e moderates. Stalin ordered the "purification" of the party. On August 19, 1936, sixteen old Bolsheviks were publicly tried for conspiring with Trotsky and for the murder of Kirov (Dmytryshyn 179-181; Treadgold 279). Anyone connected anyway to Nikolayev was also arrested. Robert Conquest explains:Everyone who was remotely connected with the case was seized. One woman had worked as a librarian at the 'Young Communist Club' in Leningrad which had been disbanded in the mid-twenties but, with which Nikolayev had in some way been associated. Not only was she arrested, but also her sister with whom she lived, her sister's husband, the secretary of her Party cell, and all those who had recommended her for jobs (Lewis 90).Then in January 1937 there was another trial for seventeen more party members. They were accused of conspiring with Nazi Germany and Japan to dismember the USSR (Dmytryshyn 181). The trials and arrests continued. There were mass arrests, confessions extracted by force, and the executions and deportations of thousands of peasants. Soviet officers were also arrested and convicted. The Red Army lost three of it's five field marshals, fourteen of it's sixteen army commanders, sixty of it's sixty-seven corps commanders, 136 of it's 199 division commanders, 220 brigade commanders, all eleven deputy commissars of war, seventy-five members of the Supreme Military Council, all military district commanders, all air force officers, all except one navy fleet commander, and all eight Red Navy admirals. In addition, the army lost half of it's officer corps, 35,000 men ranging from colonels to company commanders (Dmytryshyn 180-182; Marrin 127). Many that suffered from the purges were sent to labor camps or were just executed by the secret police. Local units of secret police were even ordered to arrest a certain percentage of the people in their districts (McKay 931). Graves were discovered in 1934 holding over 9,000 bodies of people...
