The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор, romanized: Bol'shoy terror), also known as the Year of '37 (37-й год, Tridtsat' sed'moy god) and the Yezhovshchina (Ежовщина [(j)ɪˈʐofɕːɪnə], … See more

First and second Moscow trials
Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, in which they were accused of … See more

A series of mass operations of the NKVD was carried out from 1937 through 1938 targeting specific nationalities within the Soviet Union, on the … See more

Russian Trotskyist historian Vadim Rogovin argued that Stalin had destroyed thousands of foreign communists capable of leading socialist change in their respective countries. He referenced 600 active Bulgarian communists that perished in his prison camps … See more

Following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, a power vacuum opened in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the Soviet Union (USSR). Various established figures in Lenin's … See more

On 2 July 1937, in a top secret order to regional Party and NKVD chiefs Stalin instructed them to produce the estimated number of "kulaks" and "criminals" in their districts. These individuals were to be arrested and executed, or sent to the gulag camps. The … See more

The purge of the Red Army and Military Maritime Fleet removed three of five marshals (then equivalent to four-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to three-star generals), eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the … See more