In history and political science, to purge is to remove 'undesirable' people from a government, political party, profession, or from community/society as a whole, usually by violent means.Purges are often associated with the Stalinist and Maoist regimes. Those who were purged (among them artists, scientists, teachers, people in the military, but also many long-time communists who dared disagree with the party leadership) were sent to labor camps or executed. The most notorious purge was the Great Purge initiated by Joseph Stalin during the 1930s.
The Nazis also engaged in purges, most notably in the Night of the Long Knives and the mass reprisals against Adolf Hitler's opponents following the July Plot.
