The term repression was officially used by the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, Soviet general secretary Joseph Stalin, to describe the prosecution of people considered counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the people.

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From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants

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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 conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and

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A series of mass operations of the NKVD was carried out from 1937 through 1938 until the Soviet invasion of Polandin 1939 targeting specific

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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 Navy, who

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Eventually almost all of the Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution of 1917, or in Lenin's Soviet government, were executed. Out of six members of the original Politburo during the 1917 October Revolutionwho lived until the Great Purge,

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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

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