It was a part of the larger mass operations of the NKVD which targeted many minority nationalities in the Soviet Union.

Between 1929 and 1931, Soviet authorities deported 18,000 people from areas near the Finnish border, consisting of up to 16% of the total Ingrian Finnic population.

[3] Many of the early targets were Red Guards veterans of the Finnish Civil War who now lived in the Soviet Union.

At least 739 Finns who had moved from North America to the Soviet Union were repressed in 1937 and 1938, although the number could be higher according to historian Irina Takala.

[7] Almost all North American Finns were found guilty of "counter-revolutionary activity" under Article 58 of the Soviet penal code.

[12] In 2020, the Finnish Literature Society launched a new research project Memories of the Stalinist repression which will include interviews of the relatives of the victims.