Editing Purge (section)

===Soviet Union===
{{Main|Red Terror|Great Purge|Political repression in the Soviet Union|Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Mass killings under communist regimes|Mass operations of the NKVD}}
Purges were frequent in the Soviet Union.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Matthews |first=Austin S. |date=2024 |title=Elite Threats and Punitive Violence in Autocratic Regimes: Evidence from Communist Eastern Europe |url=https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cuny/cp/pre-prints/content-jcpo23170 |journal=Comparative Politics |volume=56 |issue=4 |doi=10.5129/001041524X17078378055516 |language=en|url-access=subscription }}</ref> In the Soviet Union, military and internal security elites were more likely to be detained than civilian elites.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Saijo |first=Harunobu |date=2025 |title=How the Strategic Purges of State Security Personnel Protect Dictators |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2025.2468755 |journal=Security Studies |doi=10.1080/09636412.2025.2468755 |issn=0963-6412|doi-access=free }}</ref>

The term "purge" is often associated with [[Stalinism]]. While leading the USSR, [[Joseph Stalin]] carried out repeated purges which resulted in tens of thousands of people sentenced to [[Gulag]] labor camps and the outright executions of rival communists, military officers, [[ethnic minorities]], [[Wrecking (Soviet Union)|wreckers]], and citizens accused of plotting against [[communism]].<ref>{{cite book |last= Hunt |first=Lynn |title=The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures |volume=C: Since 1740 |publisher= Bedford/St. Martin's |isbn= 9780312465100 |year=2008 |edition=3rd |page=846 |display-authors=etal}}</ref> Stalin together with [[Nikolai Yezhov]] initiated the most notorious of the [[Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|CPSU purges]], the [[Great Purge]], during the mid to late 1930s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Bukovsky |first=Vladimir |title=The Permanent Purge. The Purge as a Technique of Soviet Totalitarian Politics from the Rise of Stalin to the Fall of Malenkov |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=  |year=1956 |edition=1st |page=7 |display-authors=etal}}</ref>