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84 Years Since the Start of Stalin’s Great Terror

84 years have passed today since the resolution of the Politburo of the Communist Party Central Committee “On anti-Soviet elements” came into force, which launched the mass repressions known as Great Stalin’s Terror.

In Ukraine, the Great Terror was a continuation of the Holodomor, genocide by forced famine in 1932-1933. However, its main target was not peasantry, but Ukraine’s intellectual elite. As a result of the decision made on August 5, 1937, almost three hundred representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were executed in the Karelian forest massif Sandarmokh for several days in October-November.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin continues the rehabilitation of the initiator of the Great Terror, shifting the focus to the glorification of the “Great Victory”. This is illustrated by the recent survey conducted by the independent Levada Center: nearly half of Russians — 48 percent — support the idea of putting up a monument to Joseph Stalin to mark the next anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. This figure has doubled compared to the same survey results of 2010.