As a rule, they were carried out according to the corresponding order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov.
According to historian Oleg Khlevniuk, Stalin became concerned about rearguard uprisings that were seen in the Spanish Civil War and believed that "nationalities of foreign governments" posed a threat in border regions, even if they were Soviet citizens whose ancestors had sometimes lived decades or centuries in the areas controlled by the Soviet Union.
[2] Minutes of the January 31, 1938 Politburo meeting list the following ethnicities against which NKND operations were to be continued: Poles, Latvians, Germans, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Iranians, Harbinites, Chinese, and Romanians.
[3] From August 1937 to October 1938, 353,513 people were arrested and 247,157 were shot in the national operations of NKVD.
00689) and suspended implementation of death sentences, signifying the end of the Great Purge ("Yezhovshchina").