The Leningrad Martyrology: A Statistical Note on the 1937 Executions in Leningrad City and Region

This article examines the August-December 1937 executions of the Great Terror in Leningrad city and region. The work is based on a sample of 784 out of 16,062 listings of victims available in volumes 1 through 4 of Leningradskii martirolog, a recent archive-based publication, and on the results of the 1937 and 1939 all-Union censuses. The victims are analyzed by ethnicity, birthplace, age, occupation, status and party membership. This analysis suggests that executions hit those individuals designated as non-Russians, above all the Poles, especially hard. Middle-aged persons were the most frequent execution target, compared to a low proportion of people under 20 and a relatively large share of seniors. Individuals of lower social standing and occupational skills comprised the majority of the victims, even though government administrators and the intelligentsia figured noticeably among the executed. Party members probably suffered more heavily than the rest of the population; yet their status and occupations did not neatly fit a notion of social elite. Overall, this article confirms the importance of the ethnic dimension of the terror revealed in recent historiography. The article shows the elite as a secondary target of the August-December 1937 executions or at least suggests that the understanding of a Soviet elite needs refinement.