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{{Short description|1936–1938 campaign in the Soviet Union}}
{{About|the 1936–1938 Soviet purge|political purges in general|Purge|the period of the French Revolution|Reign of Terror|other uses|Great Terror (disambiguation)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2015}}
{{For outline|Outline of the Great Purge (Soviet Union)}}
{{For timeline|Timeline of the Great Purge}}
{{Infobox civilian attack
| title = Great Purge
| partof = the [[purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Bolshevik Party purges]]
| image = Vinnycia16.jpg
| caption = Residents searching the exhumed victims of the [[Vinnytsia massacre]], 1943
| location = [[Soviet Union]], [[Xinjiang]], [[Mongolian People's Republic]]
| target = Political opponents, [[Trotskyism|Trotskyists]], [[Red Army]] leadership, [[kulaks]], [[Mass operations of the NKVD#National operations of the NKVD|religious activists and leaders]]
| type = [[Mass murder]], [[political repression]], [[ethnic cleansing]], [[summary executions]]
| date = '''Main phase:'''<br />19 August 1936 – 17 November 1938<br />({{Age in years, months, weeks and days|month1=8|day1=19|year1=1936|month2=11|day2=17|year2=1938}})
| fatalities = 681,692 executions and 116,000 deaths in the [[Gulag]] system (official figures)<ref name="EllmanComment"/><br />
700,000 to 1.2 million (estimated)<ref name="EllmanComment"/><ref name="Kuhr" /><ref name="Xavier" /><ref>{{cite book |last=Zemskov |first=Victor|authorlink=Viktor Zemskov|date=2014 |place=Moscow |lang=ru |script-title=ru:Сталин и народ. Почему не было восстания |trans-title=Stalin and the people. Why wasn't there an uprising |publisher=Algoritm |series=Uzly rossiyskoi istorii |isbn=978-5-4438-0677-8 }} pp. 80-81; table 3</ref>
| perps = [[Joseph Stalin]], the [[NKVD]] ([[Genrikh Yagoda]], [[Nikolai Yezhov]], [[Lavrentiy Beria]], [[Ivan Serov]] and others), [[Vyacheslav Molotov]], [[Andrey Vyshinsky]], [[Lazar Kaganovich]], [[Kliment Voroshilov]], [[Robert Eikhe]] and others
| motive = Elimination of political opponents,{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=[https://archive.org/details/greatterror00robe/page/53 53]}} consolidation of power,<ref>{{cite journal|title=Certainty, Probability, and Stalin's Great Party Purge|author=Brett Homkes|year=2004|url=https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=mcnair|volume=8|issue=1|journal=McNair Scholars Journal|page=13}}</ref> fear of counterrevolution,{{sfn|Harris|2017|p=16}} fear of party infiltration<ref name="James Harris 1941">James Harris, "Encircled by Enemies: Stalin's Perceptions of the Capitalist World, 1918–1941," ''Journal of Strategic Studies'' 30#3 [2007]: 513–545.</ref>
}}
{{Repression in the Soviet Union}}
{{History of the Soviet Union}}
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The '''Great Purge''' or '''Great Terror''' ({{langx|ru|Большой террор|translit=Bol'shoy terror}}), also known as the '''Year of '37''' ({{langx|ru|37-й год|translit=Tridtsat' sed'moy god|label=none}}) and the '''Yezhovshchina''' ({{lang|ru|ежовщина}} {{IPA|ru|(j)ɪˈʐofɕːɪnə|}}, {{lit|period of [[Nikolai Yezhov|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 [[Bolsheviks|Bolshevik]] party). The term "great purge" was popularized by historian [[Robert Conquest]] in his 1968 book, ''[[The Great Terror (book)|The Great Terror]]'', whose title [[allusion|alluded]] to the [[French Revolution]]'s [[Reign of Terror]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-10-04 |title=Great Terror: 1937, Stalin & Russia |url=https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/great-purge#leon-trotsky |access-date=2024-11-05 |website=history.com |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Rappaport">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lsKClpnX8qwC|title=Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion|author=Helen Rappaport|author-link=Helen Rappaport|year=1999|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1576070840|page=110|access-date=29 September 2015}}</ref>

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 [[Political boss|bosses]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/TokaevComradeX1956|title=Tokaev Comrade X 1956|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned, or executed, by the NKVD. The purges were eventually expanded to the [[Red Army]] high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://universitypressblog.dept.ku.edu/uncategorized/rethinking-stalins-purge-of-the-red-army-1937-38/|title=Rethinking Stalin's Purge of the Red Army, 1937–38 |last1=Whitewood|first1=Peter|date=June 13, 2016|website=University Press of Kansas Blog|access-date=2021-12-03}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/ABBEDEFC36C8903615BEEB02D3AB2CBD/S0037677900146224a.pdf/div-class-title-the-impact-of-the-great-purges-on-the-peopleandapos-s-commissariat-of-foreign-affairs-div.pdf|title=The Impact of the Great Purges on the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs|last1=Uldricks|first1=Teddy J.|journal=Slavic Review|volume=36|number=2|year=1977|pages=187–204 |doi=10.2307/2495035 |jstor=2495035|s2cid=163664533 }}</ref> The campaigns also affected many other segments of society: [[intelligentsia|the intelligentsia]], wealthy peasants—especially those lending money or other wealth (''[[kulak]]s'')—and professionals.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=250,&nbsp;257–258}} As the scope of the purge widened, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and [[Counter-revolutionary|counter-revolutionaries]] (known collectively as [[wrecking (Soviet Union)|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 party]], often by direct orders by the [[Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Politburo]] headed by Stalin.<ref>Goldman, W. (2005). "Stalinist Terror and Democracy: The 1937 Union Campaign". ''The American Historical Review'', 110(5), 1427–1453</ref> Hundreds of thousands of people were accused of political crimes, including espionage, wrecking, [[sabotage]], [[anti-Soviet agitation]], and conspiracies to prepare uprisings and coups. They were executed by shooting, or sent to [[Gulag]] [[labor camp]]s. The NKVD targeted certain [[Soviet Union#Nationalities and ethnic groups|ethnic minorities]] with particular force (such as [[Volga Germans]] or Soviet citizens of Polish origin), who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. Throughout the purge, the NKVD sought to strengthen control over civilians through fear and frequently used imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and executions during its [[Mass operations of the NKVD|mass operations]].{{sfn|Figes|2007|pp=227–315}}

Stalin reversed his stance on the purges in 1938, criticizing the NKVD for carrying out mass executions and overseeing the execution of NKVD chiefs Yagoda and Yezhov. Scholars estimate the death toll of the Great Purge at 700,000 to 1.2 million.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Homkes|first=Brett|date=2004|title=Certainty, Probability, and Stalin's Great Purge|url=https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=mcnair|journal=McNair Scholars Journal}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ellman |first1=Michael |title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |date=2002 |volume=54 |issue=7 |pages=1151–1172 |doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177 |jstor=826310 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/826310 |issn=0966-8136|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Shearer |first1=David R. |title=Stalin and War, 1918–1953: Patterns of Repression, Mobilization, and External Threat |date= 2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-95544-6 |page=vii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CCHMEAAAQBAJ&dq=great+purge+1.2+million&pg=PR7 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Nelson |first1=Todd H. |title=Bringing Stalin Back In: Memory Politics and the Creation of a Useable Past in Putin's Russia |date= 2019 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4985-9153-9 |page=7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oJGyDwAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+great+purge+1.2+million&pg=PA7 |language=en}}</ref> Despite the end of the purge, widespread surveillance and an atmosphere of mistrust continued for decades. Similar purges took place in [[Stalinist repressions in Mongolia|Mongolia]] and [[Sheng Shicai#1937–38 purges|Xinjiang]]. The Soviet government wanted to put [[Leon Trotsky]] on trial during the purge, but his exile prevented this. Trotsky survived the purge, although he was assassinated in 1940 by the NKVD in Mexico on orders from Stalin.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Leon Trotsky – Exile and assassination |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Trotsky/Exile-and-assassination |access-date=2022-04-27 |encyclopedia=Ecyclopædia Britannica |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Schatman |first=Max |title=Behind the Moscow Trials |year=1938}}</ref>

==Background==
{{See also|Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union}}
[[File:NKVD Order No. 00447.jpg|thumb|alt=A typewritten sheet of paper|Excerpt from [[NKVD Order No. 00447]]]]

A [[power vacuum]] developed in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the [[Soviet Union]] (USSR), after the 1924 [[Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin|death]] of [[Vladimir Lenin]]; established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. Joseph Stalin, the party's general secretary, triumphed over his opponents by 1928 and gained control of the party.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Joseph Stalin |url=https://www.history.com/topics/russia/joseph-stalin |access-date=2021-12-02 |website=History.com |date=12 November 2009 |language=en}}</ref> Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; Trotsky, his main political adversary, was forced into exile in 1929 and Stalin's doctrine of "[[socialism in one country]]" became party policy. Party officials began to lose faith in his leadership in the early 1930s, however, largely due to the human cost of the [[First five-year plan (Soviet Union)|first five-year plan]] and the [[Collective farming|collectivization of agriculture]] (including the [[Holodomor]] famine in [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic|Ukraine]]).

In 1930, the party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|forced collectivization of peasants]], the resulting [[Soviet famine of 1930–1933|famine of 1930–1933]] and the massive, uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants to cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's (and Soviet) perception of marginal and politically-suspect populations as potential sources of an uprising during a possible invasion. Stalin began to plan for the preventive elimination of potential recruits for a mythical "[[fifth column]] of [[wrecking (Soviet Union)|wreckers]], terrorists and spies."<ref>Hagenloh, Paul. 2000. "Socially Harmful Elements and the Great Terror." pp. 286–307 in ''Stalinism: New Directions'', edited by [[Sheila Fitzpatrick|S. Fitzpatrick]]. London: Routledge.</ref><ref>Shearer, David. 2003. "Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD During the 1930s." pp. 85–117 in ''Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union,'' edited by B. McLaughlin and K. McDermott. Basingstoke: [[Palgrave MacMillan]].</ref><ref name="werth" />

[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|alt=Formal photo of Leo Trotsky|[[Leon Trotsky]] in 1929, shortly before he was driven out of the Soviet Union]]

The term "[[purge]]" in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression "purge from the party ranks"; in 1933, for example, the party expelled about 400,000 people. The term changed its meaning between 1936 and 1953, and being expelled from the party came to mean almost-certain arrest, imprisonment, and (often) execution.

The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenges from past and potential opposition groups, including the party's left and right wings (led by Trotsky and [[Nikolai Bukharin]], respectively). After the [[Russian Civil War|Civil War]] and the late-1920s reconstruction of the Soviet economy, veteran Bolsheviks thought that the "temporary" wartime dictatorship (which had passed from Lenin to Stalin) was no longer necessary. Stalin's opponents in the Communist Party chided him as undemocratic and lax about bureaucratic corruption.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/index.htm|title=Great Terror|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

Opposition to the leadership may have accumulated substantial support from the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered its highly-paid elite, and the [[Ryutin affair]] seemed to vindicate Stalin's suspicions. [[Martemyan Ryutin]] was working with a large, secret [[Bloc of Soviet Oppositions|Opposition Bloc]] with Trotsky and [[Grigory Zinoviev]],<ref name="Broué">{{cite web|last=Broué|first=Pierre|title=The 'Bloc' of the Oppositions against Stalin (January 1980)|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1980/01/bloc.html|access-date=2020-12-19|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{citation|last=Kotkin|first=Stephen|title=Stalin: Paradoxes of Power 1878–1928}}</ref> which led to their deaths. Stalin enforced a ban on party [[political faction|factions]] and demoted party members who had opposed him, ending [[democratic centralism]].{{Citation needed|date=July 2025}}

In the new party organization, the Politburo (and Stalin in particular) were the sole dispensers of ideology. This required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially the prestigious "old guard" of revolutionaries. As the purges began, the government (through the NKVD) shot Bolshevik heroes—including [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]] and [[Béla Kun]]—and most of Lenin's Politburo for disagreements about policy. The NKVD attacked the supporters, friends, and family of these "heretical" Marxists, in Russia and abroad. It nearly annihilated Trotsky's family before [[Leon Trotsky#Assassination|killing]] him in Mexico; NKVD agent [[Ramón Mercader]] was part of an assassination task force assembled by special agent [[Pavel Sudoplatov]] under Stalin's orders.{{sfn|Andrew|Mitrokhin|2000|pp=86–87}}

[[Image:Sergei Kirov and Joseph Stalin, 1934.jpg|thumb|alt=Informal photo of Stalin, his young daughter, and Sergei Kirov looking at something|[[Saint Petersburg|Leningrad]] party leader [[Sergei Kirov]] with Stalin and his daughter, [[Svetlana Alliluyeva|Svetlana]], in 1934]]

By 1934, several of Stalin's rivals (such as Trotsky) began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his control of the party.<ref>{{Cite web |date=12 September 2018 |title=Trotsky's Struggle against Stalin |url=https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/trotskys-struggle-against-stalin |access-date=2022-08-22 |website=The National WWII Museum {{!}} New Orleans |language=en}}</ref> In an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, the popular high-ranking official [[Sergei Kirov]] was assassinated. The December 1934 assassination led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of his rivals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Who Killed Kirov? 'The Crime of the Century' |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/who-killed-kirov-the-crime-the-century |access-date=2021-12-03 |website=www.wilsoncenter.org |date=7 July 2011 |language=en}}</ref> Many of those arrested after Kirov's murder, high-ranking party officials among them, also admitted (often under duress) plans to kill Stalin themselves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. |url=https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Soviet-Trotskyites-Military-Collegium-Verbatim/dp/B0711N78KN |title=Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites' Heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R., Verbatim Report |publisher=People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. |year=1938 |asin=B0711N78KN}}</ref> The confessions' validity is debated by historians, but consensus exists that Kirov's death was the flashpoint when Stalin decided to take action and begin the purges.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Knight |first=Amy |title=Who Killed Kirov |publisher=Hill & Wang |year=1999}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Getty |first1=John Arch |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R5zx54LB-A4C |title=Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 |last2=Getty |first2=John Archibald |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1987 |isbn=978-0521335706 |language=en}}</ref> Some later historians came to believe that Stalin arranged Kirov's murder, or that sufficient evidence existed to reach such a conclusion.{{sfn|Conquest|1987|pp=122–138}} Kirov was a staunch Stalin loyalist, but Stalin may have viewed him as a potential rival because of his emerging popularity among moderates. The [[17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)|1934 Party Congress]] elected Kirov to the central committee with only three opposing votes against, the fewest of any candidate; Stalin received 292 opposing votes. After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged the increasingly-large group of former Stalin opponents with Kirov's murder and a growing list of other offenses which included treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage.

Another justification for the purge was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of war. [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] and [[Lazar Kaganovich]], participants in the repression as members of the Politburo, maintained this justification throughout the purge and each signed many death lists.{{sfn|Figes|2007|p=239}} Stalin believed that war was imminent, threatened by an explicitly-hostile Germany and an expansionist Japan. The Soviet press portrayed the USSR as threatened from within by fascist spies.{{sfn|Conquest|1987|pp=122–138}}

During and after the [[October Revolution]]{{sfn|Gellately|2007}},<ref>Robert Gellately, ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe'', 2007, Knopf, 720 pp. {{ISBN|1400040051}}</ref> Lenin used repression against perceived (and legitimate) enemies of the Bolsheviks as a systematic method of instilling fear and facilitating control of the population in a campaign known as the [[Red Terror]]. The campaign was relaxed as the Russian Civil War drew to a close, although the secret police remained active. From 1924 to 1928, mass repression—including incarceration in the Gulag system—fell significantly.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gulag History, Structure and Size: A View From the Secret Archives |url=https://uh.edu/~vlazarev/4389/Gulag-Gregory.htm |access-date=2022-08-24 |website=uh.edu}}</ref>

Stalin had defeated his political opponents and gained full control of the party by 1929, and organized a committee to begin the process of industrializing the Soviet Union. Backlash against industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture escalated, which prompted Stalin to increase police presence in rural areas. Soviet authorities increased repression against the kulaks (wealthy peasants who owned farmland) in a policy known as [[dekulakization]]. The kulaks responded by destroying crops and other acts of sabotage against the Soviet government.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2015-10-07 |title=The First Five Year Plan, 1928–1932 |url=https://uwaterloo.ca/library/special-collections-archives/first-five-year-plan |access-date=2022-08-24 |website=Special Collections & Archives |language=en |archive-date=29 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240129153640/https://uwaterloo.ca/library/special-collections-archives/first-five-year-plan |url-status=dead }}</ref> The resulting food shortage led to a mass famine across the USSR and slowed the Five Year Plan.

A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that, for the first time, members of the ruling party were included on a massive scale as victims of the repression. In addition to ordinary citizens, prominent members of the Communist Party were also targets of the purges.{{sfn|McLoughlin|McDermott|2002|p=6}} The purge of the party was accompanied by a purge of society. Soviet historians divide the Great Purge into three corresponding trials, and the following events are used for demarcation:
* 1936: The [[Moscow trials#The "Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center"|first Moscow trial]]
* 1937: Introduction of [[NKVD troika]]s for implementation of "revolutionary justice"
* 1937: Passage of Article 58-14 about "counter-revolutionary sabotage"
* 1937: The [[Moscow trials#The "Parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center"|second Moscow trial]]
* 1937: The military purge<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harward |first=Grant |date=2016-07-02 |title=Whitewood, Peter, ''The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military'' |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13518046.2016.1200397 |journal=The Journal of Slavic Military Studies |volume=29 |issue=3 |pages=524–526 |doi=10.1080/13518046.2016.1200397 |s2cid=151381912 |issn=1351-8046|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
* 1938: the [[Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"|third Moscow trial]].

==Moscow trials==
{{Main|Moscow trials}}

===First and second Moscow trials===
[[File:Л. Д. Троцкий, Л. Б. Каменев и Г. Е. Зиновьев. Середина 1920-х годов.jpg|thumb|alt=Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev with a group of other people|Bolshevik revolutionaries [[Leon Trotsky]], [[Lev Kamenev]], and [[Grigory Zinoviev]]]]

Between 1936 and 1938, three large Moscow trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held in which they were accused of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism. The trials were highly publicized and extensively covered by the outside world. In the Moscow trials, which Stalin used to eliminate his opponents, forced confessions helped to obtain convictions. Trotsky was [[Trial in absentia|tried in absentia]], and was sentenced to death for treason. Historians have found no evidence to support the charge.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/leon-trotsky | title=Leon Trotsky &#124; EBSCO Research Starters }}</ref>

The first trial, of 16 members of the "Trotskyite-Kamenevite-Zinovievite-Leftist-Counter-Revolutionary Bloc", was held in August 1936.<ref>Rogovin (1998), pp. 17–18</ref> The chief defendants were [[Grigory Zinoviev]] and [[Lev Kamenev]], two of the most prominent former party leaders who had been members of an [[Bloc of Soviet Oppositions|opposition bloc]] that opposed Stalin (although its activities were exaggerated).<ref name="Broué"/> Among other accusations, they were charged with the assassination of Kirov and plotting to kill Stalin. After confessing to the charges, all were sentenced to death and executed.<ref>Rogovin (1998), pp. 36–38</ref> The second trial, in January 1937, involved 17 lesser figures known as the "anti-Soviet Trotskyite-centre". The group (which included [[Karl Radek]], [[Yuri Piatakov]] and [[Grigory Sokolnikov]]) was accused of plotting with Trotsky, who was said to be conspiring with Germany. Thirteen of the defendants were eventually shot; the rest received sentences in labor camps, where they soon died.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=142}} There was also a secret military tribunal of a group of Red Army commanders, including [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]], in June 1937.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=182}}

It is now known that the confessions were obtained only after great psychological pressure and torture.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=121}} The methods used to extract the confessions are known from the accounts of former [[OGPU]] officer [[Alexander Orlov (Soviet defector)|Alexander Orlov]] and others, and included repeated beatings, simulated drownings, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families; Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism. After months of such interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion.<ref name="Redman">{{cite journal|last=Redman|first=Joseph|title=The British Stalinists and the Moscow Trials|journal=Labour Review|date=March–April 1958|volume=3|issue=2|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/pearce/1958/03/trials.html}}</ref>

Zinoviev and Kamenev demanded, as a condition for "confessing", a guarantee from the Politburo that their lives and that of their families and followers would be spared. The offer was accepted, but only Stalin, [[Kliment Voroshilov]], and Yezhov were present at the Politburo meeting. Stalin said that they were a "commission" authorized by the Politburo, and gave assurances that death sentences would not be carried out. After the trial, Stalin broke his promise to spare the defendants and had most of their relatives arrested and shot.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=87}}

====Dewey Commission====

In May 1937, the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials (commonly known as the [[Dewey Commission]]) was set up in the United States by supporters of Trotsky to establish the truth about the trials. The commission was headed by the American philosopher and educator [[John Dewey]]. Although the hearings were conducted to prove Trotsky's innocence, they brought to light evidence which established that some of the charges made at the trials could not be true.{{sfn|Snyder|2010|ref=none|p=137}}

[[Georgy Pyatakov]] testified that he had flown to [[Oslo]] in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight took place.<ref>{{cite book|title=Not guilty : report of the Commission of Inquiry Into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials|last=Dewey|first=John|publisher=Sam Sloan and Ishi Press International|others=1859–1952|year=2008|isbn=978-0923891312|location=New York|pages=154–155|oclc=843206645}}</ref> Another defendant, [[Ivan Smirnov (politician)|Ivan Smirnov]], admitted taking part in the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934 (when Smirnov had been in prison for a year).

The Dewey Commission published its findings in a 422-page book entitled ''Not Guilty''. Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow trials. In its summary, the commission wrote:{{blockquote|Independent of extrinsic evidence, the Commission finds:
* That the conduct of the Moscow Trials was such as to convince any unprejudiced person that no attempt was made to ascertain the truth.
* That while confessions are necessarily entitled to the most serious consideration, the confessions themselves contain such inherent improbabilities as to convince the Commission that they do not represent the truth, irrespective of any means used to obtain them.
* That Trotsky never instructed any of the accused or witnesses in the Moscow trials to enter into agreements with foreign powers against the Soviet Union [and] that Trotsky never recommended, plotted, or attempted the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.}}

The commission concluded: "We therefore find the Moscow Trials to be frame-ups."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/dewey/index.htm|title=The Case of Leon Trotsky (Report of Dewey Commission – 1937)|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

====Implication of the Rightists====
In the second trial, [[Karl Radek]] testified that there was a "third organization separate from the cadres which had passed through [Trotsky's] school",<ref name="ReferenceA">British Embassy Report: Viscount Chilston to Mr. Eden, 6 February 1937</ref> and "semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth-Trotskyites, people who helped us, not knowing of the terrorist organization but sympathizing with us, people who from liberalism, from a Fronde against the Party, gave us this help".{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=164}}

By the "third organization", he meant the [[Right Opposition|Rightists]] led by Bukharin (whom he implicated):

{{blockquote|I feel guilty of one thing more: even after admitting my guilt and exposing the organisation, I stubbornly refused to give evidence about Bukharin. I knew that Bukharin's situation was just as hopeless as my own, because our guilt, if not juridically, then in essence, was the same. But we are close friends, and intellectual friendship is stronger than other friendships. I knew that Bukharin was in the same state of upheaval as myself. That is why I did not want to deliver him bound hand and foot to the People's Commissariat of Home Affairs. Just as in relation to our other cadres, I wanted Bukharin himself to lay down his arms.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>}}

===Third Moscow trial===
{{See also|Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"}}
[[File:1934 agranov yagoda unknown redens.jpg|thumb|alt=Four men in uniform|[[NKVD]] chiefs responsible for mass repressions; ''(left to right)'': [[Yakov Agranov]], [[Genrikh Yagoda]], unidentified, and [[Stanislav Redens]]. Agranov, Yagoda and Redens were eventually arrested and executed.]]

The third and final trial, in March 1938, known as the [[Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"|Trial of the Twenty-One]], is the best-known of the Soviet show trials because of the people involved and the scope of the charges (which tied up the loose ends from earlier trials). It included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites" reportedly led by Nikolai Bukharin, former chairman of the [[Communist International]]; former premier [[Alexei Rykov]]; [[Christian Rakovsky]]; [[Nikolai Krestinsky]] and [[Genrikh Yagoda]], the recently-disgraced head of the NKVD.<ref name="Broué"/>

Although an opposition bloc led by Trotsky with Zinovievites existed, [[Pierre Broué]] says that Bukharin was not involved.<ref name="Broué"/> [[Jules Humbert-Droz]], a former Broué ally,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cohen|first=Stephen|title=Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution}}</ref> said in his memoirs that Bukharin told him he formed a secret bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev to remove Stalin from leadership.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Humbert-Droz|first=Jules|title=De Lenine à Staline. Dix ans au service de l'Internationale communiste 1921–1931}}</ref>

The fact that Yagoda was one of the accused indicated the speed at which the purges were consuming their own. No other crime of the Stalin era captivated Western intellectuals as much as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing.<ref name="Corey Robin, Fear, Page 96">Corey Robin, "Fear", p. 96</ref> For prominent communists such as [[Bertram Wolfe]], [[Jay Lovestone]], [[Arthur Koestler]], and [[Heinrich Brandler]], the Bukharin trial was their final break with communism; the first three became fervent anti-communists.<ref>Bertram David Wolfe, "Breaking with communism", p. 10</ref>{{sfn|Koestler|1940|p=258}} Bukharin's confession symbolized communism's depredations, which destroyed its sons and also enlisted them in self-destruction and denial.<ref name="Corey Robin, Fear, Page 96"/>

====Bukharin's confession====
[[File:Bucharin.bra.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|alt=See caption|[[Nikolai Bukharin]], Russian Bolshevik [[Russian Revolution|revolutionary]] executed in 1938]]

On the first day of the trial, Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all charges. He changed his plea the next day, however, after "special measures" which dislocated his left shoulder and caused other injuries.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=352}}

[[Anastas Mikoyan]] and Vyacheslav Molotov later said that Bukharin was never tortured, but his interrogators were told "beating permitted" and were pressured to extract a confession from the "star" defendant. Bukharin held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son and "methods of physical influence" wore him down. When he read his confession (amended and corrected by Stalin), he withdrew it. The examination began again, with a double team of interrogators.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=364–335}}

Bukharin's confession was a subject of debate among Western observers, inspiring [[Arthur Koestler]]'s novel ''[[Darkness at Noon]]'' and a philosophical essay by [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]] in ''Humanism and Terror''. It was a combination of fulsome confessions (of being a "degenerate fascist" working for the "restoration of capitalism") and subtle criticisms of the trial. An observer noted that after disproving several charges against him, Bukharin "proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case."<ref>Report by Viscount Chilston (British ambassador) to Viscount Halifax, No. 141, Moscow, 21 March 1938</ref> The observer said that "the confession of the accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in a trial that was based solely on confessions. He finished his last plea by saying:<ref>Tucker, Robert. "Block of Rights and Trotskyites." ''Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet''. pp. 667–668.</ref><blockquote>[T]he monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all.</blockquote>

[[Romain Rolland]] and others wrote to Stalin seeking clemency for Bukharin, but all the leading defendants were executed (except Rakovsky and two others, who were killed in [[Medvedev Forest massacre|NKVD prisoner massacres]] in 1941).

=="Ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements"==
On 2 July 1937, in a top-secret order to regional party and NKVD chiefs, Stalin [[About the anti-Soviet elements|instructed them]] to estimate the number of "kulaks" and "criminals" in their districts. These individuals were to be arrested and executed, or sent to Gulag camps. The party chiefs produced the lists within days, with figures roughly corresponding to the number of individuals already under secret-police surveillance.<ref name=werth/>

[[NKVD Order No. 00447]] was issued on 30 July 1937, directed against "ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements" such as former officials of the [[Russian Empire|Tsarist regime]] and former members of political parties other than the Communist Party. They were to be executed or sent to Gulag prison camps extrajudicially, following decisions by [[NKVD troika]]s. The following categories appear to have been on index cards, catalogues of suspects assembled over the years by the NKVD and systematically tracked down: "ex-kulaks" previously deported to "[[Forced settlements in the Soviet Union|special settlements]]" in inhospitable parts of the country ([[Siberia]], the [[Ural Mountains|Urals]], Kazakhstan, and the [[Far North (Russia)|Far North]]), former tsarist civil servants, former officers of the [[White Army]], participants in peasant rebellions, members of the clergy, people deprived of voting rights, former members of non-Bolshevik parties, criminals (such as thieves) known to the police, and other "socially harmful elements".<ref name="werth2-6"/>

Many people were arrested at random in sweeps, on the basis of denunciations or because they were related to, were friends with or knew people already arrested. Engineers, peasants, railway and other types of workers were arrested during the "Kulak Operation" based on the fact that they worked for (or near) strategic sites and factories where work accidents had occurred due to "frantic rhythms and plans". During this period, the NKVD reopened these cases and relabeled them as "sabotage" or "wrecking."<ref>Werth, Nicolas. 2009. ''L'ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs. Autopsie d'un meurtre de masse, 1937–1938''. Paris: Tallandier.</ref>

[[File:Evgeny Miller1.png|thumb|alt=Yevgeny Miller, with a beard and a large mustache|[[Yevgeny Miller|Yevgeny-Ludvig Karlovich Miller]], one of the remaining leaders of the [[White movement]], was abducted from [[Paris]] by the NKVD in 1937 and executed in [[Moscow]] 19 months later.]]

The [[Russian Orthodox Church|Orthodox clergy]], including active parishioners, was nearly annihilated; eighty-five percent of the 35,000 clergy members were arrested. Also particularly vulnerable to repression were the "special settlers" (''spetzpereselentsy''), who were under permanent police surveillance and were a large pool of potential "enemies". At least 100,000 of them were arrested during the Great Purge.<ref name="sciencespo.fr"/>

Common criminals, such as thieves and "violators of the passport regime", were also dealt with summarily. In Moscow, nearly one third of the 20,765 people executed on the [[Butovo firing range]] were charged with a non-political criminal offence.<ref name="sciencespo.fr"/>

To carry out the mass arrests, the 25,000 officers of the NKVD were supplemented with police units and [[Komsomol]] (Young Communist League) and civilian Communist Party members. To meet quotas, the police rounded up people in markets and train stations to arrest "social outcasts".<ref name=werth/> Local NKVD units, to meet "casework minimums" and force confessions from arrestees, worked long shifts during which they interrogated, tortured and beat prisoners. In many cases, those arrested were forced to sign blank pages which were later filled in with a fabricated confession by interrogators.<ref name=werth/>

After the interrogations, the files were submitted to NKVD troikas which pronounced verdicts without those accused. A troika went through several hundred cases during a half-day-long session, delivering a death sentence or a sentence to the Gulag labor camps. Death sentences were immediately enforceable. Executions were carried out at night in prisons or in secluded areas run by the NKVD on the outskirts of major cities.<ref name="werth2-6">{{cite web|first=Nicolas|last=Werth|author-link=Nicolas Werth|url=http://www.massviolence.org/The-NKVD-Mass-Secret-Operation-no-00447-August-1937?artpage=2-6|title=Case Study: The NKVD Mass Secret Operation n° 00447 (August 1937 – November 1938)}}</ref> The "Kulak Operation" was the largest single campaign of repression in 1937–38, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 executed (over half the total of known executions).{{sfn|Figes|2007|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=sge44FaZDREC&pg=PA240 240]}}

==Campaigns targeting nationalities==
{{Main|Mass operations of the NKVD|Stalinist repressions in Azerbaijan|Armenian victims of the Great Purge}}

On Yezhov's order, a series of [[mass operations of the NKVD]] was carried out from 1937 through 1938 targeting nationalities in the Soviet Union. The [[Polish Operation of the NKVD]] was the largest of this kind,{{sfn|Snyder|2010|ref=none|pp=103–104}} with the largest number of victims: 143,810 arrests and 111,091 executions. [[Timothy Snyder]] estimates that at least eighty-five thousand were ethnic Poles.{{sfn|Snyder|2010|ref=none|pp=103–104}} The remainder were "suspected" of being Polish.<ref name="Russian1">{{cite web|url=http://www.memo.ru/history/POLAcy/00485ART.htm|script-title=ru: "Польская операция" НКВД 1937–1938 гг.|publisher=НИПЦ «Мемориал»|access-date=May 27, 2012|author=Н.В.Петров, А.Б.Рогинский|quote=Original title: ''О фашистско-повстанческой, шпионской, диверсионной, пораженческой и террористической деятельности польской разведки в СССР''|language=ru|trans-title='The Polish operation' NKVD 1937–1938|archive-date=15 February 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215195305/http://www.memo.ru/history/polacy/00485ART.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>
[[File:Yakov Alksnis.jpg|thumb|alt=Yakov Alksnis in uniform, saluting|[[Yakov Alksnis]], head of the [[Soviet Air Forces|Red Army Air Forces]], fell victim to the [[Latvian Operation of the NKVD|Latvian Operation]] in 1938.|upright=0.9]]
[[File:Kosior.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|alt=Stanisław Kosior, looking left|Polish-born Soviet politician [[Stanislav Kosior]], a contributor to the [[Holodomor]], was executed in 1939.]]

Poles were 12.5 percent of those killed during the Great Purge, although they were 0.4 percent of the population. Overall, national minorities targeted in the campaigns were 36 percent<ref name="snyvic">{{cite book|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|title=Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin|date=2010|publisher=Basic Books|page=104}}</ref> of the victims of the Great Purge, but were 1.6 percent<ref name="snyvic"/> of the Soviet population. Seventy-four percent<ref name="snyvic"/> of ethnic minorities arrested during the Great Purge were executed; those sentenced during the Kulak Operation had a 50-percent chance of being executed,<ref name="snyvic"/> although this may have been due to lack of space in the Gulag camps late in the purge.<ref name="snyvic"/>

The wives and children of those arrested and executed were dealt with by [[NKVD Order No. 00486]]. Women were sentenced to forced labour for five or 10 years,<ref name="fronda"/> and their minor children were placed in orphanages. All possessions were confiscated. Extended families had nothing to live on, which usually sealed their fate as well; this affected 200,000 to 250,000 people of Polish background, depending on family size.<ref name="fronda">{{cite web| url=http://fronda.gliwice.pl/czytelnia.php5?id=84| title=Zapomniane ludobójstwo stalinowskie (The forgotten Stalinist genocide)|publisher=Gliwicki klub Fondy. Czytelnia|date=2010-10-27|author=Michał Jasiński| via=Internet Archive|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120323100829/http://fronda.gliwice.pl/czytelnia.php5?id=84|archive-date=23 March 2012}}</ref> [[National operations of the NKVD]] were conducted with a quota system using the [[album procedure]]. 

The Polish Operation of the NKVD was a model for a series of similar NKVD secret decrees targeting a number of the Soviet Union's diaspora nationalities: [[Finns]], [[Latvians]], [[Estonians]], [[Bulgarians]], [[Pashtuns|Afghans]], [[Persians|Iranians]], [[Greeks]], and [[Han Chinese|Chinese]].<ref name="Sundström-2017">{{Cite book| last1=Sundström|first1=Olle|url=https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1167084/FULLTEXT01.pdf|title=Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Stalin's Soviet Union: New Dimensions of Research|last2=Kotljarchuk| first2=Andrej|publisher=Södertörn Academic Studies|year=2017|isbn=978-9176017777|page=16|chapter=Introduction: the problem of ethnic and religious minorities in Stalin's Soviet Union}}</ref> The operations against national minorities were second only to the Kulak Operation in their number of victims. According to Timothy Snyder, ethnic Poles were the largest group of victims of the Great Purge; less than 0.5 percent of the country's population, they were 12.5 percent of those executed.<ref>[[Timothy Snyder|Snyder, Timothy]]. 2010. ''[[Bloodlands|Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin]]''. [[Basic Books]]. {{ISBN|0465002390}}. pp. 102, 107.</ref>

Snyder attributes 300,000 deaths during the Great Purge to "national terror", including ethnic minorities and Ukrainian kulaks who had survived dekulakization and the Holodomor famine which killed millions during the early 1930s.<ref>Timothy Snyder, ''Bloodlands'', Basic Books, 2010, pp. 411–412 {{ISBN?}}</ref> [[Lev Kopelev]] wrote "In Ukraine, 1937 began in 1933", referring to earlier Soviet political repression.<ref>{{cite book |last=Subtelny |first=Orest |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l5uiWHgRphQC |title=Ukraine: A History |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-1442609914 |edition=4th revised |location=Toronto |author-link=Orest Subtelny |orig-year=1988}}</ref>{{rp|418}} Ukrainian cultural elites were known as the [[Executed Renaissance]], and statistics from Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicate that about 200,000 victims of the Great Purge were Ukrainians.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dyck |first=Kirsten |title=Denial: the final stage of genocide |date=2022 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-003-01070-8 |editor-last=Cox |editor-first=John M. |series=Routledge studies in modern history |location=London New York |pages=31 |chapter=Holodomor and Holocaust memory in competition and cooperation |editor-last2=Khoury |editor-first2=Amal |editor-last3=Minslow |editor-first3=Sarah}}</ref>

Most of the diaspora minorities were Soviet citizens and whose ancestors had lived for decades (sometimes centuries) in the Soviet Union and Russian Empire, but "this designation absolutized their cross-border ethnicities as the only salient aspect of their identity, sufficient proof of their disloyalty and sufficient justification for their arrest and execution".<ref>Martin, 2001: 338.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://nkvd-mass-secret-national-operations-august-1937-november-1938.html/|title=The NKVD Mass Secret National Operations (August 1937 – November 1938) &#124; Sciences Po Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network|date=15 April 2019|website=nkvd-mass-secret-national-operations-august-1937-november-1938.html}}{{Dead link|date=March 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> The national operations of the NKVD have been called [[Genocide|genocidal]];<ref>[https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=jil "The Crime of Genocide Committed against the Poles by the USSR before and during World War II: An International Legal Study"] by Karol Karski, Case Western Reserve ''Journal of International Law'', Vol. 45, 2013</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3229636/Martin%201998.pdf?sequence=2|author=Martin, Terry|title=The origins of Soviet ethnic cleansing|journal=The Journal of Modern History|volume=70|issue=4 |date=1998|pages=813–861|doi=10.1086/235168 |s2cid=32917643 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/05/holocaust-secondworldwar|title=The fatal fact of the Nazi-Soviet pact|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|date=2010-10-05|website=the Guardian|language=en|access-date=2018-08-06}}</ref><ref name=stalpol>{{Cite book|last=Naimark|first=Norman M.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IB-hDQAAQBAJ&q=%2522Polish%2520operation%2522|title=Genocide: A World History|date=2016|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0190637729|language=en}}</ref> [[Norman Naimark]] called Stalin's policy towards Poles in the 1930s "genocidal",<ref name="stalpol"/> but he did not consider the Great Purge entirely genocidal because it also targeted political opponents.<ref name="stalpol"/>

Security issues in border areas have been cited as a need to secure the ethnic integrity of Soviet space ''vis-à-vis'' neighboring capitalist states.<ref name="Sundström-2017" /> Adherents of this theory believe that representatives of minorities were killed not because of their ethnicity, but because of their possible relationship to countries hostile to the USSR and fear of disloyalty in case of an invasion.<ref name="Sundström-2017" /> Little proof exists, however, to suggest that Russia's and Stalin's reported prejudices played a central role in the Great Purge.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Kuromiya|first1=Hiroaki|last2=Pepłoński|first2=Andrzej|date=2009|title=The Great Terror|journal=Cahiers du monde russe. Russie – Empire russe – Union soviétique et États indépendants|language=en|volume=50|issue=50/2–3|pages=647–670|doi=10.4000/monderusse.9736|issn=1252-6576|doi-access=free}}</ref>

==Purge of the army==
{{Further|Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization}}
[[File:5marshals 01.jpg|thumb|The first five Marshals of the Soviet Union in November 1935; ''(l–r)'' [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]], [[Semyon Budyonny]], [[Kliment Voroshilov]], [[Vasily Blyukher]], and [[Alexander Yegorov (soldier)|Alexander Yegorov]]. Only Budyonny and Voroshilov survived the Great Purge.|alt=Five men in uniform]]

The purge of the [[Red Army]] and [[Soviet Navy|Military Maritime Fleet]] removed three of five [[Marshal of the Soviet Union|marshals]] (then equivalent to four-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (equivalent to three-star generals),<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.goarmy.com/about/ranks-and-insignia/ranks.html|title=Ranks|website=goarmy.com|access-date=2018-12-18|archive-date=17 October 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201017012826/https://www.goarmy.com/about/ranks-and-insignia/ranks.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting opportunities for foreign contacts),{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=211}} 50 of 57 army [[corps]] commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, all 16 army [[commissar]]s, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.{{sfn|Courtois|1999|p=198}} It was first thought that 25 to 50 percent of Red Army officers had been purged, but the true figure is 3.7 to 7.7 percent. The discrepancy resulted from a systematic underestimation of the true size of the Red Army officer corps, and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the party; thirty percent of the officers purged from 1937 to 1939 were allowed to return to service.<ref>Stephen Lee, ''European Dictatorships 1918–1945,'' p. 56.</ref>

The purge of the army was said to be supported by German-forged documents (alleged correspondence between Marshal Tukhachevsky and members of the German high command).{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=198–89 (a Soviet book, ''Marshal Tukhachevskiy'' by Nikulin, pp.&nbsp;189–94 is cited)}} The claim is unsupported by facts; by the time the documents were reportedly created, two of Tukhachevsky's group were already imprisoned, and by the time the document was said to have reached Stalin the purge was already underway. Evidence introduced at trial was obtained from forced confessions.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=200–202}}

The purge had a significant effect on German decision-making in [[World War II]]. Many German generals opposed an [[Operation Barbarossa|invasion of Russia]] but [[Hitler]] disagreed, calling the Red Army less effective after its intellectual leadership was eliminated in the purge.<ref>"Despite the fact that the combined firepower of the Red Army was greater than that of the Germans, the Purges had effectively crippled it by destroying the officer corps. This was the decisive element which persuaded Hitler to attack in 1941. At the Nuremberg trial, [[Wilhelm Keitel|Field Marshal Keitel]] testified that many German generals had warned Hitler not to attack Russia, arguing that the Red Army was a formidable opponent. Rejecting this opposition, Hitler gave Keitel his main reason for invading: 'The first-class high-ranking officers were wiped out by Stalin in 1937, and the new generation cannot yet provide the brains they need.{{'"}} [[Roy Medvedev]], ''[[Let History Judge]]'', p. 214 {{ISBN?}}</ref>

==Wider purge==
{{External media|float=right|video1=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CDo767vFWc& Soviet woman's speech during the Great Purge]|video2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIhDPL92SOY Nikita Khrushchev's speech during the purge]}}
Russian [[Trotskyism|Trotskyist]] historian [[Vadim Rogovin]] said that Stalin had destroyed thousands of foreign communists capable of leading socialist change in their respective countries, citing 600 active [[Bulgarian Communist Party|Bulgarian]] communists who died in his prison camps and the thousands of German communists handed over from Stalin to the Gestapo after the signing of the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact|Nazi-Soviet Pact]]. Rogovin also noted that sixteen members of the [[central committee]] of the [[Communist Party of Germany]] were victims of Stalinist terror. Repressive measures were also imposed on the [[Hungarian Communist Party|Hungarian]], [[League of Communists of Yugoslavia|Yugoslav]] and other [[Communist Party of Poland|Polish Communist]] parties.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |page=380 |language=en}}</ref>

According to historian [[Eric D. Weitz]], 60 percent of German exiles in the Soviet Union were liquidated during the Stalinist terror and a greater proportion of the [[Communist Party of Germany|KPD]] Politburo membership died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. Weitz noted that hundreds of German citizens, most of whom were communists, were handed over to the Gestapo from Stalin's administration.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Weitz |first1=Eric D. |title=Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State |year=2021 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-22812-9 |page=280 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JOgSEAAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+handed+over+german+communists+gestapo&pg=PA280 |language=en}}</ref> Many Jews, including [[Alexander Weissberg-Cybulski]] and [[Fritz Houtermans]], were arrested in 1937 by the NKVD and turned over to the Gestapo.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sheehan |first1=Helena |title=Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History |date= 2018 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78663-426-9 |pages=416–417 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-udOEAAAQBAJ&q=helena+sheehan |language=en}}</ref> [[Joseph Berger-Barzilai]], co-founder of the [[Communist Party of Palestine]], spent twenty years in Stalin's prisons and concentration camps after the purges in 1937.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1443|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Wasserstein |first1=Bernard |title=On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War |date=2012 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4165-9427-7 |page=395 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HJSQZJKHX_8C&dq=Joseph+Berger-Barzilai+purge&pg=PA395 |language=en}}</ref>

In [[Spain]], the NKVD oversaw purges of anti-Stalinist elements of the Republican forces (including Trotskyist and [[anarchist]] factions).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sakwa |first1=Richard |title=Soviet Politics: In Perspective |year= 2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-90996-4 |page=43 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SQSiM2vPO54C&dq=spanish+civil+war+stalin+purged+nin&pg=PA43 |language=en}}</ref> Notable were the execution of [[Andreu Nin]], Spanish [[POUM]] and former government minister, [[Jose Robles]], a left-wing academic and translator, and many members of the [[POUM]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Whitehead |first1=Jonathan |title=The End of the Spanish Civil War: Alicante 1939 |date= 2024 |publisher=Pen and Sword History |isbn=978-1-3990-6395-1 |page=81 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7aLsEAAAQBAJ&dq=andreu+nin+stalin+purges&pg=PA81 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |title=Comrades!: A History of World Communism |date=2007 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-02530-1 |page=212 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Frgm5QodnFoC&dq=andreu+nin+stalin+purged&pg=PA211 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kocho-Williams |first1=Alastair |title=Russia's International Relations in the Twentieth Century |date= 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-15747-9 |page=60 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vu2kOJbrCuMC&dq=spanish+civil+war+stalin+purged+nin&pg=PA61 |language=en}}</ref>

Of six members of the original [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Politburo]] during the October Revolution who lived until the Great Purge, Stalin was the only one who survived in the Soviet Union.{{sfn|Gellately|2007}} Four of the other five were executed; the fifth, Trotsky, was forced into exile in 1929 and was assassinated in Mexico by Soviet agent Ramón Mercader in 1940.

The victims were convicted [[Trial in absentia|in absentia]] and ''[[in camera]]'' by extrajudicial bodies. NKVD troikas sentenced indigenous "enemies" under NKVD Order No. 00447, and a two-man ''dvoiki'' (NKVD Commissar Yezhov and main state prosecutor [[Andrey Vyshinsky]] or their deputies) sentenced those arrested for national reasons.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Freeze |first=Gregory |title=Russia: A History |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0199560417 |location=United States |pages=364–372 |language=English}}</ref>

Victims were executed at night in prisons, in the cellars of NKVD headquarters or in a secluded area, usually a forest. NKVD officers shot prisoners in the head with pistols.<ref name="sciencespo.fr">{{Cite web|url=http://nkvd-mass-secret-operation-n-00447-august-1937-november-1938.html/|title=The NKVD Mass Secret Operation n°00447 (August 1937 – November 1938) &#124; Sciences Po Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network|date=19 January 2016|website=nkvd-mass-secret-operation-n-00447-august-1937-november-1938.html}}{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://kurapaty-1937-1941-nkvd-mass-killings-soviet-belarus.html/|title=Kurapaty (1937–1941): NKVD Mass Killings in Soviet Belarus &#124; Sciences Po Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network|date=29 April 2019|website=kurapaty-1937-1941-nkvd-mass-killings-soviet-belarus.html}}{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> Other methods of killing were used on an experimental basis; in Moscow, the use of [[gas van]]s to kill victims during transportation to the Butovo firing range has been documented.<ref>''[[Komsomolskaya Pravda]]'', 28 October 1990, p. 2. Later cited by:
*[[Yevgenia Albats|Albats, Yevgenia]]. 1995. ''KGB: The State Within a State''. p. 101.
*[[Robert Gellately|Gellately, Robert]]. 2007. ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe''. Knopf. {{ISBN|1400040051}}. p. 460.
*[[Catherine Merridale|Merridale, Catherine]]. 2002. ''Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia''. Penguin Books. {{ISBN|0142000639}}. p. 200.
*[[Timothy Colton|Colton, Timothy J.]] 1998. ''Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis''. [[Harvard University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0674587496}}. [https://books.google.com/books?id=lXM2H6tWHskC&pg=PA286&dq=gas+chamber+butovo p. 286].
*[[Alexandr Solzhenitsyn]]. ''[[Two Hundred Years Together]]''.</ref>

===Intelligentsia===
{{See also|UPTI Affair|Sharashka|Korets–Landau leaflet}}
[[Image:NKVD Mandelstam.jpg|thumb|right|1938 NKVD arrest photo of poet [[Osip Mandelstam]], who died in a labor camp]]
[[Image:Babel NKWD.png|right|thumb|NKVD photo of writer [[Isaac Babel]] after his arrest]]
[[Image:MeyerholdMug.jpg|thumb|right|Theatre director [[Vsevolod Meyerhold]] at the time of his arrest]]
[[Image:Vavilov in prison.jpg|thumb|right|Botanist [[Nikolai Vavilov]] at the time of his arrest]]
[[Image:Aino Forsten.jpg|alt=|thumb|upright=0.8|[[Aino Forsten]] (1885–1937), Finnish educator and [[Social Democratic Party of Finland|Social Democratic]] politician,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/kansanedustajat/Sivut/910364.aspx|title=Aino Forsten|publisher=Parliament of Finland|language=fi|accessdate=21 June 2016}}</ref> arrested and executed]]
[[File:1930-MushketovD.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|Paleontologist and geologist [[Dmitrii Mushketov]], executed in 1938]]
[[Image:Khadija Gaibova.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|Pianist [[Khadija Gayibova]], executed in 1938]]
[[File:VSOshchepkov1912.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|[[Vasili Oshchepkov]], who popularized [[judo]] in the USSR and co-invented [[Sambo (martial art)|sambo]]. Accused of being a Japanese spy, he was [[Extrajudicial killing|extrajudicially executed]] in the [[Butyrka]] in 1938.]]

Those who perished during the Great Purge include:
{{unordered list
| Theoretical [[physicist]] [[Matvei Bronstein]], pioneer of [[quantum gravity]]<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1007/s10714-011-1285-4 |title=Republication of: Quantum theory of weak gravitational fields |journal=General Relativity and Gravitation |volume=44 |pages=267–283 |year=2011 |last1=Bronstein |first1=Matvei|issue=1 |bibcode=2012GReGr..44..267B |s2cid=122107821 }}</ref> was arrested, accused of fictional "terroristic" activity and shot in 1938.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bergmann |first1=Peter G. |last2=Sabbata |first2=V. de |title=Advances in the Interplay Between Quantum and Gravity Physics |date= 2012 |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |isbn=978-94-010-0347-6 |page=440 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=62NsCQAAQBAJ&dq=Matvei+Bronstein&pg=PA440 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rovelli |first1=Carlo |last2=Vidotto |first2=Francesca |title=Covariant Loop Quantum Gravity: An Elementary Introduction to Quantum Gravity and Spinfoam Theory |date=2015 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-06962-6 |pages=6–7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4VjeBAAAQBAJ&dq=Matvei+Bronstein&pg=PA7 |language=en}}</ref>
|[[Nikolai Vavilov]], Russian [[geneticist]] and [[Botany|botanist]] who made contributions to [[agricultural science]] such as the law of homologous series in variation and the [[Vavilov center|origins of cultivated plants]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Magill |first1=Frank N. |title=The 20th Century O–Z: Dictionary of World Biography |date=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-59369-7 |pages=3801–3805 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xqvpudh8dasC&dq=Nikolai+Vavilov+botanist+contributions&pg=PA3801 |language=en}}</ref> Fired in 1935, he died in prison in 1943 after a dispute with [[Trofim Lysenko]] which contributed to a decline in Soviet [[Genetics|genetic]] research.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Magill |first1=Frank N. |title=The 20th Century O–Z: Dictionary of World Biography |date= 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-59369-7 |pages=3801–3805 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xqvpudh8dasC&dq=Nikolai+Vavilov+botanist+contributions&pg=PA3801 |language=en}}</ref>
| Soviet lead engineer [[Sergei Korolev]], responsible for overseeing the launch of [[Sputnik 1]] and first human in space, was arrested, imprisoned and originally sentenced for execution under Stalin's orders.<ref name="auto2">{{cite book |last1=Lardier |first1=Christian |last2=Barensky |first2=Stefan |title=The Soyuz Launch Vehicle: The Two Lives of an Engineering Triumph |date=12 March 2013 |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |isbn=978-1-4614-5459-5 |page=76 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CWRIAAAAQBAJ&dq=korolev+death+sentence&pg=PA76 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="auto">{{cite book |last1=Rogacheva |first1=Maria A. |title=Soviet Scientists Remember: Oral Histories of the Cold War Generation |date=21 November 2019 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=979-8-8818-8473-4 |page=37 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_OqAEQAAQBAJ&dq=sergei+korolev+death+sentence&pg=PA37 |language=en}}</ref> This order extended to 74 military specialists and engineers during the purges before Korolev had his sentence commuted to hard labour in a state camp for intellectuals.<ref name="auto2"/><ref name="auto"/>
| Director of the Scientific Research Institue and Soviet engineer, [[Ivan Kleymyonov]], was falsely arrested and executed as an alleged spy in 1938.<ref name="auto1">{{cite book |last1=Society |first1=American Astronautical |title=Space Exploration and Humanity: A Historical Encyclopedia [2 volumes] |date=23 August 2010 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-1-85109-519-3 |page=1054 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vRjOEAAAQBAJ&dq=Ivan+Kleymyonov+execution&pg=PA1054 |language=en}}</ref>
| Soviet scientist and Chief Engineer in the Scientific Research Institute, [[Georgy Langemak]], was falsely arrested and executed as an alleged spy in 1938.<ref name="auto1"/>
| Experimental physicist [[Lev Shubnikov]], considered the "Soviet founding father of Soviet low-temperature physics"<ref name="j24093868">{{Cite journal |last1=Sharma |first1=Hari Prasad |last2=Sen |first2=Subir K. |date=2006 |title=Shubnikov: A case of non-recognition in superconductivity research |jstor=24093868 |journal=Current Science |volume=91 |issue=11 |pages=1576–1578 |issn=0011-3891}}</ref> known for discovering the [[Shubnikov–de Haas effect]] and [[Type-II superconductor|type-II superconductivity]]<ref name="j24093868" /> and one of the first to discover [[antiferromagnetism]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kharchenko |first=N. F. |date=2005-08-01 |title=On seven decades of antiferromagnetism |url=https://pubs.aip.org/ltp/article/31/8/633/458580/On-seven-decades-of-antiferromagnetism |journal=Low Temperature Physics |language=en |volume=31 |issue=8 |pages=633–634 |doi=10.1063/1.2008126 |bibcode=2005LTP....31..633K |issn=1063-777X|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Shubnikov was executed in 1937.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Shifman |first1=Misha |title=Physics In A Mad World |date=2015 |publisher=World Scientific |isbn=978-981-4619-31-8 |page=19 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uFsGCwAAQBAJ&dq=lev+shubnikov+1937&pg=PA19 |language=en}}</ref>
| Soviet economist [[Nikolai Kondratiev]], a proponent of the [[New Economic Policy]] who developed the business-cycle theory known as [[Kondratiev waves]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Betz |first1=Frederick |title=Managing Technological Innovation: Competitive Advantage from Change |date=2011 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-470-54782-3 |page=31 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9WfrBgAAQBAJ&dq=nikolai+kondratiev+1938&pg=PA31 |language=en}}</ref> Kondratiev was executed in 1938.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Guo |first1=Rongxing |title=An Economic Inquiry into the Nonlinear Behaviors of Nations: Dynamic Developments and the Origins of Civilizations |year= 2017 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-319-48772-4 |page=164 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nz8UDgAAQBAJ&dq=nikolai+kondratiev+executed+1938&pg=PA164 |language=en}}</ref>
| [[Valerian Obolensky]], Soviet economist and chair of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy<ref>{{cite book |last1=Krausz |first1=Tamás |title=Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography |date= 2015 |publisher=NYU Press |isbn=978-1-58367-449-9 |page=417 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z23IBgAAQBAJ&dq=valerin+obolensky+executed&pg=PA417 |language=en}}</ref> and Professor of the Agricultural Academy<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rosmer |first1=Alfred |title=Lenin's Moscow |date=1971 |publisher=(Cottons Gardens, E2 8DN), Pluto Press Limited |isbn=978-0-902818-11-8 |page=239 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B9poAAAAMAAJ&q=valerin+obolensky+professor |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Agriculture |first1=United States Department of |title=The Official Record of the United States Department of Agriculture |date=1925 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |page=3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iv5MAAAAYAAJ&dq=valerin+obolensky+professor&pg=RA25-PA3 |language=en}}</ref> in Moscow but was eventually executed on fabricated charges in 1938.
| [[Isaak Rubin]], Soviet economist and classical Marxist noted for ''[[Essays on Marx's Theory of Value]]'', arrested and executed in 1937<ref>{{cite book |last1=Faccarello |first1=Gilbert |last2=Izumo |first2=Masashi |title=The Reception of David Ricardo in Continental Europe and Japan |year= 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-81995-0 |pages=203–204 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a6HIAgAAQBAJ&dq=Isaak+Rubin+1937&pg=PA203 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Steinhoff |first1=James |title=Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry |date=2021 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-71689-9 |page=55 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a1w0EAAAQBAJ&dq=Isaak+Rubin+executed+1937&pg=PA55 |language=en}}</ref>
| [[Evgeny Pashukanis]], Lithuanian legal scholar noted for ''The General Theory of Law and Marxism'' who was arrested and died during Stalin's purges<ref>{{cite book |last1=Head |first1=Michael |title=Evgeny Pashukanis: A Critical Reappraisal |date=12 September 2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-30788-2 |page=167 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tueNAgAAQBAJ&dq=evgeny+pashukanis+purges&pg=PA167 |language=en}}</ref> 
| [[Vladimir Milyutin]], Russian economist, politician and statistician, who supported a socialist coalition government in 1917 and [[workers' control]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mccauley |first1=Martin |title=The Soviet Union 1917–1991 |date=2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-90179-2 |page=21 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7cbKAgAAQBAJ&dq=milyutin+coalition+government&pg=PA21 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Jonathan |title=Historical Dictionary of the Russian Revolution |date= 2020 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-5381-3981-3 |pages=200–201 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pkjWDwAAQBAJ&dq=Vladimir+Milyutin+%C2%A0economist&pg=PA200 |language=en}}</ref> Died under Stalin's purges in 1937.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Serge |first1=Victor |title=Notebooks: 1936–1947 |date= 2019 |publisher=New York Review of Books |isbn=978-1-68137-271-6 |page=626 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YcBWDwAAQBAJ&dq=vladimir+milyutin+prison+1937&pg=PA626 |language=en}}</ref>
| Astronomer [[Boris Numerov]], founder of the Computing Institute in 1919 and noted for his expertise in applied celestial mechanics before the Second World War. He was executed in 1941.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lankford |first1=John |title=History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia |date= 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-50834-9 |page=365 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9jyExgmZxBoC&dq=Boris+Numerov+astronomer&pg=PA365 |language=en}}</ref>
| Soviet engineer and inventor [[Ivan Kleymyonov]], a key founder of Soviet [[rocket]]ry and chief of the [[Gas Dynamics Laboratory]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chertok |first1=Boris Evseevich |title=Rockets and People |date=2005 |publisher=NASA |isbn=978-0-16-073239-3 |pages=164–165 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2IUgAQAAIAAJ&dq=Ivan+Kleymyonov+founder&pg=PA165 |language=en}}</ref> Kleymyonov was executed in 1938.
| Soviet [[astrophysicist]] and [[astronomer]] [[Boris Gerasimovich]], director of the [[Pulkovo Observatory]]. Gerasimovich, arrested with 13 other astronomers, was executed in 1938.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pondrom |first1=Lee G. |title=Soviet Atomic Project, The: How The Soviet Union Obtained The Atomic Bomb |date= 2018 |publisher=World Scientific |isbn=978-981-323-557-1 |edition=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vlZoDwAAQBAJ&dq=boris+gerasimovich&pg=PA109 |language=en}}</ref>
| Soviet engineer and [[Supreme Council of the National Economy]] chair [[Pyotr Bogdanov]], who oversaw Soviet construction projects and nationalization of the chemical industry. Bogdanov was executed in 1939.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Stone |first1=David R. |title=Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926–1933 |date=2000 |publisher=University Press of Kansas |isbn=978-0-7006-1037-2 |page=72 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=snTfAAAAMAAJ&dq=Pyotr+Bogdanov+executed&pg=PA72 |language=en}}</ref>
| Soviet military theorist and general [[Alexander Svechin]] was a leading thinker in the field during the 1920s and noted for his work, ''Strategy'', before he was purged in 1938.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Evangelista |first1=Matthew |title=Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War |date= 2018 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-1-5017-2400-8 |page=191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zpRlDwAAQBAJ&dq=alexander+svechin+purge+1938&pg=PA191 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Svečin |first1=Aleksandr A. |title=Strategy |date=1992 |publisher=East View Publications |isbn=978-1-879944-33-6 |pages=1–30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rHk2AAAACAAJ |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.aei.org/articles/positional-warfare-in-alexander-svechins-strategy/|title=Positional Warfare in Alexander Svechin's Strategy|work=American Enterprise Institute - AEI }}</ref>
| Poet [[Aleksei Gastev]], director of the [[Central Institute of Labour]] and a pioneering theorist of [[scientific management]] of labour in the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bailes |first1=Kendall E. |title=Alexei Gastev and the Soviet Controversy over Taylorism, 1918–24 |journal=Soviet Studies |date=1977 |volume=29 |issue=3 |pages=373–394 |doi=10.1080/09668137708411134 |jstor=150306 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/150306 |issn=0038-5859|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Graham |first1=Loren R. |title=The Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Communist Party, 1927–1932 |date= 2015 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-7551-1 |page=47 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rxLWCgAAQBAJ&dq=Aleksei+Gastev+purge&pg=PA47 |language=en}}</ref> His son, [[Yuri Gastev]], was a prominent Soviet [[cybernetician]], emigre and political dissident.<ref>{{cite web |title=Yuri Gastev, Russian dissident and human rights activist; at 65 – The Boston Globe (Boston, MA) {{!}} HighBeam Research |url=https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8249429.html |date=18 September 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170918201638/https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8249429.html |archive-date=18 September 2017 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kuijper |first1=Hans |title=Comprehending the Complexity of Countries: The Way Ahead |date=2022 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-981-16-4709-3 |page=164 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2-FZEAAAQBAJ&dq=Yuri+Gastev+cybernetician&pg=PA164 |language=en}}</ref>
| German Jewish [[mathematician]] [[Fritz Noether]] fled [[Nazi Germany]] in 1934. The brother of mathematician [[Emmy Noether]] (who made contributions to [[abstract algebra]], he contributed to the [[Herglotz–Noether theorem]] in [[special relativity]]. [[Albert Einstein]] futilely pleaded his case before his execution as an accused German spy.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tent |first1=Katrin |title=Groups and Analysis: The Legacy of Hermann Weyl |date= 2008 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-71788-5 |page=318 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dT2D5r-BMAsC&dq=fritz+noether+einstein+litvinov&pg=PA318 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Ben-Menahem |first1=Ari |title=Historical Encyclopedia of Natural and Mathematical Sciences |date= 2009 |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |isbn=978-3-540-68831-0 |page=3460 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9tUrarQYhKMC&dq=fritz+noether+executed&pg=PA3460 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Zimmerman |first1=David K. |title=Ensnared between Hitler and Stalin: Refugee Scientists in the USSR |date= 2022 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1-4875-4366-2 |pages=1–376 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I46jEAAAQBAJ&dq=fritz+noether+albert+einstein&pg=PT27 |language=en}}</ref>
| Poet [[Osip Mandelstam]] was arrested for reciting his anti-Stalin poem, the "[[Stalin Epigram]]" to his circle of friends in 1934. After intervention by Nikolai Bukharin and [[Boris Pasternak]] (Stalin wrote on Bukharin's letter, "Who gave them the right to arrest Mandelstam?"), Stalin instructed the NKVD to "isolate but preserve" him. Mandelstam, exiled to [[Cherdyn, Perm Krai|Cherdyn]] for three years, was arrested again in May 1938 for "counter-revolutionary activities".<ref name="poemhunter">{{Cite web|title= Biography of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam|url=https://www.poemhunter.com/osip-emilevich-mandelstam/biography/|access-date=2023-02-23|website=Poem Hunter|language=en-us}}</ref> Sentenced to five years in correction camps on 2 August 1938, he died on 27 December 1938 at a transit camp near Vladivostok.<ref>Caxtonian, [http://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/1095/martinCaxtonian.pdf?sequence=2 ''Collecting Mandelstam'']{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, November 2006</ref> Pasternak was nearly purged; Stalin reportedly crossed his name off the list, saying "Don't touch this cloud dweller."<ref>Robert C. Tucker, ''Stalin in Power'', p. 445</ref>
| Writer [[Isaac Babel]] was arrested in May 1939. On his blood-stained confession paper, he "admitted" being a member of a Trotskyist organization and being recruited by French writer [[André Malraux]] to spy for France. In the final interrogation, he retracted his confession and wrote to the prosecutor's office that he had implicated innocent people. Babel was tried before an NKVD troika and convicted of spying for the French, Austrians and Leon Trotsky and "membership in a terrorist organization". On 27 January 1940, he was shot in [[Butyrka prison]].<ref name="ReferenceB">The Independent, "The History of Hell", 8 January 1995</ref>
| [[Nikolai Sukhanov]], chronicler of the [[Russian Revolution]], agrarian economist, revolutionary intellectual and editor of an opposition newspaper,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Getzler |first1=I. |title=Nikolai Sukhanov: Chronicler of the Russian Revolution |date=2001 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-4039-3277-8 |pages=1–30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bQOIDAAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref> was first arrested during the [[1931 Menshevik Trial]] and arrested again in 1937 for alleged espionage. He was executed in 1940.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Serge |first1=Victor |title=Notebooks: 1936–1947 |date=2019 |publisher=New York Review of Books |isbn=978-1-68137-271-6 |page=643 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YcBWDwAAQBAJ&dq=Nikolai+Sukhanov+1936+spying&pg=PA643 |language=en}}</ref>
| Writer [[Boris Pilnyak]] was arrested on 28 October 1937 for counter-revolutionary activities, spying and terrorism. One report alleged that "he held secret meetings with [[André Gide|[André] Gide]], and supplied him with information about the situation in the USSR. There is no doubt that Gide used this information in his book attacking the USSR." Pilnyak was tried on 21 April 1938; in a 15-minute proceeding, he was condemned to death and executed shortly afterwards.<ref name="ReferenceB"/>
| Theatre director [[Vsevolod Meyerhold]] was arrested in 1939 and shot in February 1940 for "spying" for Japanese and British intelligence. His wife, actress [[Zinaida Reich|Zinaida Raikh]], was murdered in her apartment.<ref>Kern, Gary. ''A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror''. Enigma Books, 2003. {{ISBN|1929631146}} p. 111</ref> In a 13 January 1940 letter to Molotov, Meyerhold wrote:

<blockquote>The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap&nbsp;... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal hemorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-and-yellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water was being poured on these sensitive areas. I howled and wept from the pain. I incriminated myself in the hope that by telling them lies I could end the ordeal. When I lay down on the cot and fell asleep, after 18 hours of interrogation, in order to go back in an hour's time for more, I was woken up by my own groaning and because I was jerking about like a patient in the last stages of typhoid fever.<ref name="ReferenceB"/></blockquote>
| Georgian poet [[Titsian Tabidze]] was arrested on 10 October 1937 for treason and was tortured in prison. He named the 18th-century Georgian poet [[Besiki]] as his accomplice in anti-Soviet activities,<ref name="Tarkhan-Mouravi, George-1997">{{Cite web|author=Tarkhan-Mouravi, George|title=70 years of Soviet Georgia|url=http://rolfgross.dreamhosters.com/Texts/KandA-Web/Giahistory.htm|access-date=2023-02-23|date=19 January 1997|website=rolfgross.dreamhosters.com}}</ref> and was executed on 16 December 1937.
| Tabidze's lifelong friend and fellow poet, [[Paolo Iashvili]], forced to denounce several of his associates as [[enemy of the people|enemies of the people]], shot himself with a hunting gun in the Writers' Union building.<ref>Suny, Ronald Grigor (1994), ''The Making of the Georgian Nation'' (2nd ed.), p. 272. [[Indiana University Press]], {{ISBN|0253209153}}</ref> He witnessed and was forced to participate in public trials that ousted many of his associates from the Writers' Union, effectively condemning them to death. When [[Lavrentiy Beria]], chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Stalin and head of the NKVD, presented Iashvili with the alternatives of denouncing Tabidze or being arrested and tortured by the NKVD, Iashvili died by suicide.<ref name="Tarkhan-Mouravi, George-1997"/>
| In early 1937, poet [[:ru:Васильев,_Павел_Николаевич|Pavel Nikolayevich Vasiliev]] reportedly defended Nikolai Bukharin as "a man of the highest nobility and the conscience of peasant Russia" at the time of his denunciation at the Pyatakov Trial (Second Moscow Trial) and damned other writers signing routine condemnations as "pornographic scrawls on the margins of Russian literature". He was shot on 16 July 1937.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=301}}
| [[Jan Sten]], philosopher and deputy head of the Marx-Engels Institute, was Stalin's private tutor when Stalin studied Hegel's [[dialectic]]. (Stalin received lessons twice a week from 1925 to 1928, but found it difficult to master the basic ideas. He became hostile to German idealistic philosophy, which he called "the aristocratic reaction to the French Revolution".) Sten joined an underground opposition group which later joined the [[Bloc of Soviet Oppositions]], then led by Trotsky.<ref name="Broué"/> Sten was arrested in 1937 on orders from Stalin, who called him one of the chief "[[Mensheviks|Menshevi]]zing idealists". On 19 June 1937, Sten was killed in [[Lefortovo prison]].<ref>Roy Medvedev, "Let history judge", p. 438</ref>
| [[David Riazanov]], Soviet historian and founder of the [[Marx-Engels Institute]], was an old associate of Trotsky.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date= 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1206|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref> Arrested and put to death in 1938.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tolz |first1=Vera |title=Russian Academicians and the Revolution: Combining Professionalism and Politics |date= 1997 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-25840-6 |page=48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dL6uCwAAQBAJ&dq=David+Riazanov+great+purge&pg=PA48 |language=en}}</ref>
| Poet [[Nikolai Klyuev]] was arrested in 1933 for contradicting Soviet ideology, and was shot in October 1937.
| Russian linguist [[Nikolai Nikolayevich Durnovo|Nikolai Durnovo]], a member of the [[House of Durnovo|Durnovo family]], was executed on 27 October 1937. He created a classification of Russian dialects that was a base for modern scientific linguistic nomenclature.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://nasb.gov.by/eng/members/pamyati-uchenogo/durnovo.php|title=In memory of the scientist : Durnovo, Nikolai Nikolayevich|website=National academy of Science of Belarus}}</ref>
| [[Mari people|Mari]] poet and playwright [[Sergei Chavain]] was executed in [[Yoshkar-Ola]] on 11 November 1937. The [[State Prizes of the Soviet Republics|State prize]] of [[Mari El]] is named after Chavain.
| Ukrainian theater and movie director [[Les Kurbas]], considered by many to be the most important Ukrainian theater director of the 20th century, was shot on 3 November 1937.
| Russian writer and explorer [[Maximilian Kravkov]] was arrested for allegedly participating in the "Japanese-SR Terrorist Subversive Espionage Organization". He was executed on 12 October 1937.
| Russian [[Esperanto]] writer and translator [[Nikolai Vladimirovich Nekrasov|Nikolai Nekrasov]] was arrested in 1938 for being "an organizer and leader of a fascist, espionage, terrorist organization of Esperantists", and was executed on 4 October 1938. Another Esperanto writer, [[Vladimir Varankin]], was executed on 3 October 1938.
| Playwright and avant-garde poet [[Nikolay Oleynikov]] was arrested and executed for "subversive writing" on 24 November 1937.
| [[Yakuts|Yakut]] writer [[Platon Oyunsky]], a founder of modern Yakut literature, died in prison in 1939.
| Russian [[dramaturge]] [[Adrian Piotrovsky]], responsible for creating the synopsis of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet ''[[Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)|Romeo and Juliet]]'', was executed on 21 November 1937.
| [[Boris Shumyatsky]], ''de facto'' executive producer for the Soviet film monopoly from 1930 to 1937, was executed as a "traitor" in 1938 after a purge of the [[Soviet film industry]].
| Sinologist [[Julian Shchutsky]] was convicted as a "Japanese spy" and executed on 2 February 1938.
| Russian linguist [[Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky|Nikolai Nevsky]], an expert in East Asian languages, was arrested by the NKVD on the charge of being a "Japanese spy". He and his Japanese wife, Isoko Mantani-Nevsky, were executed on 27 November 1937.
| Ukrainian drama writer [[Mykola Kulish]], a lead figure in the [[Executed Renaissance]], was executed on 3 November 1937.
|After [[sunspot]]-development research was judged un-Marxist, 27 astronomers disappeared between 1936 and 1938. The Meteorological Office was purged as early as 1933 for failing to predict weather harmful to crops.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=295}}
}}
{{Multiple image|direction=vertical|align=right|image1=National University of Mongolia - Main Building.jpg|image2=Sheng Shi-tsai.jpg|width=180|alt1=Statue in front of a large white building|caption1=Statue of [[Khorloogiin Choibalsan]] in front of the [[National University of Mongolia]]|alt2=Photo of Sheng Shicai in uniform|caption2=[[Sheng Shicai]]. Choibalsan and Shicai organized large-scale purges in [[Mongolian People's Republic|Mongolia]] and [[Xinjiang]].
}}

===Western émigré victims===
Victims of the purge included American immigrants to the Soviet Union who had emigrated from the U.S. at the height of the [[Great Depression]] to find work. At the height of the purge, American immigrants begged the U.S. embassy for passports to leave the Soviet Union. Turned away by embassy officials, they were arrested outside by the NKVD. Several were shot dead at the Butovo firing range.<ref>{{Cite news|date=2008-08-02|title=Nightmare in the workers paradise|author=Tim Tzouliadis|language=en-GB|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7537000/7537585.stm|access-date=9 July 2025|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250124114626/http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7537000/7537585.stm|archive-date=24 January 2025|url-status=live}}</ref> One hundred forty-one American Communists of Finnish origin were executed and buried at [[Sandarmokh]],<ref> [[John Earl Haynes]] and [[Harvey Klehr]]. "[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page99.html American Communists and Radicals Executed by Soviet Political Police and Buried at Sandarmokh]" (appendix to ''In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage'').</ref> and 127 [[Finnish Canadians]] were shot and buried there.{{sfn|Haynes|Klehr|2003|p=117}}

===<span class="anchor" id="Executions of Gulag inmates"></span>Execution of Gulag inmates===
Political prisoners sentenced to the Gulag camps were also executed in large numbers. NKVD Order No. 00447 targeted "the most vicious and stubborn anti-Soviet elements in camps", all "to be put into the first category" (shot). The order specified 10,000 executions, but at least three times that number were shot (most in March and April 1938).<ref name="sciencespo.fr"/>

===<span class="anchor" id="Mongolian Great Purge"></span>Mongolian purge===
{{Main|Stalinist repressions in Mongolia}}

During the late 1930s, Stalin dispatched NKVD operatives to the [[Mongolian People's Republic]], established a Mongolian version of the NKVD troika, and executed tens of thousands of people accused of ties to "pro-Japanese spy rings".{{sfn|Kuromiya|2007|p=2}} Buddhist [[lama]]s made up most of the victims, with 18,000 killed. Other victims were nobility and political and academic figures; some were ordinary workers and herders.<ref>Christopher Kaplonski, "[http://www.chriskaplonski.com/downloads/bullets.pdf Thirty thousand bullets]", in: ''Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe'', London, 2002, pp. 155–168</ref> Mass graves containing hundreds of executed Buddhist monks and civilians have been discovered as recently as 2003.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2003-06-14|title=RTÉ News: Mass grave uncovered in Mongolia|website=[[RTÉ.ie]] |url=http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0612/mongolia.html|access-date=2023-02-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030614090710/http://www.rte.ie/news/2003/0612/mongolia.html |archive-date=14 June 2003 }}</ref>

===<span class="anchor" id="Xinjiang Great Purge"></span>Xinjiang purge===

Pro-Soviet leader [[Sheng Shicai]], from [[Xinjiang]] province in China, launched his own purge in 1937 to coincide with Stalin's Great Purge. The [[Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang (1937)|Xinjiang War]] broke out during the purge.<ref>Allen S. Whiting and General Sheng Shicai. "Sinkiang: Pawn or Pivot?" Michigan State University Press, 1958</ref> Sheng received assistance from the NKVD, and he and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. Soviet Consul General [[Garegin Apresov|Garegin Apresoff]], General [[Ma Hushan]], [[Ma Shaowu]], Mahmud Sijan, Xinjiang provincial leader Huang Han-chang and [[Hoja-Niyaz]] were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot, and Xinjiang came under virtual Soviet control.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IAs9AAAAIAAJ&q=fascist+trotskyite+plotters|title=Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: a political history of Republican Sinkiang 1911–1949|author=Andrew D. W. Forbes|year=1986|publisher=CUP Archive|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0521255141|pages=151, 376|access-date=31 December 2010}}</ref>

==Timeline==
{{Main|Timeline of the Great Purge}}

[[File:Izrail Pliner NKVD.jpg|alt=Photo of Israel Pliner|thumb|upright=0.7|[[Israel Pliner|Israil Pliner]] (1896–1939), chief of the [[Gulag]] NKVD (1937–1938), arrested and executed in 1939]]
The Great Purge of 1936–1938 can be divided into four periods:<ref name="OR">{{Cite web|author1=N.G. Okhotin|author2=A.B. Roginsky|title=«Большой террор»: 1937–1938. Краткая хроника|trans-title="Great Terror": Brief Chronology|url=http://old.memo.ru/history/y1937/hronika1936_1939/xronika.html|access-date=2023-02-23|website=[[Memorial (society)|Memorial]]}}</ref>
*October 1936 – February 1937: Reforming the security organizations, adopting official plans to purge the elite
*March – June 1937: Purging the elites; adopting plans for mass repressions against the "social base" of the potential aggressors, starting with purging the "elites" from the opposition
*July 1937 – October 1938: Mass repressions against "kulaks", "dangerous" ethnic minorities, family members of opponents, military officers, and saboteurs in agriculture and industry
*November 1938 – 1939: Halting mass operations, abolishing many organs of extrajudicial executions, reining in some organizers of mass repressions

==End==
{{Multiple image
| direction         = vertical
| align             = right
| image1            = Nikolai Yezhov with Stalin and Molotov along the Volga–Don Canal, orignal.jpg
| image2            = Stalin and Molotov along the Volga–Don Canal, Nikolai Yezhov removed.jpg
| width             = 200
| caption2          = ''[[Damnatio memoriae]]'' of [[Nikolai Yezhov]]. He was posthumously removed from pictures as part of the [[censorship of images in the Soviet Union]], such as where he stood next to Joseph Stalin.
}}

In the summer of 1938, Yezhov was relieved from his post as head of the NKVD and was eventually tried and executed. [[Lavrentiy Beria]] succeeded him as head. On 17 November 1938, a joint decree by the [[Council of People's Commissars]] and the Communist Party [[central committee]] (the [[Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation]]) and a subsequent NKVD order signed by Beria cancelled most of the NKVD orders of systematic repression and suspended the implementation of death sentences.{{full citation|date=November 2025}}

Michael Parrish wrote that although the Great Purge ended in 1938, a lesser purge continued during the 1940s.{{sfn|Parrish|1996|p=32}} [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] (a Soviet Army officer who became a prisoner for a decade in the Gulag system) wrote in ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'' a timeline of all Leninist and Stalinist purges (1918–1956); the 1936–1938 purge may have attracted the most attention from the intelligentsia, but several others (such as the first five-year plan of 1928–1933 collectivization and dekulakization) were equally large and devoid of justice.{{sfn|Solzhenitsyn|1973}}

High military commanders arrested under Yezhov were later executed under Beria. Examples include Marshal of the Soviet Union [[Alexander Yegorov (soldier)|Alexander Yegorov]], arrested in April 1938 and shot (or died after torture) in February 1939 (his wife, G. A. Yegorova, was shot in August 1938); Army Commander [[Ivan Fedko]], arrested in July 1938 and shot in February 1939; Flagman Konstantin Dushenov, arrested in May 1938 and shot in February 1940; Komkor [[Georgy Bondar|G. I. Bondar]], arrested in August 1938 and shot in March 1939. All were posthumously rehabilitated.{{sfn|Parrish|1996|p=33}}

When the relatives of those who had been executed in 1937–1938 inquired about their fate, they were told by the NKVD that their arrested relatives had been sentenced to "[[10 years without the right of correspondence]]" (десять лет без права переписки). When the ten-year periods elapsed in 1947–1948 and those arrested did not appear, relatives asked the [[Ministry of State Security (Soviet Union)|MGB]] about their fate again and were told that they died in prison.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.memo.ru/memory/preface/preface.htm|title=Московский мартиролог|work=memo.ru}}</ref>

After Stalin's death, the truth about the purges began to emerge within the party. On 25 February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech ("[[On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences]]", also known as the "secret speech") to a closed session of the 20th Party Congress. In his speech, Khrushchev said that Stalin "acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position, was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation." Of the 139 members and candidates of the Central Committee elected at the 17th Congress, "98 persons, i.e., 70 percent, were arrested and shot (mostly in 1937-1938)," which he attributed to "the abuse of power by Stalin, who began to use mass terror against the Party cadres." About the trials, Khrushchev said: "The confessions of guilt of many arrested and charged with enemy activity were gained with the help of cruel and inhuman tortures."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115995|title=February 25, 1956. Khrushchev's Secret Speech, 'On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences'|work=Wilson Center Digital Archive}}</ref>

==Western reactions==
Although the trials of former Soviet leaders were widely publicized, the hundreds of thousands of other arrests and executions were not. These became known in the West only as a few former Gulag inmates reached the West with their stories.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=472–473}} Western correspondents failed to report the purges, and in many Western nations (especially France) attempts were made to silence or discredit witnesses.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=472}} According to [[Robert Conquest]], [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] said that the evidence of the camps should be ignored so the French proletariat would not be discouraged.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=472}} A series of legal actions ensued, at which definitive evidence was presented that established the validity of the former labor-camp inmates' testimony.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=472–474}}

Conquest wrote in his 1968 book, ''The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties'', some Western observers were unintentionally (or intentionally) ignorant of the fraudulent nature of the charges and evidence; they included [[Walter Duranty]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'', a Russian speaker; the American ambassador [[Joseph E. Davies]], who noted "proof&nbsp;... beyond reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of treason";{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=468}} and [[Beatrice Webb|Beatrice]] and [[Sidney Webb]], authors of ''Soviet Communism: A New Civilization''.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=469}} "Communist parties everywhere simply transmitted the Soviet line" but some of the most critical reporting came from the left, notably ''[[The Guardian|The Manchester Guardian]]''.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=465–467}} American journalist [[H. R. Knickerbocker]] reported the executions, calling them "the great purges" in 1941 and describing how over four years they affected "the top fourth or fifth, to estimate it conservatively, of the Party itself, of the Army, Navy, and Air Force leaders and then of the new Bolshevik intelligentsia, the foremost technicians, managers, supervisors, scientists". Knickerbocker wrote about dekulakization, "It is a conservative estimate to say that some 5,000,000 [kulaks]&nbsp;... died at once, or within a few years."<ref name="knickerbocker1941">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RwGwpIBHhgcC&pg=PA133|title=Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind|publisher=Reynal & Hitchcock|author=Knickerbocker, H.R.|year=1941|pages=133–134|isbn=978-1417992775}}</ref>

Khrushchev's revelations in 1956 had a profound impact on Western communist parties. The ''[[Daily Worker]]'' (the [[Communist Party USA]] newspaper) published the Secret Speech in full, following the lead of ''The New York Times''.<ref>{{Cite web|author=Howard Fast|title=On Leaving the Communist Party|url=https://www.trussel.com/hf/onleave.htm|date=16 November 1957|access-date=2023-02-23|website=www.trussel.com}}</ref>

==Rehabilitation==

[[Image:The Soviet Union 1963 CPA 2824 stamp (Russian Civil War Hero Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Map of Eastern Front of Russian Civil War).jpg|thumb|alt=A green four-kopeck stamp|Posthumously rehabilitated, [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]] was commemorated on a 1963 Soviet postage stamp.]]
[[File:No to death penalty sculpture Ulaanbaatar.jpg|thumb|Monument to victims of the repressions in [[Ulaanbaatar]], Mongolia|alt=A black monument reading, "No to Death Penalty"]]

The Great Purge was denounced by Nikita Khrushchev after Stalin's death. In his secret speech to the [[20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|20th]] [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|CPSU]] congress in February 1956 (which was made public a month later), Khrushchev referred to the purges as an "abuse of power" by Stalin which resulted in enormous harm to the country. In the speech, he acknowledged that many of the victims were innocent and were convicted on the basis of confessions obtained by torture. Khrushchev later wrote in his memoirs that he had initiated the process, overcoming objections from the rest of the party leadership; the transcripts belie this, although they indicate differences of opinion about the speech.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |title=On Stalin's Team : The years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics |date=2017 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=978-0691175775 |pages=244–245}}</ref>

In 1954, some of the convictions began to be overturned. Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other generals convicted in the trial of Red Army generals were declared innocent ([[Rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitated]]) in 1957. Former Politburo members [[Yan Rudzutak]] and [[Stanislav Kosior]] and many lower-level victims were also declared innocent during the 1950s. Nikolai Bukharin and others convicted in the Moscow Trials were not rehabilitated until as late as 1988. Leon Trotsky, considered a major player in the Russian Revolution and a major contributor to [[Marxist theory]], was never rehabilitated by the USSR. ''Rehabilitation: The Political Processes of the 1930s–50s'' (Реабилитация. Политические процессы 30–50-х годов), published in 1991, contains a large amount of new archive material (transcripts of interrogations, letters of convicts, and photos) demonstrating in detail how a number of show trials were fabricated.{{Full citation needed|date=July 2025}}

==Number of people executed==
[[File:RIAN archive 910794 Memorial events in Bykovnya Graves reserve.jpg|thumb|Memorial events at the [[Bykivnia graves]], [[Kyiv]], Ukraine|alt=People with flowers near a tree with a sign]]
Official figures give the total number of verifiable executions in 1937 and 1938 at 681,692.{{sfn|Thurston|1998|p=139}}<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Getty|first1=J. Arch|last2=Rittersporn|first2=Gábor|last3=Zemskov|first3=Viktor|title=Victims of the Soviet penal system in the pre-war years: a first approach on the basis of archival evidence|journal=[[American Historical Review]]|date=1993|volume=98|issue=4|page=1022|doi=10.2307/2166597|jstor=2166597|url=https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf}}</ref> in addition to 116,000 deaths in the [[Gulag]],<ref name="EllmanComment">{{cite journal|last=Ellman|first=Michael|date=2002|title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=54|issue=7|pages=1151–1172|doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177|quote=The best estimate that can currently be made of the number of repression deaths in 1937–38 is the range 950,000–1.2 million, i.e. about a million. This is the estimate which should be used by historians, teachers and journalists concerned with twentieth century Russian—and world—history|s2cid=43510161}}</ref> Two thousand were unofficially killed in [[Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code|non-Article-58]] shootings.<ref name="EllmanComment"/> The total estimate of deaths during the Great Purge ranges from 950,000 to 1.2 million, including executions, deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag.<ref name="EllmanComment"/> There were [[Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union#Death toll|16,500 to 50,000 deaths in the deportation of Soviet Koreans]] which correspond to the purge. According to Robert Conquest, a practice to lower execution numbers was to disguise executions with the sentence "10 years without the right of correspondence"; this almost always meant execution. All the bodies identified from mass graves at [[Vinnytsia massacre|Vinnitsa]] and [[Kuropaty]] were of individuals who had received this sentence.<ref>Robert Conquest, ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment: 40th Anniversary Edition'', Oxford University Press, US, 2007. p. 287</ref> Despite this, the lower figure roughly confirmed Conquest's 1968 estimate of 700,000 "legal" executions; in the preface to the 40th anniversary edition of ''The Great Terror'', Conquest wrote that he had been "correct on the vital matter—the numbers put to death: about one million".<ref>Robert Conquest, Preface, ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment: 40th Anniversary Edition'', Oxford University Press, US, 2007. p. xvi</ref>

According to [[J. Arch Getty]] and Oleg V. Naumov, "popular estimates of executions in the great purges vary from 500,000 to 7 million." However, "the archival evidence from the secret police rejects the astronomically high estimates often given for the number of terror victims" and "the data available at this point make it clear that the number shot in the two worst purge years [1937–38] was more likely in the hundreds of thousands than in the millions."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Getty|first1=J. Arch|last2=Naumov|first2=Oleg V.|date=2010|title=The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939|location=|publisher=[[Yale University Press]]|pages=xiv, 243, 590–591|isbn=978-0300104073}}</ref> Historian Corrina Kuhr wrote that 700,000 people were executed during the Great Purge, out of the 2.5 million who were arrested.<ref name="Kuhr">{{Cite journal|last=Kuhr|first=Corinna|date=1998|title=Children of 'Enemies of The People' as Victims of the Great Purges|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20171081|journal=Cahiers du Monde russe|volume=39|issue=1/2|pages=209–220|doi=10.3406/cmr.1998.2520|jstor=20171081|issn=1252-6576|quote=According to latest estimates 2,5 million people were arrested and 700,000 of them shot. These figures are based on reliable archival materials [...]|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Nérard François-Xavier estimates the same number of people who were sentenced to death, but said that 1.3 million people were arrested.<ref name="Xavier">{{Cite web|last=François-Xavier|first=Nérard|date=27 February 2009|title=The Levashovo cemetery and the Great Terror in the Leningrad region|url=https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/levashovo-cemetery-and-great-terror-leningrad-region.html|website=[[Paris Institute of Political Studies]]|language=en|quote=The Yezhovshchina or Stalin's Great Terror [...] The precise end result of these operations is difficult to establish, but the total of the condemnations is estimated at roughly 1,300,000 of which 700,000 were sentenced to death, most of the others were sentenced to ten years in the camps (document translated in Werth, 2006: 143).}}</ref> The Soviets made their own estimates; Vyacheslav Molotov said, "The report written by that commission member&nbsp;... says that 1,370,000 arrests were made in the 1930s. That's too many. I responded that the figures should be thoroughly reviewed".<ref>Chuev, Feliks. ''Molotov Remembers''. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 285</ref>

==Stalin's role==
[[File:Great Purge Stalin Voroshilov Kaganovich Zhdanov Molotov.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.7|alt=Front page of a booklet|List from the Great Purge signed by [[Vyacheslav Molotov|Molotov]], Stalin, [[Kliment Voroshilov|Voroshilov]], [[Lazar Kaganovich|Kaganovich]], and [[Andrei Zhdanov|Zhdanov]]]]
<noinclude>{{Joseph Stalin series|expanded=Leader of the Soviet Union}}</noinclude>
Historians with archive access have confirmed that Stalin was intimately involved in the purge. Russian historian [[Oleg Khlevniuk|Oleg V. Khlevniuk]] says, "Theories about the elemental, spontaneous nature of the terror, about a loss of central control over the course of mass repression, and about the role of regional leaders in initiating the terror are simply not supported by the historical record".<ref>Oleg V. Khlevniuk. ''Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle.'' [[Yale University Press]], 2008. {{ISBN|0300110669}} p. xix</ref> In addition to signing Yezhov's lists, Stalin issued instructions about certain individuals; he once told Yezhov, "Isn't it time to squeeze this gentleman and force him to report on his dirty little business? Where is he: in a prison or a hotel?" Reviewing one of Yezhov's lists, he added "beat, beat!" to M. I. Baranov's name.<ref>Marc Jansen, Nikita Vasilʹevich Petrov. ''Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895–1940''. [[Hoover Institution Press]], 2002. {{ISBN|0817929029}} p. 111</ref> Stalin signed 357 lists in 1937 and 1938 authorizing the execution of about 40,000 people; around 90 percent of these are confirmed to have been shot,<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20071014232729/http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/mjellman/ Michael Ellman], [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman1933.pdf Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071014232729/http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/mjellman/ |date=14 October 2007 }} ''Europe–Asia Studies'', [[Routledge]]. Vol. 59, No. 4, June 2007, 663–693. [[PDF]] file</ref> 7.4 percent of those executed legally.<ref>Getty & Naumov, ''The Road to Terror''. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1999, p. 470</ref> While reviewing one list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one. Who remembers the names now of the [[boyars]] [[Ivan the Terrible]] got rid of? No one."<ref>Quoted in [[Dmitri Volkogonov]], ''Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy'' (New York, 1991), p. 210.</ref> He ordered 100,000 [[Buddhist]] [[lama]]s in Mongolia to be liquidated, but political leader [[Peljidiin Genden]] resisted the order.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Baabar |first1=Bat-Ėrdėniĭn |title=History of Mongolia |date=1999 |publisher=Monsudar Pub. |isbn=978-99929-0-038-3 |page=322 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xXxxAAAAMAAJ |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kotkin |first1=Stephen |last2=Elleman |first2=Bruce Allen |title=Mongolia in the Twentieth Century |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-46010-7 |page=112 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FWmmBgAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+100,000+order+mongolia&pg=PA112 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dashpu̇rėv |first1=Danzankhorloogiĭn |last2=Soni |first2=Sharad Kumar |title=Reign of Terror in Mongolia, 1920–1990 |date=1992 |publisher=South Asian Publishers |isbn=978-1-881318-15-6 |page=44 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Aw4cAAAAIAAJ&q=stalin+100,000+order+mongolia |language=en}}</ref>

Yezhov may have misled Stalin about aspects of the purge.<ref name="Service-2005">{{Cite book|last=Service|first=Robert|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hSWK6Dh4wRgC&pg=PA369|title=Stalin: A Biography|date=2005|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0674016972|page=369|language=en|author-link=Robert Service (historian)}}</ref> Contemporary and some subsequent commentators surmised that the Great Purge had not begun at Stalin's initiative, and the idea circulated that the process was out of control after it began.<ref name="Service-2005" /> Stalin may have failed to anticipate NKVD excesses under Yezhov,<ref name="Service-2005" /> and objected to the large numbers of people Yezhov was purging. He interrupted Yezhov when he announced that 200,000 party members were expelled, saying that they were "very many" and suggesting that the expulsion of 30,000 former Trotskyists and 600 [[Zinovievist]]s "would be a bigger victory".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Getty|first=John Archibald|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NWYvGYcxCjYC|title=Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives|date=1993|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521446709|page=51|language=en|author-link=J. Arch Getty}}</ref>

[[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]] wrote that although the "purposive deaths" caused by Hitler constitute "murder", those under Stalin fall into the category of "execution"; however, in "causing death by criminal neglect and ruthlessness&nbsp;(...) Stalin probably exceeded Hitler":{{sfn|Wheatcroft|1996|p=1348}} 

<blockquote>Stalin undoubtedly caused many innocent people to be executed, but it seems likely that he thought many of them guilty of crimes against the state and felt that the execution of others would act as a deterrent to the guilty. He signed the papers and insisted on documentation. Hitler, by contrast, wanted to be rid of the Jews and communists simply because they were Jews and communists. He was not concerned about making any pretence at legality. He was careful not to sign anything on this matter and was equally insistent on no documentation.{{sfn|Wheatcroft|1996|p=1348}}</blockquote>

==<span class="anchor" id="Soviet investigation commissions"></span>Soviet investigative commissions==
[[File:RIAN archive 749019 Opening of monument to victims of political repressions.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|alt=Russian Orthodox clergy at the front of a large crowd|Memorial service for victims of political repression in [[Moscow]], 1990]]

At least two Soviet commissions investigated Stalin's show trials after his death. The first, in 1956–1957 and headed by Molotov, included Voroshilov, Kaganovich, [[Mikhail Suslov]], [[Yekaterina Furtseva]], [[Nikolai Shvernik]], [[Averky Aristov]], [[Pyotr Pospelov]] and [[Roman Rudenko]], and was tasked with investigating materials about Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky and others. Saying that accusations against Tukhachevsky ''et al.'' should be dropped, it failed to fully rehabilitate the victims of the three Moscow trials; its final report, however, admits that the accusations were not proven during the trials and "evidence" was obtained by lies, blackmail, and "use of physical influence".{{Full citation needed|date=July 2025}}

The second, [[Shvernik Commission]] worked primarily from 1961 to 1963 and included [[Alexander Shelepin]], Serdyuk, Mironov, Rudenko, and Semichastny. It resulted in two large reports detailing falsifications in the show trials of Bukharin, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky, and many others. The commission based its findings largely on documents and eyewitness testimony by former NKVD workers and victims of repression. It recommended rehabilitating everyone accused except for Radek and Yagoda; Radek's materials required further checking, and Yagoda was one of the falsifiers at the trials. According to the commission,

<blockquote>Stalin committed a very grave crime against the Communist party, the socialist state, Soviet people and worldwide revolutionary movement&nbsp;... Together with Stalin, the responsibility for the abuse of law, mass unwarranted repressions and death of many thousands of wholly innocent people also lies on Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov&nbsp;....{{full citation needed|date=July 2025}}</blockquote>

Molotov said, "We would have been complete idiots if we had taken the reports at their face value. We were not idiots." He added, "[T]he cases were reviewed and some people were released."<ref>Chuev, Feliks. ''Molotov Remembers''. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, pp. 276, 294</ref>

==Mass graves and memorials==
{{Main|List of mass graves from Soviet mass executions}}

During the late 1980s, with the formation of [[Memorial (society)|Memorial]] and similar organisations across the Soviet Union at a time of Gorbachev's [[glasnost]] ("openness and transparency") it became possible to speak about the Great Purge and to begin locating the 1937–1938 killing grounds and identifying those buried there. In 1988, the mass graves at [[Kurapaty]] in Belarus were the site of a clash between demonstrators and police. A stone was brought in 1990 from the former [[White Sea]] [[Solovki prison camp]] and installed next to KGB headquarters in Moscow as a memorial to all victims of political repression since 1917.{{cn|date=November 2025}}

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many more mass graves of purge victims were discovered and turned into memorial sites.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Pictorial essay: Death trenches bear witness to Stalin's purges|date=July 17, 1997|url=http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9707/17/russia.gulag.grave/index.html|access-date=2023-02-23|website=www.cnn.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|date=2002-07-16|title=Mass grave found at Ukrainian monastery|language=en-GB|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2131954.stm|access-date=2023-02-23}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|title=Wary of its past, Russia ignores mass grave site|work=Christian Science Monitor|author=[[Fred Weir]]|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1010/p01s02-woeu.html|access-date=2023-02-23|date=10 October 2002|issn=0882-7729}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|date=2010-06-09|title=Stalin-era mass grave yields tons of bones|language=en|work=Reuters|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-grave-idUSTRE6584HJ20100609|access-date=2023-02-23}}</ref> Some, such as the [[Bykivnia graves]] near [[Kyiv]], reportedly contain up to 200,000 bodies.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1022&context=rel|title=Jewish Cemeteries, Synagogues, and Mass Grave Sites in Ukraine|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200923054145/https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1022&context=rel|archive-date=23 September 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ucrdc.org/HI-BYKIVNIA.html|title=Bykivnia between Hitler and Stalin|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200923054410/http://www.ucrdc.org/HI-BYKIVNIA.html|archive-date=23 September 2020}}</ref> In 2007, the Butovo firing range near Moscow was turned into a shrine to victims of Stalinism. Between August 1937 and October 1938, more than 20,000 people were shot and buried there.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Kishkovsky|first=Sophia|date=2007-06-08|title=Former Killing Ground Becomes Shrine to Stalin's Victims|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/world/europe/08butovo.html|access-date=2023-02-23|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

The Joffe Foundation in Saint Petersburg launched a Map of Memory website in 2016, which recorded the location and current use of 411 burial grounds and commemorative sites across Russia linked to forced resettlement, deportation, the Gulag, and 149 secret execution and burial sites.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://en.mapofmemory.org/burial-grounds-great-terror|title=Burial grounds of the Great Terror|website=Map of Memory|date=16 November 2021 |access-date=12 July 2025}}</ref> President Vladimir Putin opened the [[Wall of Grief]], an official (but controversial) recognition of Soviet crimes, on 30 October 2017.<ref name="nyt">{{cite news|last=MacFarquhar|first=Neil|title=Critics Scoff as Kremlin Erects Monument to the Repressed|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/world/europe/russia-soviet-repression-monument.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=30 October 2017|access-date=6 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203224221/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/world/europe/russia-soviet-repression-monument.html|archive-date=2024-02-03}}</ref>

A mass grave containing 5,000 to 8,000 skeletons was discovered in [[Odesa]], Ukraine, during an August 2021 exploration for a planned expansion of [[Odesa International Airport]]. The graves are believed to date back to the late 1930s, during the purge.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58340805|title=Stalin-era mass grave found in Ukraine|publisher=BBC|date=26 August 2021}}</ref>

<gallery mode=packed heights=180px>
File:Wall of sorrow at the first exhibition of the victims of Stalinism in Moscow.jpg|alt=People looking at papers and pictures on a wall|"Week of Conscience", the first exhibition of victims of Stalinism in Moscow, 19 November 1988
File:Kurapaty 1989 meeting.jpg|[[Kuropaty]] mass gravesite near [[Minsk]], Belarus|alt=A large gathering at a forest
File:КрасныйБор.jpg|[[Krasny Bor Forest, Karelia|Krasny Bor]] memorial cemetery, near [[Petrozavodsk]]|alt=A monument, Orthodox cross and flowers in a forest
File:Stalin-repressions-poles-memorial.jpg|Memorial to [[Poles in the Soviet Union|Polish]] victims of Stalinist repression in [[Tomsk]]|alt=A memorial stone with a cross and plaque
File:Кировский район Донецка 302.jpg|Monument to victims of political repression in Rutchenkove, near [[Donetsk]], Ukraine|alt=outdoor sculpture of a man against a wall
File:Stalin-repressions-Tomsk-stone.jpg|Memorial to victims of Stalinist repression in Tomsk|alt=A stone and a stone arch
File:Сандормох25.jpg|Monument at entrance to the [[Sandarmokh]] burial grounds reading, "People! Do not kill one another"|alt=A memorial stone and flowers
</gallery>

==Historical interpretations==
The Great Purge has sparked a number of debates about its purpose, scale, and mechanisms. According to one interpretation, Stalin's regime had to maintain its citizens in a state of fear and uncertainty to stay in power (Brzezinski, 1958). Robert Conquest emphasized Stalin's paranoia, focused on the Moscow show trial of the [[Old Bolsheviks]], and analyzed the carefully-planned and systematic destruction of the Communist Party. Others view the purge as the culmination of a [[Social engineering (political science)|social-engineering]] campaign which started at the beginning of the 1930s (Hagenloh, 2000; Shearer, 2003; Werth, 2003).<ref name=werth>{{cite web|first=Nicolas|last=Werth|author-link=Nicolas Werth|url=http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/nkvd-mass-secret-national-operations-august-1937-november-1938|title=Case Study: The NKVD Mass Secret Operation n° 00447 (August 1937 – November 1938)|publisher=Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network|date=15 April 2019}}</ref> According to an October 1993 study in ''[[The American Historical Review]]'', much of the Great Purge was directed against widespread banditry and criminal activity in the Soviet Union at the time.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Getty |first1=J. Arch |last2=Rittersporn |first2=Gabor T. |last3=Zemskov |first3=Viktor N. |date=October 1993 |title=Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=98 |issue=4 |pages=1030–1035 |doi=10.2307/2166597 |jstor=2166597}}</ref>

Historian [[Isaac Deutscher]] regarded the Moscow trials "as the prelude to the destruction of an entire generation of revolutionaries".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1370|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref> Trotsky viewed the violence characteristic of the purge as an ideological difference between Stalinism and Bolshevism:<ref name="www.marxists.org">{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolshevism (August 1937) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/08/stalinism.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> 

<blockquote>The present purge draws between Bolshevism and Stalinism not simply a bloody line but a whole river of blood. The annihilation of all the older generation of Bolsheviks, an important part of the middle generation which participated in the civil war, and that part of the youth that took up most seriously the Bolshevik traditions, shows not only a political but a thoroughly physical incompatibility between Bolshevism and Stalinism. How can this not be seen?<ref name="www.marxists.org"/></blockquote>

According to Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" and Robert Conquest, many accusations (notably those presented at the [[Moscow trials|Moscow show trial]]s) were based on [[forced confession]]s obtained through [[torture]]{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=121 which cites his secret speech}} and on a loose interpretation of [[Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code]] dealing with counter-revolutionary crimes. [[Due process]], as defined by Soviet law in force at the time, was often largely replaced with summary proceedings by NKVD troikas.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=286}}

In his memoir, Valentin Berezhkov (Stalin's interpreter in 1941) suggests parallels between Hitler's inner-party purge and Stalin's mass repression of Old Bolsheviks, military commanders and intellectuals.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Berezhkov |first1=V. M. (Valentin Mikhaĭlovich) |url=https://archive.org/details/atstalinsside00vmbe/page/10/mode/2up?view=theater |title=At Stalin's side : his interpreter's memoirs from the October Revolution to the fall of the dictator's empire |last2=Mikheyev |first2=Sergei M. |date=1994 |publisher=Secaucus, NJ : Carol Pub. Group |isbn=978-1-55972-212-4 |page=10}}</ref> According to historian James Harris, contemporary archival research pokes "rather large holes in the traditional story" woven by Conquest and others.{{sfn|Harris|2017|pp=2–4}} His findings, while not exonerating Stalin or the Soviet state, dispel the notion that the bloodletting was merely the result of Stalin attempting to establish his own personal dictatorship; evidence suggests he was committed to building the socialist state envisioned by Lenin. The real motivation for the terror was an exaggerated fear of counterrevolution:{{sfn|Harris|2017|p=16}}

<blockquote>So what was the motivation behind the Terror? The answers required a lot more digging, but it gradually became clearer that the violence of the late 1930s was driven by fear. Most Bolsheviks, Stalin among them, believed that the revolutions of 1789, 1848 and 1871 had failed because their leaders hadn't adequately anticipated the ferocity of the counter-revolutionary reaction from the establishment. They were determined not to make the same mistake.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163498|title=Historian James Harris says Russian archives show we've misunderstood Stalin|last=Harris|first=James|date=July 26, 2016|website=[[History News Network]]|access-date=December 1, 2018}}</ref></blockquote>

Two major lines of interpretation have emerged among historians. One says that the purges reflected Stalin's ambitions, paranoia, and inner drive to increase his power and eliminate potential rivals. Revisionist historians explain the purges by theorizing that rival factions exploited Stalin's paranoia and used terror to enhance their own positions. Peter Whitewood examines the first purge (directed at the army) and suggests a third interpretation: Stalin and other top leaders believing that they were surrounded by capitalist enemies and worried about the vulnerability and loyalty of the Red Army.<ref name="James Harris 1941"/> "Stalin attacked the Red Army because he seriously misperceived a serious security threat", and "Stalin seems to have genuinely believed that foreign‐backed enemies had infiltrated the ranks and managed to organize a conspiracy at the very heart of the Red Army." The purge hit deeply from June 1937 to November 1938, removing 35,000; many were executed. Experience in carrying out the purge facilitated purging other elements of the Soviet polity.<ref>Peter Whitewood, ''The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military'' (2015) Quoting pp. 12, 276.</ref><ref>Ronald Grigor Suny, review, ''Historian'' (2018) 80#1: 177–179.</ref><ref>For a critique of Whitewood see Alexander Hill, review, ''American Historical Review'' (2017) 122#5 pp. 1713–1714.</ref> Historians cite the disruption as a factor in the Red Army's disastrous military performance during the German invasion.<ref>Roger R. Reese, "Stalin Attacks the Red Army." ''Military History Quarterly'' 27.1 (2014): 38–45.</ref> [[Robert W. Thurston]] wrote that the purge was not intended to subdue the Soviet masses (many of whom helped implement it), but to deal with opposition to Stalin's rule by the Soviet elites.{{sfn|Thurston|1998|p=xx}}

==See also==
* [[Leningrad affair]]
* [[Anti-Rightist Campaign]]
* [[Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin]]
* [[Index of Soviet Union–related articles]]
* [[Timeline of the Great Purge]]
* [[History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953)]]
* [[Armenian victims of the Great Purge]]
* [[Family members of a traitor to the Motherland]]
* [[Orphans in the Soviet Union#Children of "enemies of the people", 1937–1945]]
* [[Mass killings under communist regimes]]
* [[Lustration]]
* [[Stalinist repressions in Azerbaijan]]
* [[Holodomor]]
* ''[[The Commissar Vanishes]]''

===Similar events===
* [[Cultural Revolution]] and the [[Great Leap Forward]] (China)
* [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956|Hungarian Revolution]]
* [[Cambodian genocide|Khmer Rouge genocide]] (Cambodia)
* [[30 September Movement|30 September killings]] (Indonesia)
* [[Prague Spring]] (Czechoslovakia)

====<span class="anchor" id="Similar Polticidal Purges"></span>Similar political purges====
* [[1979 Ba'ath Party Purge]] (Iraq)
* [[Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66]] (Indonesia)
* [[Dirty War]] (Argentina)
* [[White Terror (Spain)|White Terror]] (Spain)
* [[Bodo League massacre]] (South Korea)

==References==

===Citations===
{{Reflist|30em}}

===Sources===
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book|last1=Andrew|first1=Christopher|last2=Mitrokhin|first2=Vasili|year=2000|orig-year=1999|title=The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB|location=New York|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=978-0465003129}}
* {{cite book|last=Conquest|first=Robert|year=1987|title=Stalin and the Kirov Murder|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0195055795|author-mask=2|url=https://archive.org/details/stalinkirovmurde00conq}}
* {{cite book|last=Conquest|first=Robert|year=2008|orig-year=1990|title=The Great Terror: A Reassessment|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0195317008|author-mask=2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ubXQSk2qfXMC}}
* {{cite book|last=Courtois|first=Stéphane|author-link=Stéphane Courtois|year=1999|title=The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression|location=Cambridge, MA|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0674076082|title-link=The Black Book of Communism}}
* {{cite book|last=Figes|first=Orlando|author-link=Orlando Figes|year=2007|title=The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia|location=London|publisher=Allen Lane|isbn=978-0713997026}}
* {{cite book |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |title=On Stalin's Team : The years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics |date=2017 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=978-0691175775}}
* {{cite book|last=Gellately|first=Robert|author-link=Robert Gellately|year=2007|title=Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe|publisher=Knopf|isbn=978-1400040056}}
* {{cite book|last=Harris|first=James|year=2017|title=The Great Fear: Stalin's Terror of the 1930s|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|isbn=978-0198797869}}
* {{cite book|last1=Haynes|first1=John Earl|author2-link=John Earl Haynes|last2=Klehr|first2=Harvey|author1-link=Harvey Klehr|year=2003|title=In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage|publisher=[[Encounter Books]]|isbn=978-1893554726|url=https://archive.org/details/indenial00john}}
* {{cite book|last=Koestler|first=Arthur|author-link=Arthur Koestler|year=1940|title=Darkness at Noon}}{{ISBN?}}
* {{cite book|last=Kuromiya|first=Hiroaki|year=2007|title=The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s|location=New Haven, CT|publisher=[[Yale University Press]]|isbn=978-0300123890}}
* {{cite book|last1=McLoughlin|first1=Barry|last2=McDermott|first2=Kevin|year=2002|title=Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union|location=Basingstoke|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=978-1403901194}}
* {{cite book|last=Parrish|first=Michael|year=1996|title=The Lesser Terror: Soviet state security, 1939–1953|location=Westport, CT|publisher=Praeger Press|isbn=978-0275951139}}
* {{cite book|last=Solzhenitsyn|first=Aleksandr I.|author-link=Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn|year=1973|title=The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: In Three Volumes|url=https://archive.org/details/gulagarchipelago00solz|url-access=registration|location=New York|publisher=Harper and Row}}
* {{cite book|last=Thurston|first=Robert|author-link=Robert W. Thurston|year=1998|orig-year=1996|title=Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934–1941|location=New Haven, CT|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0300074420}}
* {{cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen|title=The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=52|issue=6|pages=1143–1159|author-mask=2|year=2000|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Comments_KEP_CNQ.pdf|doi=10.1080/09668130050143860|pmid=19326595|s2cid=205667754}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
{{See also|Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union#Terror, famine and the Gulag}}
* A. Artizov, Yu. Sigachev, I. Shevchuk, V. Khlopov under editorship of acad. A. N. Yakovlev. ''Rehabilitation: As It Happened. Documents of the CPSU CC Presidium and Other Materials. Vol. 2, February 1956–Early 1980s''. Moscow, 2003.
* {{cite book|last=Chase|first=William J.|year=2001|title=Enemies within the Gates?: The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934–1939|location=New Haven, CT|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-08242-5}}
* {{cite book|last=Colton|first=Timothy J.|year=1998|title=Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis|publisher=[[Belknap Press]]|isbn=978-0-674-58749-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Conquest|first=Robert|author-link=Robert Conquest|year=1973|orig-year=1968|title=The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties|edition=Revised|location=London|publisher=Macmillan|isbn=978-0-02-527560-7}}
* {{citation|last=Hill|first=Alexander|title=The Red Army and the Second World War|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2017|isbn=978-1-1070-2079-5}}.
* {{cite book|editor-last=Hoffman|editor-first=David L.|year=2003|title=Stalinism: The Essential Readings|location=Oxford|publisher=Blackwell Publishers|isbn=978-0-631-22890-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=54ZJypH-7xcC}}
* {{cite book|editor-last=Ilic|editor-first=Melanie|year=2006|title=Stalin's Terror Revisited|location=Basingstoke|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan}}
* {{cite book|last1=Karlsson|first1=Klas-Göran|last2=Schoenhals|first2=Michael|year=2008|title=Crimes against humanity under communist regimes – Research review|publisher=Forum for Living History|isbn=978-91-977487-2-8|url=http://www.levandehistoria.se/files/forskningsinventering_EN.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100824031709/http://www.levandehistoria.se/files/forskningsinventering_EN.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=2010-08-24}}
* {{cite book|last=Lyons|first=Eugene|author-link=Eugene Lyons|year=1937|title=Assignment in Utopia|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.89424|publisher=[[Harcourt Trade Publishers|Harcourt Brace and Company]]}}
* {{cite book|last=Merridale|first=Catherine|author-link=Catherine Merridale|year=2002|title=Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia|location=London|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-0-14-200063-2}}
* {{cite book|last=Naimark|first=Norman M.|author-link=Norman Naimark|year=2010|title=Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity)|location=Princeton, NJ|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-14784-0}}
* {{cite book|last=Rogovin|first=Vadim|author-link=Vadim Rogovin|year=1996|title=Two Lectures: Stalin's Great Terror: Origins and Consequences – Leon Trotsky and the Fate of Marxism in the USSR|publisher=Mehring books|isbn=978-0-929087-83-2}}
* {{cite book|last=Rogovin|first=Vadim|year=1998|title=1937: Stalin's Year of Terror|publisher=Mehring Books|isbn=978-0-929087-77-1|author-mask=2}}
* {{cite book|last=Rosefielde|first=Steven|author-link=Steven Rosefielde|year=2009|title=Red Holocaust|location=London|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-77757-5}}
* {{cite book|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|author-link=Timothy D. Snyder|year=2005|title=Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine|location=New Haven, CT|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-10670-1}}
* {{cite book|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|year=2010|title=Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin|location=New York|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=978-0-465-00239-9|author-mask=2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZCP6WKJwVr8C|via=Google Books}}{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
* {{cite book|last=Tzouliadis|first=Tim|year=2008|title=The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia|location=London|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-1-59420-168-4|url=https://archive.org/details/forsakenamerican00tzou}}
* Watt, Donald Cameron. "Who plotted against whom? Stalin's purge of the soviet high command revisited." ''Journal of Soviet Military Studies'' 3.1 (1990): 46–65.
* {{cite journal|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf|title=The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930–45|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen|author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft|year=1996|volume=48|issue=8|pages=1319–1353|journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]]|jstor=152781|doi=10.1080/09668139608412415}}
* Whitewood, Peter. ''The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military'' (2015)
* Whitewood, Peter. "The Purge of the Red Army and the Soviet Mass Operations, 1937–38." ''Slavonic & East European Review'' 93.2 (2015): 286–314. [http://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/958/1/slaveasteurorev2.93.2.0286.pdf online]
* —— "Subversion in the Red Army and the Military Purge of 1937–1938." ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 67.1 (2015): 102–122.
* —— "In the shadow of the war: Bolshevik perceptions of polish subversive and military threats to the Soviet Union, 1920–32." ''Journal of Strategic Studies'' (2019): 1–24.
* {{cite book|editor-last=Yakovlev|editor-first=Alexander N.|editor-link=Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev|year=1991|title=Реабилитация. Политические процессы 30–50-х годов|trans-title=Rehabilitation: Political Trials of the 1930s–50s|location=Moscow|publisher=[[ROSSPEN]]}}
* {{cite book|last=Yakovlev|first=Alexander N.|year=2004|orig-year=2002|title=A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia|location=New Haven, CT|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-10322-9|author-mask=2}}

===Film===
* Pultz, David, dir. 1997. ''Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror'' [81:00, documentary film]. Narrated by [[Meryl Streep]]. US

==External links==
* {{Commons category-inline}}
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1938/trial/ ''The Case of Bukharin'']{{snd}}Transcript of Nikolai Bukharin's testimonies and last plea; from "The Case of the Anti-Soviet Block of Rights and Trotskyites", Red Star Press, 1973, pp. 369–439, 767–779
* {{YouTube|25JpnWlEfvE|Actual video footage from Third Moscow Trial}}
* [[Nicolas Werth]] [http://www.massviolence.org/The-NKVD-Mass-Secret-Operation-no-00447-August-1937 Case Study: The NKVD Mass Secret Operation n° 00447 (August 1937 – November 1938)]
* [http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1999/9905/9905arc2.cfm "Documenting the Death Toll: Research into the Mass Murder of Foreigners in Moscow, 1937–38"] by Barry McLoughlin, American Historical Association, 1999
* [https://en.mapofmemory.org/great-terror-karelia "The Great Terror in Karelia, 1937-1938", Map of Memory (2016)]
* [https://en.mapofmemory.org/ "The Map of Memory. Russia's Necropolis of Terror and the Gulag: A select directory of burial grounds and commemorative sites"]. Joffe Foundation. Retrieved 16 August 2025. 411 sites within Russia from the Civil War to the 1950s. 

{{Joseph Stalin}}
{{Soviet Union topics}}

[[Category:Great Purge|  ]]
[[Category:1930s in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:1936 in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:1937 in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:1938 in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:NKVD]]
[[Category:Political and cultural purges]]
[[Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Massacres in Russia]]
[[Category:Massacres in Ukraine]]
[[Category:Massacres in Uzbekistan]]
[[Category:Massacres in Belarus]]
[[Category:Massacres in Armenia]]
[[Category:Politicides]]
[[Category:Stalinism]]
[[Category:Mass murder in 1937]]
[[Category:Mass murder in 1938]]
[[Category:Soviet phraseology]]
[[Category:Persecution by the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Persecution of intellectuals in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Massacres in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Ethnic cleansing in Europe]]
[[Category:Ethnic cleansing in Asia]]
[[Category:Genocides in Europe]]
[[Category:Genocides in Asia]]
[[Category:Revolutionary terror]]