On November 17, 1938, a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On Arrests, Prosecutorial Supervision and Investigation" was adopted, which put an end to the mass operations of the NKVD in 1937-1938. It was about him that Vladimir Vysotsky sang in "The Ballad of Childhood" (1975): "The first time I received freedom by decree from thirty-eighth." The great terror was replaced by a campaign to restore "socialist legality," in which, on the initiative of the Stalinist leadership, a large-scale action was carried out to purge the NKVD, which lasted almost three years, as a result of which about 7.5 thousand operational officers were expelled from the state security organs, of which about one and a half thousand were arrested and convicted.