Polish Operation by the NKVD - MYP G9 Individuals & Societies - Never Again? - LibGuides at International School of Amsterdam

Database Reference Sources

The Soviet Union Under Joseph Stalin
"The Communist Party spread its control into the lives of most citizens, a process that also saw the steady growth of the country's internal security apparatus, the dimensions of which would soon become apparent during the campaign of mass state terror of the 1930s, an even more turbulent decade than the preceding one. Known as the Great Purge, the campaign was first directed against the party and state bureaucracy. The show trials of 1936–38 of prominent old Bolsheviks, which drew international attention, were accompanied by an even more devastating terror conducted across the various localities of the Soviet Union."
Soviet Purges
"Soviet purges were Joseph Stalin's systematic elimination of dissenters and potential opponents when he was general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the 1930s."

Soviet Union
"Soviet Union, in full Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik or Sovetsky Soyuz, former northern Eurasian empire (1917/22–1991) stretching from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean and, in its final years, consisting of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (S.S.R.’s): Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (now Moldova), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The capital was Moscow, then and now the capital of Russia."

JSTOR Results - 'Polish Operation' of the NKVD
"Between summer 1937 and autumn 1938, the time of the 'Great Terror', numerous so-called 'National Operations' targeting ethnic minorities were carried out in the USSR. The largest was the 'Polish Operation'. Starting in August 1937 and ending in October 1938, NKVD units arrested over 150,000 people, 111,000 of whom were soon shot. The 'Polish Operation' marked the zenith of the persecution of Poles in the Soviet Union, which had begun in the early 1930s when the party leadership embarked on systematic mass terror against the Polish minority."

The Purge of the Red Army and the Soviet Mass Operations, 1937–38
"This article explores the possible connections between Stalin's purge of the Red Army, sanctioned in June 1937, and the Soviet mass operations, launched just weeks later. It argues that Stalin ordered the military purge to combat a misperceived threat from foreign agents in the Red Army that had become a pressing issue in the early months of 1937. The article makes the case that, once launched, the military purge provided the catalyst for the mass operations as the regime sought not only to destroy a ‘fifth column’ in the Red Army, but soon turned attention to the wider population."

About the “Polish Operation”
"The “Polish Operation” carried out by the NKVD during the Great Terror in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was indubitably one of the greatest atrocities – with the characteristics of genocide – in the history of 20th century Europe."

Witness Accounts
Four survivors and witnesses to the "Polish Operation" and their stories.

The main torturers involved in the "Polish operation" of the NKVD
Stalin, Joseph
"Following Lenin's death in 1924, Joseph Stalin consolidated his power within the party bureaucracy, outmaneuvering his more intellectually nimble but less politically astute colleagues by making full use of his considerable administrative and political skills and patronage opportunities."
Yezhov, Nikolai Ivanovich
"One of the most sinister figures of the Stalin era, which certainly produced other worthy candidates for that dubious title, Yezhov prepared and conducted the Great Purge of 1936–38, as commissar of internal affairs."

What was the „Polish Operation” by the NKVD?
"The "Polish operation" by the Soviet NKVD was a criminal operation conducted in the Soviet Union between 1937 and 1938, which resulted in the sentencing of at least 139,835 people - mostly Poles."