Polish Operation of the NKVD

The Polish Operation of the NKVD was a secret operation run by the Soviet Union in the 1940s. It involved the NKVD -the secret police force of the Soviet Union- arresting many thousands of Polish citizens, especially soldiers, politicians and intellectuals, and sending them to be imprisoned in labour camps in the Soviet Union. The people who were arrested were seen as a threat to the Communist government of the Soviet Union, which was afraid that these people would oppose it. The NKVD also conducted mass deportations of whole families, sending them in cattle trucks to distant parts of the Soviet Union. The purpose of this was to punish those people seen as a threat, and also to break up communities that could have been a source of opposition. Ultimately, the Polish Operation of the NKVD aimed to control the people and communities within the Soviet Union.