The success of the Agro-Joint initiative would turn tragic just two years later. Joseph Stalin's government had grown increasingly hostile to foreign organizations. Agro-Joint worker soon became targets for Stalinist purges under the National Operations of the NKVD. Operational Order No. 00439, entitled “On the Arrest of German Subjects Suspected of Espionage against the USSR” was issued on July 25, 1937, and mandated the arrest of current and former German citizens who had taken up Soviet citizenship. Later in the year, the order was expanded to include others suspected of collaborating or spying for Germany. Agro-Joint workers, and the doctors it had helped to resettle, became targets. Many of those who assisted in Agro-Joint - including its 17 staff - were arrested, were accused of espionage and counterrevolutionary activities, and were killed.