Short term effects of Stalin's purges are:
(1) When Russia attacked on Finland,Russia had to suffer mass casualties as 36% of the army had been purged or executed or killed and the new army was poorly trained.Thirteen million deaths can be attributed to the purge by dictator Stalin.The idea was to eliminate dissenting members of the Communist Party of Russia.More than a million people were sent to Siberian labour camps known as Gulags.
(2) When Germany attacked on Russia in 1941,The German forces almost reached Moscow,once again the Russian army was almost incompetent compared to German forces,even though reorganisation of Russian forces had been done by dictator Stalin.
(3)  Upon Stalin’s rise to power, some members of the former Bolshevik party began to question his authority. By the mid-1930s, Stalin believed anyone with ties to the Bolsheviks or Lenin’s government was a threat to his leadership and needed to go.
(4)The rise of Nazi power in Germany and militarists in Japan also posed a great danger to the U.S.S.R. Many experts believe these threats further encouraged Stalin to carry out the purge in an effort to unite and strengthen his country.
(5) Stalin’s acts of terror and torture broke the Soviet people’s spirits and effectively eliminated certain groups of citizens, such as intellectuals and artists. His reign as dictator also made his people completely dependent on the state.
