Commemorating national and ethnic minority victims of the Stalinist Great Terror

August 5 is an annual remembrance day for the victims of the Great Terror in the USSR. In 1937–1938, during Stalin’s rule, the Soviet government carried out a campaign of political terror in which hundreds of thousands were arrested and executed. It was set off by order no. 00447 of the NKVD (the ministry of internal affairs, which in the Soviet system controlled the country’s entire police force and prison system) launching a “mass operation” against “wealthy” peasants and “anti-Soviet” individuals. By August 5, the order had reached local police forces, and arrests began.

Around the same time, the NKVD released several orders targeting “German subjects” and “members of the Polish Military Organization” (an insurgent organization that fought for Polish independence, disbanded in 1921), thus starting the “Polish” and “German operations”. In total, a dozen such “national operations” were carried out by the NKVD in 1937–1938, in which many people who merely had connections to foreign countries or relatives abroad were arrested, as well as their families and friends; indeed, some were arrested for just having a foreign-sounding name.

The Great Terror ended as it had started, with an order from the top levels of power, in November 1938.

This year on August 5 we invite you to commemorate the victims of these “national operations” perpetrated by the NKVD in different parts of the USSR. As a result of the Great Terror, the ethnic, social and cultural composition of many regions changed dramatically towards russification.

In the course of 11 “national operations”, 225,325 cases were considered by the NKVD and the USSR Prosecutor's Commission, and 170,482 people were sentenced to be shot. At the later stage of these “national operations”, newly introduced  judicial units known as Special Troikas considered no less than 107,660 cases and sentenced to death no less than 72,252 people.

For example, in Karelia, in the northwest of Russia, about 4,500 Finns were arrested and mostly executed in the course of the “Polish operation” that was followed by the “Finnish” one. The Anti-Finnish repressive campaign reached such a scale that Finns accounted for over 40% of all those arrested in Karelia in 1937–1938 (with their number representing 3.2% of the population).

Burial sites were prepared in advance in almost every regional center of the USSR, even before the mass executions got underway. Sometimes they were located within a city, more often outside of it, in woods. Some sites are better known than others: among them Sandarmokh, Krasny Bor, Levashovo, Pivovarikha, Dubovka, 12th kilometer, Kolpashevsky Yar, Tesnitsky Forest, Lisya Balka, Bykovnya, Kuropaty, Butovo, Kommunarka. Monuments large and small have since been erected in many cities - some in urban centers, some in cemeteries, some on firing grounds outside of cities.

We invite you to commemorate the victims of “national operations” on the 5th of August this year.

How can you join this commemoration?

• In the Open List database you can search for representatives of any ethnic group from any region of the USSR. If you need help - message us on Telegram @memorialtalks_bot;

• you can read these names together with like-minded people near execution sites or monuments in the city or country you find yourself in, and record a short video;

• you can print the names on sheets of paper and bring them to sites of burial or remembrance, you can bring photos, flowers and candles;

• you can spread the word on social media;

• you can think of other ways to commemorate.

And most importantly: do please send us your videos, photos and stories to our Telegram bot @memorialtalks_bot or tag us on social media. On August 5, we'll be publishing this material all day long!