Great Purge

The Great Purge or Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор, romanized: Bol'shoy terror), also known as the Year of '37 (37-й год, Tridtsat' sed'moy god) and the Yezhovshchina (ежовщина [(j)ɪˈʐofɕːɪnə], lit. 'period of Yezhov'), was a political purge in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. After the assassination of Sergei Kirov by Leonid Nikolaev in 1934, Joseph Stalin launched a series of show trials known as the Moscow trials to remove suspected dissenters from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (especially those aligned with the Bolshevik party). The term "great purge" was popularized by historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror, whose title alluded to the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. The purges were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the interior ministry and secret police of the USSR. In 1936, the NKVD under Genrikh Yagoda began the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks, government officials, and regional party bosses. Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned, or executed, by the NKVD, including Nikolai Bukharin, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinoviev. The purges were eventually expanded to the Red Army high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military, including Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The campaigns also affected many other segments of society: the intelligentsia, wealthy peasants—especially those lending money or other wealth (kulaks)—and professionals sometimes in the form of specialist-baiting. As the scope of the purge widened, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries (known collectively as wreckers) began affecting civilian life. The purge reached its peak between September 1936 and August 1938, when the NKVD was under chief Nikolai Yezhov (hence the name Yezhovshchina). The campaigns were carried out according to the general line of the...