Editing Purge (section)

==Characteristics==
The [[Shanghai massacre of 1927]] in China and the [[Night of the Long Knives]] of 1934 in Nazi Germany, in which the leader of a political party turns against a particular section or group within the party and kills its members, are commonly called "purges". Mass expulsions of populations on the grounds of [[racism]] and [[xenophobia]], such as the [[deportation of the Crimean Tatars]] in the Soviet Union, are not.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

Though sudden and violent purges are notable, most purges do not involve immediate execution or imprisonment, for example the periodic massive purges of the [[Communist Party of Czechoslovakia#Membership|Communist Party of Czechoslovakia]] on grounds of apathy or dereliction, or the [[Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service|purge of Jews]] and [[German resistance to Nazism|political dissenters]] from the German Civil Service in 1933–1934.

Beginning in 1966, [[Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party|Chairman]] [[Mao Zedong]] and his associates purged much of the [[Chinese Communist Party]]'s [[Generations of Chinese leadership|leadership]], including the [[head of state]], [[President of the People's Republic of China|President]] [[Liu Shaoqi]] and the then-[[Secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party|Secretary-General]], [[Deng Xiaoping]], as part of what the leaders termed the [[Cultural Revolution]]. In [[Maoism|Maoist]] states, sentences usually involved hard labor in ''[[laogai]]'' camps and executions. Deng Xiaoping acquired a reputation for returning to power after he had been purged several times.{{citation needed|date=December 2023}}