Purge, Cleanse, Kill!

[Pyramid_Head]

So far Great Purge's both implementation in representing scale of events and resulting effects are quite underwhemling. That was a major event in USSR history, which influenced most of later decisions.
In HoIIV it is a 4 stage event with 4 options, most of which, are pointless.
USSR already have good theorists and losing some of them would not be nor decisive, nor crippling. Besides, you can choose, who you may Purge.

Negative effects of the Purge:

• –50% Division organization
• –10% Research bonus in all doctrine researches

IMO, the Purge event chain have following problems:
1. Absolute Certainty
You'll get guaranteed civil war in the future. No chances. No civil war, with losing a quarter(or more) of your army, worth the results of not purging someone, for 10% discount on doctrine research or other minor benefit.
2. Negligible effects
For Purge you will be hit hard with ORG malus and doctrine research time. ORG penalty could be a problem only if you decide to go for offensive war and completely negated should defensive war happen to you. Research time is negated by assigning a theorist. Neither of this effects prevents USSR from becoming a behemoth, with huge industrial capacity and stockpiles of infantry equipment.
3. No adequate alternative.
Should you not perform the Purge you will lose:

Spoiler: Lessons of War

• gains 20  army experience.
• gets 1× (50%) research bonus for armor technology
• gets 1× research bonus (50%) for land doctrines.
• remove any existing Officers Purged & Great Patriotic War national spirit

One discount for Nuclear and two for rocket techs. And a research slot. Overall losses would be five -50% discounts, research slot and 20 army exp.
All this for a 4(max) years of negative effects, which gradually diminishes every 146 days. Which means should you start it early, then you'll have no negative effects by 1940. And should war happen before, Lessons of War will instantly wipe out all negative effects and provide you with significant bonuses and discounts. Also, all negative effects will be overlapped by Great Patriotic War effect, which will fire should you be attacked before Purge effects would expire. So far, there is no question "to Purge or not to Purge", its "Purge now" or "Purge later".
The alternative for not Purging is abilty to install Trotsky, which is...only a permanent revolution branch.
4. Lack of in-game logic
For various civil war outcomes the leaders just make no sense. Vlasov as a leader for every neutral faction? The man was famous only for being a traitor, who agreed to collaborate with the nazis and abandoned only front line nazis assigned him for, but otherwise held absolutely no political power, nor military influence. It's like assigning Goebbels for ever democratic or communist coup for Germany. Leaders, who feature in Purge events, who were actually targeted or could be targets of purging not even featuring in "Survivors coup" event.

What could be possibly done:
1. Adding logic
Just make splinter faction and civil war leaders logical. People, who actually held power and influence. There's a whole lot of them, starting from Tukhachevskiy to Bukharin, Yezhov and Beria, with generals and political figures in-between.
2. Make consequences more severe
USSR is a victim of HoIIV mechanics and able to amass huge amount of MIC and CIC. So such huge benefits of the Purge should have much severe effects. There were no Hollywood 1-rifle-per-3-soldiers, but USSR still suffered heavily from lack of equipment yet now there's absolutely no problem amassing tremendous stockpiles of INF equipment and spam deivisions like hell. Full-strength divisions! Full-strength tank divisions. USSR never had that even in 1941. Possible solution to outweigh benefits from Purging is to hit USSR with Production Efficiency malus, slowly dwindling in a way "Talented new Officers" slowly negates reserach and ORG penalty. Another option is to implement Great-Depression-like mechanics with heavy penalty on construction speeds to prevent overwhelming production values.
3. Create national focus intersection with ability to go for Lessons of War.
Now refusal to Purge shuts entire branch of national focuses off. There should be a positive sides for not Purging, other than single doubtful benefit of ability to install Trotsky with accompanying civil war. If no separate branch could be created for alternative tothe Purge, then at least make an intersection which will open Lessons of War and its huge benefits to players. Because now, players have no option but to Purge as fast as possible and use gambits, like declaring wars right after the Purge to get access to Lessons of War and get rid of negative effects ASAP. Instead of preventing early USSR aggression, current state of things actually promotes it.
4. Add uncertainty
Make possibility of civil war a chance, a gamble. Add a bit of uncertainty to your choices.

The event chain right now is so...primitive, so underwhelming it hurts. Expanding it could present more choices for more flexible USSR gameplay and ways to adjust balance of USSR's strength.

 

[cat013]

The Great Purge was immaterial to the 1941 disaster. If not for its national unity effects it shouldn't even be in the game.

 

[Telenil]

I strongly disagree that the purge tree should have any sort of gamble. None of the books I've read suggests there was a serious plot against Stalin in the mid-30s. IMO, the player shouldn't have to worry about imaginary/ahistorical coups. The civil war should be a deliberate, ahistorical action, like turning the Reich democratic.

Everything else follows. If we don't want a civil war that only ever existed in propaganda (and perhaps not even that) to constrain player action, then the purge should happen every time, so its effects should be relatively benign.

The alternative would be to make the purge happen by event, no choice or alternative. But, personnally, I wouldn't like to be forced to inflict crippling maluses on my troops because an imaginary conspiracy would somehow break the country if I did the sensible thing.

 

[Searry]

Yeah I don't think Vlasov fits as a leader of anything than turncoat troops. The old leaders of Russia had died, been assassinated or lost their prestige. I don't know who fits as the leader of non-communist Russia.

 

[Sourlol]

I strongly disagree that the purge tree should have any sort of gamble. None of the books I've read suggests there was a serious plot against Stalin in the mid-30s. IMO, the player shouldn't have to worry about imaginary/ahistorical coups. The civil war should be a deliberate, ahistorical action, like turning the Reich democratic.

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

Stalin rose to power in a system built by conspiracy and revolution. That is part of the character of the nation you play as. The particularities of the leader and populace play a role in all the countries in the game. And if you look at TfV and especially DoD NF trees PDX is making a concerted effort to increase the visibility of the national narrative. In most cases it is the population v the state or the leader v the state. USSR, the state (that's you the player) had to deal with a paranoid sociopath of a leader (that's Stalin), that should be reflected in game.
India had to deal with famine and a populace that wanted freedom.
The US had a policy of isolationism they had to come together as to what their global responsibilities were before they would get involved in another large conflict.
Romania apparently has a philandering king who is more a liability than anything else.

 

[Telenil]

Stalin rose to power in a system built by conspiracy and revolution. That is part of the character of the nation you play as. The particularities of the leader and populace play a role in all the countries in the game. And if you look at TfV and especially DoD NF trees PDX is making a concerted effort to increase the visibility of the national narrative. In most cases it is the population v the state or the leader v the state. USSR, the state (that's you the player) had to deal with a paranoid sociopath of a leader (that's Stalin), that should be reflected in game.

Not by turning conspiracies that do not exist into a physical threat.

If an event simply says Stalin does a crippling purge and adds the maluses, that's fine, assuming the game can be balanced around it. But if the player feels forced to clic on the button because otherwise there will be civil war, that's not Stalin being paranoid, that's the USSR actually being under threat. In the late 30s, no one in Russia was going to attempt a coup, especially not the people being purged.

 

[cat013]

Looks like some people don't understand how the Soviet government worked ("byzantine" doesn't even begin to cover it). Take so called Leningrad Affair of late 1940s for example. They were plotting to establish Russian Communist party as an ally to the All-Union Communist party. If you don't realize how this was more existential threat to Stalin than Barbarossa, you simply wasted your time reading.

 

[Opanashc]

In the late 30s, no one in Russia was going to attempt a coup, especially not the people being purged.

If you believe it - it must be true. After all, you were there and knew everything.
Except you weren't.
Trotsky's followers held a lot of power in USSR in the 30s. I highly doubt they would have invited him if they were successful in staging a coup. In 1930s, Stalin was making top brass actually WORK. And if they didn't prove useful - he replaced them. You believe, that figureheads that won Civil War using tsarist's army officers as their chiefs of staff and got rid of them in late 1920s, were willing to part with their privileges? Hell no! They wanted to continue "business as usual", but the situation was changing, and they weren't changing with the situation. They already proved not useful as figureheads, because those need to be loyal, and they shown where their loyalties lie.

 

[Khevenhuller]

Not by turning conspiracies that do not exist into a physical threat.

If an event simply says Stalin does a crippling purge and adds the maluses, that's fine, assuming the game can be balanced around it. But if the player feels forced to clic on the button because otherwise there will be civil war, that's not Stalin being paranoid, that's the USSR actually being under threat. In the late 30s, no one in Russia was going to attempt a coup, especially not the people being purged.

But what happens if things go worse for the USSR than they originally did? If Stalin had not purged he would have been unable to pack the General Staff and the senior leadership of the armed forces with his creatures, like Kulik and Mekhlis and old comrades from the 1st Cavalry Army of the revolutionary period. If you still had more independently minded characters around like Tukhachevsky (whose loathing of Stalin dated back to the war against Poland) and Kalinin then things could have gone differently.

The Great Purge was immaterial to the 1941 disaster. If not for its national unity effects it shouldn't even be in the game.

Tupolev was jailed in 1938 and stayed there for some years, which is hardly a minimal effect. The whole Soviet radar research programme was derailed as all the scientists were taken away and shot. Alongside this, in 1937 the principle of 'dual control' so the commissars were back at the higher levels of command, which hamstrung senior officers. Stalin was wedded to Popov's view that independent and large armoured formations were impossible (something Popov had to sheepishly admit he was wrong about to Stalin after the Fall of France) whilst Stalin personally ordered the production of anti-tank guns reduced, Kulik cancelled the production of the 76mm Field Gun and ordered nothing in its place whilst Zhukov went along with the 1941 'forward deployment' rather than sticking to the Stalin Line: Shaposhnikov had tried this out on Stalin and had been summarily ignored. Would there have been more resistance to this sort of sub-optimal meddling if the purges had not happened? The whole struggle over mechanisation, what should happen and how is completely undermined by the effect of the purges.

USSR is a victim of HoIIV mechanics and able to amass huge amount of MIC and CIC. So such huge benefits of the Purge should have much severe effects. There were no Hollywood 1-rifle-per-3-soldiers, but USSR still suffered heavily from lack of equipment yet now there's absolutely no problem amassing tremendous stockpiles of INF equipment and spam deivisions like hell. Full-strength divisions! Full-strength tank divisions. USSR never had that even in 1941. Possible solution to outweigh benefits from Purging is to hit USSR with Production Efficiency malus, slowly dwindling in a way "Talented new Officers" slowly negates reserach and ORG penalty. Another option is to implement Great-Depression-like mechanics with heavy penalty on construction speeds to prevent overwhelming production values..

I seem to recall that 50% of Soviet tanks needed an overhaul or were not operational at the start of Barbarossa whilst ammunition was scarce. I also think that the aviation production was concentrated increasingly beyond the Urals, but production for the army was primarily focussed in European Russia. The purge had also created havoc in logistical support and rear areas as the higher staff were still wrangling over how it should be done and what was needed.

K

 

[Opanashc]

K

You assume, that those purged in 1937-38, were smarter then those who remained (in top echelon). They weren't. Both sides were at the same level. Generals that won WW2 were a different breed, going through entire career growth, instead of jumping from lieutenants to generals in 2-3 years.

 

[Sourlol]

Not by turning conspiracies that do not exist into a physical threat.

if the player feels forced to clic on the button because otherwise there will be civil war, that's not Stalin being paranoid, that's the USSR actually being under threat. In the late 30s, no one in Russia was going to attempt a coup, especially not the people being purged.

How do we know that? Soviets were notorious for attempting to scrub important people from the annals of their history. How do we know there wasn't the seeds of a real plot, multiple real plots, that were effectively removed? If everyone who had a hand in the plot was dead it would be pretty difficult to go and ask them what they were really doing during the 1930s.

Who knows, maybe if Stalin wasn't purging people and ruling with a fist of terror, there may have been a coup or assassination attempt (who is to say he didn't die from assassination?).

He wiped out a shit ton of dissidents, who is to say those people, in an alternate universe where they weren't purged, wouldn't have been his political downfall?

If anything it sounds like the actual Purge was effective at preventing an uprising/coup/revolt/assassination.

Again, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

 

[Opanashc]

Who knows, maybe if Stalin wasn't purging people and ruling with a fist of terror, there may have been a coup or assassination attempt (who is to say he didn't die from assassination?).

It wasn't an assassination attempt per se. Doctors were prevented from reaching him on time. You want a coup? Look at what happened to Beria.

 

[cat013]

The whole Soviet radar research programme was derailed as all the scientists were taken away and shot.

Given that the Red Army had working radar by 1941 they must have had backup scientists stashed somewhere. Still, none of this really matters. In the sense that if it didn't happen the Summer-41 campaign would still end up exactly the way it did. That is what late mobilization (multiplied in this case by extremely poorly timed tank force reorganization) normally does to your army. But as this game has no mobilization at all I don't see how it is relevant.

 

[Khevenhuller]

You assume, that those purged in 1937-38, were smarter then those who remained (in top echelon). They weren't. Both sides were at the same level. Generals that won WW2 were a different breed, going through entire career growth, instead of jumping from lieutenants to generals in 2-3 years.

Who said anything about smart? I am not talking about Russian generals from 1943, but from 1941. The people Stalin replaced these purged officers with often had extremely baleful consequences. We can only go by pre-purge reputations and what they left behind, and certainly the 1936 doctrinal regulations did look like a solid basis for developing a modern approach to warfare. That Stalin's placeman, Kulik, could make a claim for the abandonment of mechanisation and the institution of an 18,000 strong infantry division with horse drawn artillery, and Voroshilov who seems to have spent the entire thirties resisting any attempt at mechanising the army survived is more noteworthy. We do not know if the people got rid of would have been militarily competent, we do know that the ones who survived either were incompetent (like Budenny) or just were cowed into going along with things (like Zhukov and Shaposhnikov).

k

 

[Sourlol]

It wasn't an assassination attempt per se. Doctors were prevented from reaching him on time. You want a coup? Look at what happened to Beria.

My understanding is there was more going on than just doctors being prevented to treat. He suffered a heart attack. The nature of the heart attack, it has been discussed, is consistent the the symptoms from being poisoned by a few substances.

Per wikipedia, The political memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed that Beria had boasted to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin: "I took him out."

That was allegedly pulled from:

Montefiore, Simon Sebag (2004). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. London: Phoenix.ISBN 978-0-75381-766-7.

 

[Opanashc]

Who said anything about smart? I am not talking about Russian generals from 1943, but from 1941. The people Stalin replaced these purged officers with often had extremely baleful consequences. We can only go by pre-purge reputations and what they left behind, and certainly the 1936 doctrinal regulations did look like a solid basis for developing a modern approach to warfare.That Stalin's placeman, Kulik, could make a claim for the abandonment of mechanisation and the institution of an 18,000 strong infantry division with horse drawn artillery, and Voroshilov who seems to have spent the entire thirties resisting any attempt at mechanising the army survived is more noteworthy. We do not know if the people got rid of would have been militarily competent, we do know that the ones who survived either were incompetent (like Budenny) or just were cowed into going along with things (like Zhukov and Shaposhnikov).

Oh, so Tukhachevsky, demanding 100,000 tanks by 1938 without ANY support such as trucks and all, was smart? You stop to think, that Kulik was being smarter, by suggesting the use of what could realistically be done?
Have you read the writings of and their contemporaries about those purged? ALL writings? They are demonstrated as not any brighter than those who were left, and with more flaws (such as alcoholism) to boot.

 

[Khevenhuller]

Given that the Red Army had working radar by 1941 they must have had backup scientists stashed somewhere. Still, none of this really matters. In the sense that if it didn't happen the Summer-41 campaign would still end up exactly the way it did. That is what late mobilization (multiplied in this case by extremely poorly timed tank force reorganization) normally does to your army. But as this game has no mobilization at all I don't see how it is relevant.

What they did was re-start the programme that had been closed down in 1937 in 1939 by dusting off the research that had been made up to 1937. Two years of work had been lost. However, even then it was not straightforward as the Chair of Acoustics at the Dzerzhinski Artillery academy intervened and insisted that radar was futile and used his influence to arrange a conference that, thankfully, came down against him. This delayed the production of Burya-2 and Burya-3 sets until well into 1940.

Was non-mobilisation inevitable purges or no purges? Again, it is not easy to make that call. Although barred from shooting at German recce flights in 1941, Colonel-General Kutznetsov, CO of the Baltic Special Military District instituted black out measures at airfields and naval bases in his district. Colonel-General Voronov, CO of AA command, was impressed by this and asked the Kremlin to pass this idea on to other commanders. Instead Kuznetsov was ordered to turn the lights on again!

A second point about mobilisation refers to the Special Military Districts: these were permanently mobilised. These were Baltic, Western and Kiev which covered all of the western frontier barring a small portion in front of Odessa and the border with Finland. It is more important to note that in these areas the defences were often simply battalion positions, totally lacking in buried communications or rear area support. This was a direct result of the decision by Stalin, implemented by Zhukov, to go to the forward zone rather than stick to the original defences. Motor transport and even prime movers had been taken away from operational units to haul building materials. These were the results of a poor strategic decision ordered by Stalin in the face of no resistance from the high command barring the unwell Shaposhnikov.

K

 

[Pyramid_Head]

I do not think it is possible or have any meaning to guess if Purges were beneficial or harmful for the eventual events that would unfold. It is a useless debate. Eventually it will boil down to political trash and squabble with one posters screaming how Stalin is worse than Hitler and preaching how everyone who support communism should be banned from the forums and others who will claim Purges were absolutely beneficial and Stalin was a genius, visionary and almost a saint, who single-handedly saved the world from fascism. Eventually it will boil down to thread closing.
What I am talking is gameplay effects and representation of the Purge event chain. Options to shift USSR ideology or diplomatic and internal course via flexible event chain.

 

[Khevenhuller]

Oh, so Tukhachevsky, demanding 100,000 tanks by 1938 without ANY support such as trucks and all, was smart? You stop to think, that Kulik was being smarter, by suggesting the use of what could realistically be done?
Have you read the writings of and their contemporaries about those purged? ALL writings? They are demonstrated as not any brighter than those who were left, and with more flaws (such as alcoholism) to boot.

You are sort of missing the point here. If we are discussing the possibility of a coup if things go wrong, the existence of officers that were independently minded and willing to challenge party placemen like Voroshilov and Mekhlis makes a coup more likely.

If we are discussing the impact of the purges on the state of the Red Army in 1941 it is clear that the purges gave Stalin and the party greater control, reduced the ability of the armed forces to resist mad ideas and muddied both doctrinal and technical development. We have not even considered what the impact of the purges were overseas, particularly in regard to the Germans.

K

 

[Khevenhuller]

I do not think it is possible or have any meaning to guess if Purges were beneficial or harmful for the eventual events that would unfold. It is a useless debate. Eventually it will boil down to political trash and squabble with one posters screaming how Stalin is worse than Hitler and preaching how everyone who support communism should be banned from the forums and others who will claim Purges were absolutely beneficial and Stalin was a genius, visionary and almost a saint, who single-handedly saved the world from fascism. Eventually it will boil down to thread closing.
What I am talking is gameplay effects and representation of the Purge event chain. Options to shift USSR ideology or diplomatic and internal course via flexible event chain.

Well, I did meet his interpreter, who assured me that Stalin had been 'a very considerate employer'.

K