Nikolai Yezhov
The term "purge" is often associated with Stalinism. While leading the USSR, Joseph Stalin imprisoned in Gulag-labor camps and executed, i.e. purged, rival communists, military officers, ethnic minorities, and "wreckers", or citizens accused of plotting against Communism. Stalin together with Nikolai Yezhov initiated the most notorious of the CPSU purges, the Great Purge, during the 1930s.