Mass operations of the People's Comissariate of Internal Affairs (NKVD) were carried out during the
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
and targeted specific categories of people. As a rule, they were carried out according to the corresponding order of the
People's Commissar
Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English transliteration of the Russian (''komissar''), which means 'commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the political commissars of Soviet and Ea ...
of Internal Affairs
Nikolai Yezhov.
List
*
Ex-kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet "elements" ~386,798 killed (mostly ethnic Ukrainians)
**
NKVD Order No. 00447
*
Family members of traitors to the Motherland
*
Kharbin Operation of the NKVD ~30,992 killed
National operations of the NKVD
The operations of this type in this period targeted "foreign" ethnicities (ethnicities with cross-border ties to foreign
nation-states), unlike
nationally targeted repressions during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. According to historian
Oleg Khlevniuk
Oleg Vitalyevich Khlevniuk ( rus, Олег Витальевич Хлевнюк, born 7 July 1959 Vinnytsia, Ukrainian SSR) is a historian and a senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow.[Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...]
and believed that "nationalities of foreign governments" posed a threat in border regions, even if they were Soviet citizens whose ancestors had sometimes lived decades or centuries in the areas controlled by the Soviet Union.
From August 1937 to October 1938, 353,513 people were arrested and 247,157 were shot in the national operations of NKVD. It is estimated that this would make up 34% of the total victims of the Great Purge.
*
Polish Operation of the NKVD
The ''Polish Operation'' of the NKVD (Soviet security service) in 1937–1938 was an anti-Polish mass-ethnic cleansing operation of the NKVD carried out in the Soviet Union against Poles (labeled by the Soviets as "agents") during the period of ...
~111,091 killed
**
NKVD Order No. 00485
*
German Operation of the NKVD ~41,898 killed
*
Greek Operation of the NKVD ~20,000
—50,000
*
Latvian Operation of the NKVD
The ''Latvian Operation'' (russian: «Латышская операция», lv, „Latviešu operācija”) was a national operation of the NKVD against ethnic Latvians, Latvian nationals and persons otherwise affiliated with Latvia and/or ...
16,573 killed
*
Korean Operation of the NKVD ~40,000 killed
[Pohl, J. Otto (1999), Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949, Greenwood, page 13-14]
*
Chinese Operation of the NKVD
*
Estonian Operation of the NKVD
The Estonian Operation of the NKVD was a mass arrest, execution and deportations of persons of Estonian origin in the Soviet Union by the NKVD during the period of Great Purge (1937–1938). It was a part of the larger mass operations of the NKVD ...
4,672 killed
*
Finnish Operation of the NKVD 8,000–25,000 killed or disappeared
Rollback
On November 17, 1938 a joint decree No. 81 of
Sovnarkom
The Councils of People's Commissars (SNK; russian: Совет народных комиссаров (СНК), ''Sovet narodnykh kommissarov''), commonly known as the ''Sovnarkom'' (Совнарком), were the highest executive authorities of ...
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
and
Central Committee of
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the subsequent order of the NKVD undersigned by
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolsheviks ...
cancelled most of NKVD orders of mass type (but not all, see, e.g.,
NKVD Order No. 00689) and suspended implementation of death sentences, signifying the end of the
Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
("Yezhovshchina").
See also
*
Mass killings under communist regimes
References
Political repression in the Soviet Union
Political and cultural purges
NKVD
Great Purge
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