Moscow Trials

The Moscow Trials were a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge. They are widely considered to have been show trials in which the verdicts were predetermined. The defendants were accused of conspiring with the western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism, according to Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code).

Summary

• The first trial was of 16 members of the so-called "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre," held in August 1936, at which the chief defendants were Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, two of the most prominent former party leaders. All were sentenced to death and executed.
• The second trial in January 1937 involved 17 lesser figures including Karl Radek, Yuri Piatakov and Grigory Sokolnikov. Thirteen defendants were shot, the remainder received terms of imprisonment in labor camps where they soon died.
• The third trial, in March 1938, included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites," led by Nikolai Bukharin, former head of the Communist International, former Prime Minister Alexei Rykov, Christian Rakovsky and Nikolai Krestinsky. All the leading defendants were executed.
• There was also a secret trial before a military tribunal of a group of Red Army generals, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky, in June 1937.