What was the name of Stalin's late-1930s campaign of political terror and purges?

• A. The Great Purge (Yezhovshchina)
• B. The Great Leap Forward
• C. The Cultural Revolution
• D. The Moscow Trials

Answer: (A)

The main idea being tested is identifying the period of state-led political terror and mass arrests in the Soviet Union under Stalin in the late 1930s. The correct term for that sweeping campaign is The Great Purge, a roundup of arrests, show trials, executions, and Gulag imprisonments aimed at removing perceived enemies within the party, the military, and broader society. It reached its height around 1937–1938, with the NKVD under Nikolai Yezhov carrying out many of the mass operations; that intensity is why you sometimes hear the term Yezhovshchina to describe this phase.

The Moscow Trials were a brutal and highly publicized activity within the purge, but they are events within the broader campaign rather than the campaign’s name itself. The other two options refer to campaigns in China under Mao Zedong, not to Stalinist actions in the Soviet Union, so they don’t fit the question.