By pursuing the Great Purge, Stalin aimed to solidify his own control of power in the Soviet Union and remove all dissent from the Communist Party.
The Great Purge or Great Terror, carried out between 1936 and 1938, was not the first purge carried out during Stalin's rule. He previously had persecuted kulaks (wealthy peasants who opposed his collectivization of land), clergy members and others. But the Great Purge of the late 1930s was aimed specifically at potential enemies within the Communist Party. Hundreds of thousands were executed and even more sent to gulags (labor camps). Stalin defended the Purge as necessary to purify the Communist Party and strengthen the Soviet Union, but others see it primarily as a brutal effort to enhance and maintain his own position of power.
