Great Purge

The Great Purge is the name given to campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s which included purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

End of Yezhovshchina

By the summer of 1938, Stalin and his circle realized that the purges had gone too far, and Yezhov was relieved from his head of NKVD post (remaining People's Commissar of Water Transport) and eventually purged. Lavrenty Beria, a fellow Georgian and Stalin confidante, succeeded him as head of the NKVD. On November 17, 1938 a joint decree of Sovnarkom USSR and Central Committee of VKP(b) (Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation) and the subsequent order of NKVD undersigned by Beria cancelled most of the NKVD orders of systematic repression and suspended implementation of death sentences. This signaled the end of massive, overzealous purges.

Related Topics:
1938 - NKVD - Lavrenty Beria - November 17 - Sovnarkom - Central Committee - Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation - NKVD orders of systematic repression

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Nevertheless, the practice of mass arrest and exile was continued until Stalin's death in 1953.

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