Editing History of Russia (section)

===Stalinist repression===
{{Further|Great Purges}}
[[File:5marshals 01.jpg|thumb|left|The first five [[Marshals of the Soviet Union]] in November 1935, clockwise from top left: [[Semyon Budyonny]], [[Vasily Blyukher]], [[Alexander Ilyich Yegorov]], [[Kliment Voroshilov]], and [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]]. Only Budyonny and Voroshilov would survive Stalin's [[Great Purge]].]]
The [[NKVD]] gathered in tens of thousands of Soviet citizens to face arrest, [[population transfer in the Soviet Union|deportation]], or execution. Of the six original members of the 1920 Politburo who survived Lenin, all were purged by Stalin. Old Bolsheviks who had been loyal comrades of Lenin, high officers in the Red Army, and directors of industry were liquidated in the [[Great Purges]].<ref name="conquest-terror">[[Conquest, Robert]]. ''[[The Great Terror: A Reassessment]]''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|0-19-507132-8}}.</ref> Purges in other Soviet republics also helped centralize control in the USSR.

Stalin destroyed the opposition in the party consisting of the old Bolsheviks during the [[Moscow trials]]. The NKVD under the leadership of Stalin's commissar [[Nikolai Yezhov]] carried out a series of [[Mass operations of the NKVD|massive repressive operations]] against the kulaks and various national minorities in the USSR. During the Great Purges of 1937–38, about 700,000 people were executed.

Penalties were introduced, and many citizens were prosecuted for fictitious crimes of sabotage and espionage. The labor provided by convicts working in the [[labor camp]]s of the [[Gulag]] system became an important component of the industrialization effort, especially in [[Siberia]].<ref name="forcedlabor">Gregory, Paul R. & Valery Lazarev (eds.). ''The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag''. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2003. {{ISBN|0-8179-3942-3}}.</ref><ref name="ivanova">Ivanova, Galina M. ''Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System''. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. {{ISBN|0-7656-0427-2}}.</ref> An estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system, and perhaps another 15&nbsp;million had experience of some other form of forced labor.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.anneapplebaum.com/communism/2000/06_15_nyrb_gulag.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081015012139/http://www.anneapplebaum.com/communism/2000/06_15_nyrb_gulag.html|title=Anne Applebaum – Inside the Gulag|archive-date=15 October 2008}}</ref><ref name="applebaum">[[Applebaum, Anne]]. ''Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps''. London: Penguin Books, 2003. {{ISBN|0-7139-9322-7}}.</ref>

After the partition of Poland in 1939, the NKVD executed 20,000 captured Polish officers in the [[Katyn massacre]]. In the late 30s - first half of the 40s, the Stalinist government carried out [[Population transfer in the Soviet Union|massive deportations of various nationalities]]. A number of ethnic groups were deported from their settlement to Central Asia.