Polish Operation of the NKVD
The Polish Operation of the NKVD (Soviet security service) in 1937–1938 was an anti-Polish mass ethnic cleansing operation of the NKVD carried out in the Soviet Union against Poles (labeled by the Soviets as "agents") during the period of the Great Purge. It was ordered by the Politburo of the Communist Party against the so-called "Polish spies" and customarily interpreted by the NKVD officials as relating to 'absolutely all Poles'. It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people, and summary executions of 111,091 Poles living in or near the Soviet Union. The operation was implemented according to NKVD Order No. 00485 signed by Nikolai Yezhov. The majority of the shooting victims were ethnically Polish, but not all (with several others belonging to various minority groups from the Kresy macro-region, ex. Ruthenians) these groups in the Soviet worldview had some element of Polish culture or heritage, and were therefore also "Polish". The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry, or classed as possibly having pro-Polish sympathies. In order to speed up the process, the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names.