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Stalin was a big fan of purges and we're not talking about the kind of uses [Stalin appears]

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a laxative though one we're talking about the identification and removal of

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people who Stalin decided were undesirable in some way no one knows

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exactly how many people died during Stalin's purges but experts estimate the [Floating skulls]

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number to be around 20 million in other words it's like Stalin wiped the state

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of California off the map.. hey looky there no more Kardashians anyway

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Stalin started the purging process by eliminating the Russian intelligentsia

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aka all of the country's smart people while many of these folks were [Russian intelligensia in a meeting]

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imprisoned first you have to remember that the gulag was an awful place to be

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about 10% of a gulags population died every year either from disease or from

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the effects of hard labor and of course many members of the intelligence you [People working hard labor in Gulag]

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were just executed outright the charges Stalin made against his victims were as

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you can imagine daft he accused them of spying or being counter revolutionaries [Stalin looking at guinea pig]

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he accused them of producing research or writings that were unmarxist

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because Stalin was such an expert on Marxism by the late 1930s it became

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clear that all those previous purges had just been practice..that's right Stalin

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dropped a great purge also known as the great terror on the Soviet population

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really the man should have just dosed himself with Metamucil maybe then he [Man running frantically to the restroom]

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wouldn't have had so much gung ho to murder everybody

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well the assassination of a highly placed Soviet official led to Stalin

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imprisoning relocating and forcing confessions from millions of people

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Stalin went after all of them intellectuals, Ukrainians, political

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rivals basically anyone who thought he was a big fat jerk which was a lot of

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people well the purging continued right on through World War two and even [Soldiers running through a field]

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increased after the conflict because Stalin felt threatened by all the Soviet

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soldiers returning from the fighting yeah because that's a great way to treat

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the veterans who saved both your country and you're crazy butt there Uncle Joe

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good job....

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Shmoop takes no stance on the craziness of Stalin's butt. [Man attempting to get into restroom doors]

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