Soviet Execution

In the times of Soviet turmoil, execution, disappearance, deportation, and excommunication were all regular parts of life. Yet throughout the nation's turbulent history, never was there more fear and death than during the Great Purge in 1937-38. Under the hand of a paranoid dictator, nearly 2 million people were executed for crimes of supposed political dissidence. Russian intelligentsia, ex-kulaks, Mongolians, Chinese, and Westerners were killed by the thousands to satisfy the leader of the Union during the Yezhofshchina. It was largely assumed by Stalin's fellow leaders that they, as staunch, powerful members of the party, were immune from this treatment. Yet the head of the murders, Nikolai Yezhov, was the victim of one of Stalin's final paranoid executions. He would, over time, be erased from Russian history, airbrushed from photographs and blacked out from documents, to ensure that nobody would ever think of him again. This was the fate of millions, not simply death but obliteration.