Stalin's Purge of Bolshevik Leadership | Generated by AI
Question: How accurate is the claim that almost the entire original Bolshevik leadership was executed or murdered under Stalin’s Soviet Union (e.g., Trotsky assassinated in Mexico, etc.)?
Answer:
The claim is largely accurate. By the late 1930s, under Joseph Stalin’s rule, the vast majority of the original Bolshevik leadership from the October Revolution of 1917 had been executed, died in prison, or been assassinated abroad during the Great Purge (1936–1938) and related repressions.
Key facts:
- Of the 21 members of the first Politburo formed in October 1917, only Stalin himself died of natural causes in 1953. The others met violent or unnatural ends:
- Lenin – died in 1924 (natural causes, but before Stalin’s full consolidation of power)
- Trotsky – assassinated in Mexico in 1940 on Stalin’s orders
- Kamenev – executed in 1936
- Zinoviev – executed in 1936
- Bukharin – executed in 1938
- Rykov – executed in 1938
- Tomsky – committed suicide in 1936 facing arrest
- Of the 7 original members of the first Politburo (1917):
- 4 were executed (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov)
- 1 assassinated (Trotsky)
- 1 suicide (Tomsky)
- 1 (Stalin) survived
- Central Committee of 1917: Out of 71 full and candidate members elected at the 6th Congress, over 50 were executed or died in camps during the 1930s–1940s.
- Even many second-tier Old Bolsheviks (party members before 1917) were almost completely wiped out. Historian Robert Conquest estimated that ~80–90 % of the 1934 Central Committee were later shot or died in captivity.
The only prominent exceptions who survived into the post-Stalin era were figures like Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Anastas Mikoyan — but they were from a slightly later generation and had fully aligned with Stalin.
So yes — the original revolutionary leadership was systematically annihilated by Stalin, either through show trials, NKVD executions, or targeted assassinations abroad. This was part of his effort to eliminate any potential rivals and rewrite Bolshevik history around himself.