Although Donald Trump’s purges—current and continuing—of his own government are unprecedented for the United States, they nevertheless have a historical precedent.    

Unfortunately for Americans, that precedent occurred in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin.

The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion in 1941.

In 1937-38, the Red Army fell prey to Stalin’s paranoia.

Its victims included:

• Three of five marshals (five-star generals);
• Thirteen of 15 army commanders (three- and four-star generals);
• Fifty of 57 army corps commanders; and
• One hundred fifty-four out of 186 division commanders.

And heading the list of those marked for death was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937. 

Joseph Stalin

Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power. 

On his confession, which survives in the archives, his bloodstains can clearly be seen.

On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special military tribunal to try Tukhachevsky and eight generals for treason.

It was a sham: The accused were denied defense attorneys, and could not appeal the verdict—-which was foregone: Death.

Within hours of the verdict, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell and shot once in the back of the head. 

In a Russian version of poetic justice, five of the eight generals who served as Tukhachevsky’s judges were themselves later condemned and executed as traitors.

From 1937 until 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially declared a traitor and fifth-columnist. 

On January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his co-defendants were declared innocent of all charges and were “rehabilitated” by order of Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev. 

 Postage stamp honoring Mikhail Tukhachevsky

The Stalin purges—lasting to 1938—decimated the Russian army and left the Soviet Union vulnerable to attack by its arch enemy: Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

On June 22, 1941, that attack swept over the western part of the Soviet Union, up to the gates of Moscow and, in 1942, as far east as Stalingrad. It took four years of bitter warfare—and a loss of at least 25 million Soviet casualties—before the Nazi threat was finally destroyed.

As a result of Trump’s purges of America’s health and security institutions, the United States now faces the same threat of invasion—through disease, terrorism, natural disaster or military conquest.

Donald Trump

Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans are openly or silently rubberstamping Trump’s agenda.

The reason: They fear that Trump will turn his Fascistic voting base upon them. They want to keep their seats in Congress—and all the power and perks that go with them. 

Republicans don’t care that Trump has trashed the institutions that Americans have cherished for more than 200 years. Institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, and an incorruptible Justice Department.

He has viciously attacked all of these—and Republicans have either said nothing or rushed to his defense. Many of them tried to short-circuit Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation and prosecution of Trump’s inciting a deadly riot against Congress on January 6, 2021. 

But there are signs that even some Republicans might be thinking of breaking with Trump—at least on slashing the Medicaid program.

States and the federal government jointly pay for Medicaid, which offers nearly-free health care coverage for roughly 80 million poor and disabled Americans, including millions of children. It cost $880 billion to operate in 2023.

Nationally, 55% of Americans said the government spends too little on Medicaid.

And pollster Tony Fabrizio, a chief architect of Trump’s 2024 victory, has heard rumblings of Republican discontent. He’s warned the President that:

• 59% of voters in 18 swing districts worry “about their personal financial situation.”
• In these swing districts, 80% favor extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies for health insurance—which will expire this year after Democrats expanded them in 2021.
• Majorities oppose cutting taxes on corporations.
• 63% say their top priority for tax policy is helping “working-class families,” versus the 1%, which Trump and Republicans favor.

The House blueprint, which Trump supports, lays the groundwork for up to $880 billion in Medicaid cuts and tens of billions in cuts to food stamps.

According to a February 22 story in The New Republic—“Trump’s New Pollster Just Hit Him With Very Bad News and a Warning”:

“One caveat: The Fabrizio poll finds that a very slim majority supports extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts when they are not defined. But that package contained enormous tax cuts for the rich and corporations, and those would get extended too.”

Yet even if Medicaid and Medicare remain untouched, that will do nothing for those thousands of federal workers who have lost their jobs.

Many of them waited months to undergo extensive background investigations. Many of them have been on the job only weeks or months before being pink-slipped.

Most of them won’t be given letters of recommendation, proving they were not removed for cause. Which will make it hard to convince new employers to hire them.

They are among the first casualties of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great” campaign. They won’t be the last.