After Sergei Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad, Stalin and the Soviet security services treated the killing as proof of a wider underground threat. The case helped justify expanded arrests and investigations against alleged political opponents. This atmosphere set the stage for the mass repression that followed in 1936–1938.
The first major public "show trial" of the Great Purge opened against Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and other defendants (often called the "Trial of the Sixteen"). The trial presented a narrative of a coordinated terrorist plot linked to Trotsky, reinforcing the idea that opposition groups were enemies of the state. It signaled that earlier political rivalries would now be handled through criminal prosecutions and executions.
The court found the defendants in the first show trial guilty and ordered executions. The rapid sentencing and implementation demonstrated how the state combined publicity, forced confessions, and capital punishment to eliminate perceived rivals. It also encouraged wider purges in the Communist Party and government agencies.
Genrikh Yagoda was removed as head of the NKVD (secret police), and Nikolai Yezhov took over. Under Yezhov, the scale and speed of arrests and prosecutions increased sharply, so much so that the period is often called the "Yezhovshchina" (the time of Yezhov). The leadership change mattered because it aligned the security services more tightly with Stalin’s push for broader repression.
The second major show trial (often called the "Trial of the Seventeen") ran in late January 1937 and targeted additional prominent Soviet figures. The prosecution claimed sabotage and collaboration with foreign powers, widening the scope of who could be labeled an internal enemy. The guilty verdicts reinforced the pattern of public trials feeding broader waves of arrests.
Grigory ("Sergo") Ordzhonikidze, a senior Soviet official linked to industrial policy, died in Moscow in February 1937. His death came during intensified accusations of "wrecking" (deliberate industrial sabotage) and escalating political pressure within the leadership. The event became part of the broader turning point in 1937, when high-level protection for accused officials was increasingly impossible.
Former Politburo members Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov were arrested, bringing prominent "Old Bolsheviks" into the purge’s center. Their detention helped prepare the final major show trial in 1938, which presented them as leaders of a large anti-Soviet bloc. The arrests showed that even very senior party veterans were no longer safe from prosecution.
A secret trial targeted Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other top commanders, leading to convictions and executions. The purge then spread widely through the armed forces, removing experienced leaders and creating fear across military institutions. This was a major turning point because the terror moved decisively into the military, not only the party and civil administration.
Yezhov signed NKVD Order No. 00447, which set quotas and procedures for a sweeping operation against alleged "anti-Soviet elements," including many labeled "kulaks" (a loose term often used for better-off peasants or targeted rural residents). The order relied on "troikas"—three-person panels that processed cases quickly without normal court protections. This administrative system accelerated arrests, sentences, and executions on a massive scale.
NKVD Order No. 00485 initiated a major "national operation" focused on Poles in the USSR, framed as a campaign against alleged espionage and sabotage networks. It became one of the largest ethnicity-targeted actions within the Great Purge. The order helped extend the terror beyond political categories into nationality-based mass repression.
Order No. 00486 expanded punishment to relatives of people labeled "traitors," including many wives and children. Wives could be sent to labor camps, and children could be placed in special institutions or orphanages, formalizing guilt by association. This deepened the purge’s social impact by turning political repression into family-wide persecution.
The third major show trial (often called the "Trial of the Twenty-One") opened in March 1938 and put Bukharin, Rykov, and others at the center of an alleged anti-Soviet conspiracy. By featuring such well-known revolution-era figures, the trial helped portray the purge as a final cleanup of long-standing internal enemies. It also tied together earlier accusations into a single, sweeping narrative of betrayal and sabotage.
The court sentenced most defendants in the third show trial to death, including Bukharin and Yagoda. The verdicts underscored how the show trials functioned as public confirmation of outcomes already decided by the leadership and security services. With these sentences, the purge’s most famous public courtroom phase reached its peak.
A joint decree by the Soviet government and Communist Party leadership ordered an end to "mass operations" and criticized major procedural abuses. It required closer prosecutor oversight and a return to more formal investigation rules, effectively signaling that the peak phase of the Great Purge was over. The state framed this shift as correcting "excesses" while still defending the purge’s goals.
Lavrentiy Beria replaced Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD, marking a leadership transition as the regime moved to reduce the most chaotic parts of the terror. The change helped consolidate control over the security services and shift blame for abuses onto Yezhov. While repression continued, the period after Yezhov is often described as a partial retreat from the peak intensity of 1937–1938.
Following the November 1938 decree, NKVD Order No. 00762 set procedures to carry it out, including stopping many systematic repression orders and changing how cases were handled. This is widely treated as the administrative endpoint of the Great Purge’s mass-operation system. The outcome was not full political liberalization, but a clearer transition away from the highest-volume arrest-and-execution machinery of 1937–1938.
The Great Purge in Soviet Russia (1936–1938)