Great Purge
Soviet mass executions
The Great Purge was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938 under Joseph Stalin.
Millions were executed, imprisoned in labor camps, or exiled as suspected enemies of the state—party officials, military officers, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens alike.
Show trials extracted false confessions.
Also called the Great Terror.
- StalinSoviet autocrat, mid-century
- repressionUnconscious blocking of thoughts
- Soviet UnionFormer communist superstate
- show trialsPropaganda-driven mock prosecutions
- NKVDStalin-era secret police
totalitarianism · enemy of the people · executions · mass graves · political violence · Trotskyism · cult of personality · Cheka · Soviet censorship · forced labor camps · Siberian exile · Communist Party · forced migration · Marxism-Leninism · Exile · Bolshevik Revolution · denunciation · Russification
Great Purgepolitical reform
Altering governmental structures or practices
amnesty · rehabilitation · de-Stalinization · glasnost · perestroika
Great Purgegeneral amnesty
Sweeping official forgiveness
exoneration · truth and reconciliation · reintegration · Nuremberg Trials · lustration
Great PurgeVelvet Revolution
Czechoslovakia's nonviolent 1989 transition
fall of the Berlin Wall · peaceful revolution · national healing · democratic transition · liberation
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