Dönninghaus Victor,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Nord-Ost-Institut, Lueneburg, Germany, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dress Rehearsal of the “Great Purge” and Western National Minorities
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2019-1-2
The representatives of the so-called “western” national minorities (Germans, Pole, Finns, etc.) were targeted by the Central Committee’s Politbureau long before the beginning of the mass repressions during 1937–1938 as a potential “base” for the “Fifth Column”. Escalating conflict with Hitler’s Germany has pushed this xenophobia to the extreme. In this article, the author states, that the “national” operations in the USSR (targeted search of the spies, residents, saboteurs etc. among “disloyal ethnos”) began in spring 1934. Ethnical “purges” and arrests during 1934–1936, as well as a massive propaganda campaign among the populace were to show the Soviet society the normality of the terror, strengthen the idea of “universal sabotage”, and prove the existence of the “Fifth Column” in the USSR.
Publishing: 26/02/2019
How to cite: Dönninghaus V. Dress Rehearsal of the “Great Purge” and Western National Minorities // Historical Courier, 2019, # 1 (3). Article 2. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2018/ISTKURIER-2018-2-02.pdf
Links: Issue 1 2019
Keywords: USSR; Belarus; Ukraine; Central Committee’s Politbureau; OGPU; NKVD; western national minorities; Russian Germans; Poles; Finns; repressions