Polish Operation of the NKVD | |
---|---|
Part of the Great Purge[1][2] | |
![]() Memorial in Kraków | |
Location | ![]() |
Date | 1937–1938 |
Target | Poles |
Attack type | Prison shootings |
Deaths | +/− 111,091 |
Victims | 22% of the Polish population of the Soviet Union was "sentenced" by the operation (140,000 people)[3] |
Perpetrators | Nikolai Yezhov (NKVD), Joseph Stalin |
The Polish Operation of the NKVD (Soviet security service) in 1937–1938 was an anti-Polish 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 'absolutely all Poles'.[citation needed] It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people, and summary executions of 111,091 Poles living in or near the Soviet Union.[4][5] The operation was implemented according to NKVD Order No. 00485 signed by Nikolai Yezhov.[6]
The majority of the shooting victims were ethnically Polish,[1] but not all, with some belonging to various minority groups from the Kresy macro-region, for instance, Ruthenians; these groups in the Soviet worldview had some element of Polish culture or heritage, and were therefore also "Polish".[7] The NKVD agents looked through local phone books to expedite the procedure and detained people with names that sounded Polish.[8]
While similar to other operations such as the Greek Operation, Finnish Operation, Latvian Operation and Estonian Operation, the Polish Operation was the largest ethnic shooting and deportation action during the Great Purge campaign of political murders in the Soviet Union.[9][10] According to official data, victims of the Polish Operation accounted for 41.7% of the sentenced people and 44.9% of the executed people during all such ethnic operations.[11]
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