Liquidation of “the Fifth Column” in the USSR (1937-1938)

The article is focused on the repressions of western ethnic minorities in the USSR in 1937–1938. They were associated with Stalin’s sensation of imminent war, taking into account his spy mania and ideas of “hostile capitalist environment”. Considering this situation, representatives of western national minorities perfectly fitted the role of “the fifth column”. These were Stalin’s ideas of military confrontation that determined the orientation of “national operations” of 1937–1938 against those, who were directly or indirectly related to the states of “hostile environment”. That’s why the Poles, the Germans, the Finns, the Estonians, the Latvians and representatives of other Western countries fell the victims of NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) "national operations” of 1937–1938.Despite the fact that “national operations” were conducted by NKVD authorities in respect of almost all the countries of “hostile capitalist environment”, ethnic background was not the major criteria for repressions, but birth, residency, as well as the relations with the foreign countries. This “selectivity” is the principal distinction of “national operations” of 1937-1938 from deportations of 1941–1944, affecting all the “disloyal” nations without exception. National status outweighed the social status, having practically disposed slogan of proletarian internationalism and class solidarity, proclaimed by Bolsheviks.