Great Purge

The Great Purge or the Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (37-ой год, Tridtsat sedmoi god) and the Yezhovschina ('period of Yezhov'), was NKVD head Nikolay Yezhov's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union that occurred from 1936 to 1938. It involved large-scale repression of the peasantry; ethnic cleansing; purges of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Red Army; widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. Historians estimate the total number of deaths due to Stalinist repression in 1937–38 to be between 950,000 and 1.2 million.

Great Purge

The Great Purge or the Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (37-ой год, Tridtsat sedmoi god) and the Yezhovschina ('period of Yezhov'), was NKVD head Nikolay Yezhov's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union that occurred from 1936 to 1938. It involved large-scale repression of the peasantry; ethnic cleansing; purges of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Red Army; widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. Historians estimate the total number of deaths due to Stalinist repression in 1937–38 to be between 950,000 and 1.2 million.