The Great Purge was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin in the second half of the 1930s. The secret police, the NKVD, arrested hundreds of thousands of people, among them Communist Party leaders, army officers, intellectuals, peasants and ordinary citizens, on charges of treason, sabotage and espionage. Prominent Bolsheviks were put on show trials in Moscow, and many were executed, while others were sent to forced labour camps in the Gulag. The terror weakened the Red Army and the state apparatus and left a lasting fear in society. It eased after the NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov was replaced by Lavrentiy Beria in late 1938. The Soviet leadership later denounced the repressions after Stalin's death.
Before and after
- 8 November 1935Birth of Alain Delon
- 15 November 1935Birth of Mahmoud Abbas
- 30 November 1935Birth of Woody Allen
- 31 December 1935Birth of Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
- 1936Great Purge
- 1936Construction of Fallingwater
- 1936Origins of American Hockey League
- 1936Establishment of Jim Corbett National Park
- 1936Inge Lehmann discovers the Earth's inner core
More in Wars, politics & history
- from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918World War I
- 28 June 1919Treaty of Versailles
- from 1933 to 1945The Holocaust
- 30 January 1933Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany
- from 18 July 1936 to 1 April 1939Spanish Civil War
- from 1 September 1939 to 2 September 1945World War II
The era
This moment belongs to the Modern era (1914 CE to 1945 CE), world wars and a changing world. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.