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).

Totals

All of the surviving members of the Lenin-era Politburo, except Stalin, Mikhail Kalinin and Vyacheslav Molotov, were tried. By the end of the final trial Stalin had arrested and executed almost every important living Bolshevik from the Revolution. Of 1,966 delegates to the party congress in 1934, 1,108 were arrested. Of 139 members of the Central Committee, 98 were arrested. Three out of five Soviet marshals and one-third of the Red Army officers were arrested or shot. Outside of politics, many millions of others died in the purges. The key defendant, Leon Trotsky, was living in exile abroad, but he still did not survive Stalin's desire to have him dead and was assassinated by a Soviet agent in 1940.

Related Topics:
Lenin - Politburo - Mikhail Kalinin - Vyacheslav Molotov - Central Committee - Red Army - Leon Trotsky

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