The Great Purge and the Soviet terror campaign

There was a period in the Soviet Union when simply being considered a threat to the state could be enough to destroy someone's life. Between roughly 1936 and 1938, Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, also known as the Great Terror, targeted Communist Party members, officials and countless others accused of political disloyalty or opposition.

Arrests, prosecutions and expulsions spread through Soviet institutions, creating an atmosphere where suspicion alone could have devastating consequences. At least 750,000 people are commonly estimated to have been executed during the campaign, while more than a million others were reportedly sent to forced labor camps known as Gulags.

The exact numbers remain debated, but the scale of the repression is not. Fear spread across the Soviet Union, reaching far beyond the political figures originally considered threats. The Great Purge became one of the defining episodes of Stalin's rule, leaving a legacy of mass repression that continued to shape Soviet society long after the campaign itself ended.