Great Purge

The Great Purge or the Great Terror (),In Russian history, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (lit. 'Yezhov phenomenon'),  after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD. was a purge in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938.Gellately, Robert 2007. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: the age of social catastrophe. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-4000-4005-6. It was a large-scale repression of kulaks.The word "peasant" means something like "farmer" in English. Ethnic minorities were murdered. Even members of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Red Army leadership were killed. 

Everyone was watched by the police. Everyone was suspected. People were imprisoned without a fair trial. Executions were common.Figes, Orlando 2007. The Whisperers: private life in Stalin's Russia. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-7139-9702-6, pp=227–315 Historians think the total number of deaths due to Stalinist repression in 1937–38 was between 950,000 to 1.2 million.

The "Kulak Operation" and the mass murder of national minorities made up the Great Terror. Together these two actions caused nine-tenths of the death sentences and three-fourths of Gulag prison camp sentences. In the Western world, Robert Conquest's 1968 book The Great Terror popularized the phrase. Conquest's title was a reminder of the French Revolution time known as the Reign of Terror (French: la Terreur, "the Terror"; from June to July 1794: la Grande Terreur, 'the Great Terror').

References

Category:Massacres
Category:Communism
Category:Soviet crimes against humanity