Mass operations of the NKVD

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Mass operations of the NKVD were carried out during the Great Purge and targeted specific categories of people. As a rule, they were carried out according to the corresponding order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov.

[edit] National operations of NKVD

The operations of this type in this period targeted "foreign" ethnicities (ethnicities with cross-border ties to foreign nation-states), unlike nationally-targeted repressions in the time frame of World War II. Since these times, ordinary Soviet citizens were firmly impressed with the feeling of the danger to have any kind of relations with foreign countries and citizens. That feeling persisted until the very days of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nearly all official questionaries contained an item "Do you have relatives or acquaintances abroad?" – which was a stumbling block in any nomenklatura assignment or promotion.

[edit] Rollback

On November 17, 1938 a joint decree of Sovnarkom USSR and Central Committee of VKP(b) and the subsequent order of the NKVD undersigned by Beria cancelled most of NKVD orders of this type (but not all, see, e.g., NKVD Order no. 00689) and suspended implementation of death sentences, signifying the end of the Great Purge ("Yezhovshchina").

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