Timeline of The Great Purge - 1936

1936

March 9

Resolution of Politburo on "Measures for Protecting the USSR from infiltration of spies, terrorist and diversion elements." It stated that the USSR accepted too many political immigrants some of which are connected with the police of capitalist states. The resolution created a commission chaired by Secretary of Central Committee of Communist Party Nikolai Yezhov on purging from the spies international organization of the territory of the Soviet Union

March 25

NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda submitted a proposal to the Politburo for sending "all the Trotskyists" into the "remote camps".

April 28

Decree of Sovnarkom which ordered "Expulsion of 15,000 ethnic Polish and German families from Ukraine and transfer of them to Kazakhstan". The decision was motivated by the need to clear the border regions of unreliable people. All together 69,283 people were transferred.

May 20

Politburo accepts Yagoda's proposal on Trotskyists.

June 19

Yagoda and the Prosecutor General of the USSR, Andrey Vyshinsky, sent to the Politburo a list of 82 members of a "contra-revolutionary Trotskyist organization". The list included Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev

July 29

Classified letter from the Politburo On terrorist actions of Trotsky-Zinoviev group. The letter stepped up the propaganda campaign against "Trotskyists".

August 19 - August 24

Trial of the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center". Among the sixteen sentenced to death were Zinoviev, Kamenev, Ter-Vaganyan, and Smirnov.

September 14

Arrest of Georgy Pyatakov and two days later Karl Radek

September 25

Telegram from Joseph Stalin and Andrei Zhdanov (who had been on vacation in Sochi) to tke Politburo: "We consider it is absolutely necessary to assign Yezhov to head the NKVD. Yagoda is obviously too weak for this position. The NKVD was four years late in the Trotsky-Zinoviev case."

September 26

Yagoda was transferred to the position of Narkom of Communications. Yezhov became Narkom of Internal Affairs (head of the NKVD), while keeping his positions as a Secretary of Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Chairman of the CPSU Party Control Committee.

September 29

The Politburo issued the declaration On our attitude towards towards counter-revolutionary Trotskyists-Zinovievists. The declaration states "Previously we considered Trotskyists as a political avant-garde of the international bourgeoisie. We were wrong. These gentlemen went even lower. They are spies, wreckers and saboteurs of the Fascist bourgeoisie in Europe.... Thus, we need to finish them off; not only those under investigations but also those imprisoned and exiled."

October 4

The Politburo approved the proposal by Yezhov and Vyshinsky for sentencing 585 new "members of Trotskyist-Zinovievist block". This set the precedent of sentencing by lists.

October 19 - October 22

The so-called Kemerovo trial in Novosibirsk. The case concerned a disaster in the "Tsnrallnaya" coal mine in Kemerovo. 10 people were sentenced to death as Trotskyists preparing a terrorist act. Later some of the sentenced persons were witnesses in Moscow trials.

November 13

A letter from NKVD on "discovering and destroying the Eser underground" started mass arrests and imprisonments of former members of Socialist-Revolutionary Party including those already exiled.

November 13

An order of the NKVD and the Procurator-General of the USSR, On streamlining investigations of railroad catastrophes, required investigation of each railroad accident and sentencing of those found responsible in three days after the incident.

November 29

An order of the Procurator-General of the USSR requires thorough investigations of all past fires, accidents, etc in order to discover the saboteurs responsible.

December 4 and December 7

Report of Yezhov to the Plenum of the Communist Party Central Committee. Yezhov mentioned thousand of discovered Trotskyist spies, reported the arrests of Pyatakov and Radek, and accused Nikolai Bukharin and Alexey Rykov of being in the Anti-Soviet Right Center. In the following discussion the Central Committee considered the possible arrest of Bukharin, but agreed to delay the decision until the next plenum (the resolution was proposed by Joseph Stalin).

December 5

The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union adopted the 1936 Soviet Constitution. The constitution proclaimed equal rights of all citizens.

December 17

The Sovnarkom issued the decree On exiling counter-revolutionary elements from Azerbaijan to Iran and remote regions of the Soviet Union.