Armenian victims of the Great Purge

Orchestrated by Joseph Stalin, the Great Purge was a campaign of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union against supposed "enemies of the people," including members of the Communist Party, the peasantry, writers and intellectuals, and other unaffiliated persons.

The process of the Great Purge in Armenia is usually dated to 9 July 1936, with the assassination of Armenian First Secretary Aghasi Khanjian by Lavrentiy Beria in Tiflis (Tbilisi).

Expressions of "nationalism" were suspect and many leading Armenian writers, artists, scientists, and intellectuals were executed or imprisoned, including Axel Bakunts, Yeghishe Charents, Gurgen Mahari, Nersik Stepanyan, and others.

[2] In response, in September 1937, he sent Georgy Malenkov, Mikhail Litvin, and later Anastas Mikoyan to oversee a purge of the Communist Party of Armenia.

[10] After Stalin's death, Anastas Mikoyan called for the rehabilitation of Charents in a speech in Yerevan on 11 March 1954, beginning de-Stalinization and the Thaw in Armenia.