In order to prevent a possible coup or an assassination, Stalin got rid of dissidents by sending them to Siberia. This was done through a government agency known as "Gulag." The dissidents were sent to forced-labour camps originally established by Lenin. These were particularly used from the 1930s to the early 1950s. The Gulag was a major instrument of political repression during the Soviet years.
Stalin expelled his major
opponents from the political arena by the end of the 1920s. In the period of
1936 to the beginning of 1938. Most of them were physically exterminated. Stalin's
purges left behind few key players and set the slate clean for a new history of
Soviet communism.
