Let's summarize archival evidence that Great Purge has happened and had hundreds of thousands of victims (Taken from here
https://grumbler-1.livejournal.com/58562.html )
https://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/63148 - this document was created by an enemy of the people Zubkin.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD,_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%AF%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 He admitted that he was spying for Germany, and more importantly, that he was sabotaging the NKVD archives with the purpose of making those unuseable
Also, note that by anticommunist mythology captured by Wikipedia, Zubkin was shot in 1939, on the same day he was sentenced to death; meanwhile, his widow had a death certificate for her husband that he died in 1944 in prison. Oh gee, surely, death certificate was wrong, and the real Zubkin was shot, and not that anticommunists have made this shit up, like in many, many other cases
https://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/49499 - fully handwritten text in original. Dated 11 Dec 1953, signed by "colonel Pavlov". Actual organizational structure of NKVD in 1953 was like this
https://web.archive.org/web/20140201123707/http://shieldandsword.mozohin.ru/VD3462/structure/1so.htm - Pletnev was one of the chiefs of NKVD and his rank was lieutenant colonel. He was a real person, with a document trail of his existence. Somehow, Pavlov, a person who couldn't be found anywhere in any other document, being higher rank that Pletnev, was his "acting" replacement, and he was signing under handwritten table with crazy hundreds of thousands figure of people shot to death
https://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/170661 - third document, from Rudenko to Khruschev. Original looks like picrelated. It's dated 1954, but "correction fluid" that was used to stamp out original numbers in the document wasn't invented until 1956
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_fluid Furthermore, according to Soviet archive/record keeping protocols, ink color and handwriting style are part of the protocol, so if there's any "error correction" happening in the document, it must be clarified in the document by the person doing correction via signing in the new ink with surname and initials, to prove authenticity of the whole document and that there weren't edits. If there's a printed document applied to archives, it cannot have shit like corrections, it must be remade from scratch so that there's no questions about authenticity
Your move, conspiracy theorists, who believe in Soviets secretly murdering more than 700k people in super secrecy, without leaving behind any corpses