Great Purge

The Great Purge or the Great Terror, also known as the Year of '37 and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), is Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin's campaign to solidify his power over the party and nation; the purges are also designed to remove the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky as well as other political rivals within the party

It occurs from August 1936 to March 1938.

Following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 a power vacuum opens in the Communist Party.

Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, outmaneuvers political opponents and ultimately gains control of the Communist Party by 1928.

Initially Stalin's leadership is widely accepted, and the doctrine Socialism in One Country becomes enshrined party policy.

However, by the early 1930s party officials begin losing faith in his leadership following the disasters of collectivization and the limited success of the First Five-Year Plan.

These policy failures lead to Stalin's rivals such as Leon Trotsky attempting to sway the party away from Stalin's command.

In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, a popular high-ranking official, Sergei Kirov, is assassinated in 1934.

His death spearheads an investigation that reveals a network of party members working against Stalin including several of Stalin's rivals.

Many of those arrested in Kirov's assassination also confess plans to kill Stalin himself, including high-ranking party officials.

Historians doubt the validity of these claims; nonetheless, they do agree that Kirov's death had been the flashpoint where Stalin took action and began the purges. 

By 1936 Stalin's paranoia reaches a crescendo.

The fear of losing his position, the potential return of Trotsky, and the rising threat of fascism from the west, goads him into authorizing the Great Purge.

The purges themselves are largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the secret police of the USSR.

The initial stages of the purges Are targeted at the Soviet government itself.

The NKVD begins the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks, government officials, and regional party bosses.

Eventually the purges are expanded to the Red Army and military high command, which has a disastrous effect on the military altogether.

As the scope of the purge begins widening, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries begins impacting civilian life.

The NKVD begins targeting certain ethnic minorities such as the Volga Germans, who are subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression.

During the purge, the NKVD widely utilizes imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and arbitrary executions to solidify control over civilians. 

In 1938 Stalin reverses his stance on the purges and declares that the internal enemies have been removed.

Stalin criticizes the NKVD for carrying out mass executions and subsequently executes Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolay Yezhov who had headed the NKVD during the purge years.

Despite the Great Purge being over, the atmosphere of mistrust and widespread surveillance will continue for decades after.

Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000.

The term great purge itself will be popularized by the historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror.

Conquest's title itself is an allusion to the period from the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror.