The Bolsheviks stated as justification the need to get rid of the members who had joined the party simply to be on the winning side.
The major criteria were social origins (members of working classes were normally accepted without question) and contributions to the revolutionary cause.
In particular, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Ivanovich Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky were asked to defend themselves during this purge.
)[6] But from 1934 onwards, during the Great Purge, the connotations of the term changed, because being expelled from the party came with the possibility of arrest, with long imprisonment or execution following.
[9] In response, Stalin's Great Purge saw one third of the Communist party executed or sentenced to work in labor camps.
Although most were innocent, many chose to name accomplices either in hopes of gaining freedom or just to stop their torture by interrogators, which was ubiquitous at the time.
In one piece of literature, the author recalls a Soviet general describing the Great Purges as "difficult years to understand" for citizens and foreigners alike.
Germans, Poles, Finns, and other westerners were shown the same fate the bourgeoisie had been dealt following the end of NEP.