The Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 was an anti-Polish mass-ethnic cleansing operation of the NKVD carried out in the Soviet Union against Poles during the period of the Great Purge. It was
Memorial in Kraków
First page of one of the copies of the Order No. 00485, archived by the Kharkov branch of the NKVD
Memorial to 30 Poles of Vershina, executed on 19 February 1938
The Great Purge or Great Terror, also known as the Year of '37 and the Yezhovshchina, was a political purge in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. After the assassination of Sergei Kirov by Leonid Nik
Polish Operation of the NKVD
…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 the Great Purge. It was ordered by the Politburo of the Communist Party against so-called "Polish spies" and customarily interpreted by NKVD officials as relating to…
Residents searching for relatives among the exhumed victims of the Vinnytsia massacre, 1943
Excerpt from NKVD Order No. 00447
Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov with Stalin and his daughter, Svetlana, in 1934
Bolshevik revolutionaries Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinoviev