of Polish origins were executed and their bodies thrown into the Ob River. Assessment According to historian Michael Ellman, "The 'national operations' of 1937–38, notably the 'Polish operation', may qualify as genocide as defined by the UN Convention, although there is as yet no legal ruling on the matter". Karol Karski argues that the Soviet actions against Poles are genocide according to international law. He says that while the extermination was targeting other nationalities as well, and according to the criteria other than ethnicity, but as long as Poles were singled out based on their ethnicity, that makes the actions to be genocide. The historian Terry Martin refers to the "national operations", including the "Polish Operation", as ethnic cleansing and "ethnic terror". According to Martin, the singling out of diaspora nationalities for arrest and mass execution "verged on the genocidal". Historian Timothy Snyder called the Polish Operation genocidal: "It is hard not to see the Soviet "Polish Operation" of 1937-38 as genocidal: Polish fathers were shot, Polish mothers sent to Kazakhstan, and Polish children left in orphanages where they would lose their Polish identity. As more than 100,000 innocent people were killed on the spurious grounds that theirs was a disloyal ethnicity, Stalin spoke of "Polish filth". On the other hand, Stalin often praised Poland as a good nation and the Poles as brave fighters, the third most "dogged" soldiers after the Russians and Germans. Norman Naimark called Stalin's policy towards Poles in the 1930s "genocidal" but did not consider the entire Great Purge genocidal since it targeted political opponents as well. Simon Sebag Montefiore presents a similar opinion. According to historians Olle Sundström and Andrej Kotljarchuk, most scholars (for example, Nicolas Werth, Michael Mann and Hiroaki Kuromiya) focus on the security dilemma in the border areas suggesting the need to secure the ethnic integrity of Soviet space vis-à-vis neighboring capitalistic enemy states. They stress the role of international relations and believe that representatives of ethnic minorities such as the Poles, were killed not because of their ethnicity, but because of their possible relations to countries hostile to the USSR and fear of disloyalty in the case of an invasion. See also Anti-Polish sentiment Soviet war crimes Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946) Gestapo–NKVD conferences (1939-1940) Katyn massacre Genocides in history Kengir uprising Flight of Poles from the USSR Footnotes Further reading McLoughlin, Barry, and McDermott, Kevin (eds). Stalin's Terror: