: Nearly a million people were executed, including the top military brass and cultural elite.
: The purges allowed Stalin to replace the old Bolshevik guard with a new elite of "young strivers" completely dependent on him for their status. Geopolitics and the "Waiting" for Hitler Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941
Stalin’s primary goal in 1929 was to force a backward peasant economy into "socialist modernity". This was achieved through two brutal, simultaneous campaigns: : Nearly a million people were executed, including
: Stalin built over 9,000 industrial enterprises, transforming the USSR into a modern war machine. By the late 1930s, the Red Army was the best-armed force in the world, with tens of thousands of tanks and planes. The Great Terror (1936–1938) 000 industrial enterprises