The problems were to some extent of Stalin's own making; he obviously felt that under his totalitarian regime, political and social activities must be controlled just as much as economic life He aimed at complete and unchallenged power for himself and became increasingly suspicious and intolerant of criticism. Starting in 1930, there was growing opposition within the party, which aimed to slow down industrialisation, allow peasants to leave collective farms, and remove Stalin from the leadership if necessary. However, Stalin was equally determined that political opponents and critics must be eliminated once and for all. A new constitution was needed to consolidate the hold of Stalin and the communist party over the whole country. Social and cultural aspects of life needed to be brought into line and harnessed to the service of the state. Stalin's methods were typically dramatic. Using the murder of Sergei Kirov on December 1934, one of his supporters of the Politburo, as an excuse, Stalin launched what became known as the purges. It seems fairly certain that Stalin himself organised Kirov's murder, but it was blamed on Stalin's critics. Over the next four years, hundreds of important officials were arrested, tortured, made to confess to all sorts of crimes of which they were largely innocent (such as plotting with the exiled Trotsky or with capitalist governments to overthrow the soviet state) and forced to appear in a series of 'show trials' at which they were invariably found guilty and sentenced to death or labour camp. Those executed included all the 'Old Bolsheviks' - Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and Radek - who had helped to make the 1917 revolution, the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army, Tukhachevsky, thirteen other generals and about two-thirds of the top officers. Millions of innocent people ended up in labour camps. Even Trotsky was sought out and murdered in exile in Mexico City. The purges were successful in eliminating possible alternative leaders and in terrorising the masses into obedience, but the consequences were serious. Many of the best brains in the government, the army and in industry had disappeared, and in a country where the highly educated class was still small, this was bound to hinder progress.