In the late 1930’s, a period that later came to be known as the Great Terror or Great Purge occurred in Russia under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). With the help of Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the secret police— then known as the NKVD—Stalin instituted a campaign of widespread arbitrary arrests, imprisonments, and sentences in forced labor camps that left Russians in a perpetual state of fear. While the exact number of victims during this period is not known for sure, thousands were arrested on false charges of anti-Soviet conspiracy. Both during this time and decades later, millions of Russians served long sentences of forced labor in a camp system known as the Gulag. Many of them would die in the camps due to overwork, abuse, and the harsh climatic conditions of Siberia.

The Soviet Union had been established after the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917. Driven by a ruthless form of Marxist ideology, the Bolsheviks and their leader, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), overthrew the more moderate government that had followed the abdication of Russia’s last Tsar. The Bolsheviks were determined to create a communist utopia. They fought a years-long civil war against anti-revolutionary forces and introduced increasingly coercive political measures to consolidate their power.