The Purge: Difference between revisions

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* As Stalin's biggest fan, Albania's former communist dictator Enver Hoxha also carried out a number of purges during his time in office (albeit they were on a much smaller scale).

* The French Revolution between 1789 and 1799 saw several Purges, some directed against royalists, some against 'dissenting' factions within the Revolution. The guillotine was introduced to make the executioner's workload more feasible.

** Same thing - but worse - happened after [[Red October]]. During the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks quickly executed some representatives of the old regime. As the months went by and the ensuing civil war intensified, the purge grew into a [[Reign of Terror]]. In fact, ''all'' the factions involved in the civil war (the White Army, the Anarchists, the Czech Legion etc.) conducted purges of some sort - though they had different targets.

** Same thing - but worse - happened after [[Red October]]. During the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks quickly executed some representatives of the old regime. As the months went by and the ensuing civil war intensified, the purge grew into a [[Reign of Terror]]. In fact, ''all'' the factions involved in the civil war (the White Army, the Anarchists, the Czech Legion etc.) conducted purges of some sort - though they had different targets. Oh, and it was a very ''mobile'' war. That is, sometimes this "shoot the previous Mayor, Town Council and anyone you don't like who happened to be around" routine was done ''repeatedly''.

* During the early first century BC, Rome went through a bloody purge when Marius seized power, then Sulla's proscription. About forty years later, the Second Triumvirate held their own proscriptions, referred to in Shakespeare's ''[[Julius Caesar]]''. Later emperors' struggles with the senatorial order were frequently depicted as purges by historians.

* Upon the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, the Egyptian leadership decided that it would be best to let Vice-President Anwar Sadat run things for a while, figuring he would be a pushover if they wanted to oust him. By the end of 1971, most of his political enemies--both among the leadership and outside of it--were either dead or imprisoned, the result of an event known as the [[wikipedia:Corrective Revolution|Corrective Revolution]].

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* The numerous regimes modeled after Stalin's USSR or Hitler's Germany also conducted purges, though not quite to the scale of their "mentor" countries. After Stalin's death (1953) the purges in East Europe became less common and far less brutal (people usually lost their jobs instead of their heads, or were put in prisons rather than labor camps).

* For a long period of history in the Ottoman Empire, a Sultan's sons would compete for the crown amongst themselves by slaughtering their male siblings (and sometimes nephews and uncles.) Whomever was left alive at the end of the purge was declared the new Sultan. (This lasted until the Empire finally got into the habit of declaring the firstborn son the next ruler.)

* [[Tsarist Russia|Ivan IV "The Terrible"]] accused the top Boyars of trying to reduce him to their puppet - he seized actual power in the wake of a big riot against them. Later he moved out of Moscow with some favorites and issued what amounts to ultimatum: he gets to "set aside" some land as royal personal property (a pre-existing mechanism, but not ''intended to'' manage confiscations or keep servants above the law) and sort out "the traitors" (list attached) - or abdicates. If this oligarchy did see fit to steal from the crown prince or refer to a minor noble as "slave", one can only guess how they treated common people... So the monarch got support of pretty much everyone else. Cue raids, confiscations and exile of heirs to the borders. The purge dropped in popularity when some participants reduced it to plain "[[Rape, Pillage and Burn]]" deal. Also the folk from confiscated (i.e. best) lands ran to the borders: instead of "devil you know" they may get a favorite of the worst sort, and even if not, this voided various lucrative arrangements. The more people ran, the more infrastructure failed, so more ran - until this led to two lost wars. After which Ivan IV fixed some problems his purge created... and purged his troublesome servants too for good measure.