129-654: The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin . They were nominally directed against " Trotskyists " and members of the " Right Opposition " of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . The defendants were Old Bolshevik Party leaders and top officials of the Soviet secret police . Most were charged under Article 58 of
258-565: A bloc of opposition with the Trotskyists, along with some rightists . Ivan Smirnov, also a defendant at the first Moscow Trial, was one of the Trotskyists' leaders. Pierre Broué and a number of historians assumed that the opposition was dissolved after the arrest of Smirnov and Ryutin. However, some documents found after Broué's search showed that the Underground Left Opposition stayed active even in prison, in fact,
387-659: A Nazi accomplice with a document that had been previously displayed in a glass cabinet at the Institute of the Working Class Movement as an example of a Gestapo forgery. The trials themselves were "shows", with each participant having to learn a script and conduct repeated rehearsals before the performance. In the Slánský trial in Czechoslovakia , when the judge skipped one of the scripted questions,
516-591: A Politburo member, it would have been ordered verbally by Stalin to NKVD director Genrikh Yagoda . Many cities, streets, and factories were named or renamed after Kirov in Russia, including the cities of Kirov (formerly Vyatka) and Kirov Oblast , Kirovsk ( Murmansk Oblast ), Kirov ( Kaluga Oblast ), Kirovohrad (formerly Zinovyevsk, now Kropyvnytskyi) and Kirovohrad Oblast ( Ukrainian SSR ; now Ukraine ), Kirovabad ( Azerbaijani SSR ; now Ganja, Azerbaijan ), Kirovakan ( Armenian SSR ; now Vanadzor, Armenia ),
645-597: A bourgeois was caught hiding his own furniture, Kirov ordered him shot." In 1921, Kirov became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan , the Bolshevik party organization in the Azerbaijan SSR . Kirov was a loyal supporter of Joseph Stalin , the successor of Vladimir Lenin , and in 1926 was rewarded with command of the Leningrad party organization. Kirov was a close personal friend of Stalin, and
774-585: A campaign to rid the party of current or prior opposition, including Trotskyists and leading Bolshevik cadre members from the time of the Russian Revolution or earlier, who might even potentially become a figurehead for the growing discontent in the Soviet populace resulting from Stalin's mismanagement of the economy . Stalin's rapid industrialization during the period of the First five-year plan and
903-448: A confession of Rajk in his show trial, regarding "Vladimir" the questioner of Kádár: Vladimir had but one argument: blows. They had begun to beat Kádár. They had smeared his body with mercury to prevent his pores from breathing. He had been writhing on the floor when a newcomer had arrived. The newcomer was Vladimir's father, Mihály Farkas. Kádár was raised from the ground. Vladimir stepped close. Two henchmen pried Kádár's teeth apart, and
1032-530: A double team of interrogators. Bukharin's confession in particular became the subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon and a philosophical essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Humanism and Terror among others. His confessions were somewhat different from others in that, while he pleaded guilty to general charges, he denied knowledge of any specific crimes. Some astute observers noted that he would allow only what
1161-468: A friend he wanted to kill the head of the party control commission that had expelled him. Nikolayev's friend reported this to the NKVD. Ivan Zaporozhets then allegedly enlisted Nikolayev's friend to contact him, giving him money and a loaded 7.62 mm Nagant M1895 revolver. Nikolayev's first attempt at killing Kirov failed. On 15 October 1934, Nikolayev packed his Nagant revolver in a briefcase and entered
1290-663: A group of wealthy benefactors provided a scholarship for Kirov to attend an industrial school at Kazan . After gaining his degree in engineering , Kirov moved to Tomsk , a city in Siberia , where he became a Marxist and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1904. Kirov was a participant in the 1905 Russian Revolution and was arrested, joining with the Bolsheviks soon after being released from prison. In 1906, he
1419-443: A modicum of personal honor), whereas Bukharin's biographers Stephen Cohen and Robert Tucker saw traces of Aesopian language , with which Bukharin sought to turn the tables and conduct a trial of Stalinism (while still keeping his part of the bargain to save his family). Bukharin himself speaks of his "peculiar duality of mind" in his last plea, which led to "semi-paralysis of the will" and Hegelian " unhappy consciousness ." The result
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#17327647993341548-430: A number of historians concluded that the assassination was ordered by Stalin. According to Orlov, Stalin ordered Yagoda to arrange the assassination of Kirov. Orlov said that Yagoda ordered Medved's deputy, Vania Zaporozhets, to undertake the job. Zaporozhets returned to Leningrad in search of an assassin; in reviewing the files he found the name of Leonid Nikolayev. According to another Soviet defector, Grigori Tokaev ,
1677-673: A party leader such as Stalin to have done. He said: "Comrade Stalin personally directed the investigation of Kirov's assassination. He questioned Nikolayev at length. The leaders of the Opposition placed the gun in Nikolayev's hand!" Other speakers duly rose to purge the Communist Party of any opposition: "The Central Committee must be pitiless—the Party must be purged... the record of every member must be scrutinized...." No one at
1806-555: A power struggle. Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and Kamenev and Zinoviev temporarily lost their membership in the Communist Party. In 1932 Zinoviev and Kamenev were found to be complicit in the Ryutin Affair and again were temporarily expelled from the Communist Party. At this time, they entered in contact with Trotskyists in the USSR and again joined Trotsky against Stalin, this time in secret. They then formed
1935-534: A practice common among Russian revolutionaries of the time. Kirov began using the pen name Kir, first publishing under the pseudonym Kirov on 26 April 1912. One account states that he chose the name Kir, the Russian version of Cyrus (from the Greek Kūros), after a Christian martyr in third-century Egypt from an Orthodox calendar of saints' days, and Russifying it by adding an -ov suffix . A second story
2064-563: A real oppositionist underground group assassinated Kirov. Author and Menshevik scholar Boris Nikolaevsky argued: "One thing is certain: the only man who profited by the Kirov assassination was Stalin." The idea of Stalin's complicity in Kirov's assassination has been backed by Robert Conquest and Amy Knight but challenged by revisionist historians who argued that this theory relies primarily on circumstantial evidence and Khrushchev-era investigations. Robert W. Thurston argued that Kirov
2193-652: A ruling triumvirate in early 1923 after Vladimir Lenin had become incapacitated from a stroke. In the context of the series of defeats of communist revolutions abroad (crucially the German revolutions of 1919 , but also later the Chinese Revolution of 1927 ), which left the Russian Revolution increasingly isolated in a backward country, the triumvirate was able to effect the marginalization of Leon Trotsky in an internal party political conflict over
2322-426: A series of emotional letters to Stalin, protesting his innocence and professing his love for Stalin, which contrasts with his critical opinion of Stalin and his policies as expressed to others and with his conduct in the trial. There are several possible interpretations of Bukharin's motivation (besides coercion) in the trial. Koestler and others viewed it as a true believer's last service to the Party (while preserving
2451-485: A strong supporter of industrialisation and forced collectivisation . At the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1930, Kirov stated: "The General Party line is to conduct the course of our country industrialization. Based on the industrialisation, we conduct transformation of our agriculture . Namely, we centralise and collectivise." In 1934, at the 17th Congress of
2580-613: A willing accomplice when the full force of Stalin's terror was unleashed in Leningrad. Knight's contention is supported by the fact that whereas most of the elite tried to anticipate what Stalin desired and to act accordingly, Kirov did not always do what Stalin wanted. In 1934, Stalin wanted Kirov to come to Moscow permanently. Whereas all the other members of the Politburo would have complied, Stalin accepted that, as Kirov had no desire to leave Leningrad, he would not come to Moscow until 1938. When Stalin wanted Filipp Medved moved from
2709-436: Is a public trial in which the guilt or innocence of the defendant has already been determined. The purpose of holding a show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public, serving as an example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors. Show trials tend to be retributive rather than corrective , and they are also conducted for propagandistic purposes. When aimed at individuals on
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#17327647993342838-593: Is as follows: The second trial occurred between 23 and 30 January 1937. This trial involved 17 lesser figures including Karl Radek , Yuri Pyatakov , Grigory Sokolnikov , and Leonid Serebryakov . Alexander Beloborodov was also arrested and intended to be tried along with Radek, but did not make the confession required of him, and so he was not produced in court. Thirteen of the defendants were eventually executed by shooting (Pyatakov and Serebryakov among them). The rest (including Radek and Sokolnikov) received sentences in labour camps, where they were later murdered. Radek
2967-597: Is reputed to have been a scandal, when Kirov topped the poll in elections to the Central Committee, and Stalin's acolyte, Lazar Kaganovich ordered a number of ballots be destroyed so that Stalin and Kirov could share top billing. Amy Knight , a historian of the Soviet Union, suggests that whereas Kirov "might have toed the line as others did, on the other hand, he might have acted as a rallying point for those who wanted to oppose his [Stalin's] dictatorship." Furthermore, Knight suggests that Kirov would not have been
3096-959: Is that Kirov based it on the name of the Persian king Cyrus the Great . Kirov became commander of the Bolshevik military administration in Astrakhan and fought for the Red Army in the Russian Civil War until 1920. Simon Sebag Montefiore writes: "During the Civil War, he was one of the swashbuckling commissars in the North Caucasus beside Ordzhonikidze and Mikoyan . In Astrakhan he enforced Bolshevik power in March 1919 with liberal bloodletting; more than 4,000 were killed. When
3225-760: The Azov Regiment , on the charges of involvement in a terrorist organization and taking part in action to overthrow the Russia-backed authorities in the Donetsk region. Most of the Ukrainians standing trials in Russia are members of Ukrainian Armed Forces , which, according to HRW , makes them prisoners of war with corresponding status and protections per the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War . According to HRW and Amnesty International ,
3354-552: The Central Committee , 98 were arrested. Three out of five Soviet marshals ( Alexander Ilyich Yegorov , Vasily Blyukher , Tukhachevsky ) and several thousands of the Red Army officers were arrested or shot. 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 Mexico in 1940. Show trial A show trial
3483-554: The Czechoslovak Communist party . General Heliodor Píka was arrested without a warrant in early May 1948 and accused of espionage and high treason , damaging the interests of the Czechoslovak Republic and the Soviet Union, and undermining the ability of the state to defend itself, Píka was not allowed to present a defence, and no witnesses were called. He was sentenced to death and hanged. During
3612-596: The Daily Worker of March 12, 1936, told the world that "the trials in Moscow represent a new triumph in the history of progress." The article was ironically illustrated by a photograph of Stalin with Yezhov, himself shortly to vanish and his photographs airbrushed from history by NKVD censors. In the United States, left-wing advocates such as Corliss Lamont and Lillian Hellman also denounced criticism of
3741-995: The Kirovskaya station of the Moscow Metro (now Chistye Prudy station), the Kirov Ballet (now the Mariinsky Ballet), the massive Kirov Plant in Saint Petersburg, Kirov Square in Yekaterinburg , the Kirov Islands in the Kara Sea , and various small settlements. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the locations and buildings named after Kirov have been renamed, especially outside of Russia . In order to comply with Ukrainian decommunization laws , Kirovohrad
3870-663: The Kremlin or even Stalin himself, as he had done in the earlier Moscow Trials. Such high-ranking party show trials included those of Koçi Xoxe in Albania and Traicho Kostov in Bulgaria, who were purged and arrested. After Kostov was executed, Bulgarian leaders sent Stalin a telegram thanking him for the help. In Romania, Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu , Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca were arrested, with Pătrășcanu being executed. The Soviets generally directed show trial methods throughout
3999-969: The Moscow Trials of the Great Purge period (1937–38). Such trials paralleled the institution of self-criticism within Communist Party cadres and Soviet society . Known show trials in Soviet Ukraine include "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine" trial (1930), "People's Revolutionary Socialist Party" trial [ uk ] (1930), " Ukrainian National Center [ uk ] " trial (1931). During its full-scale invasion into Ukraine, around 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers were taken prisoners by Russia in Mariupol in May 2022. In 2023 Russia began criminal prosecutions against members of
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4128-516: The People's Republic of Slovenia . First was the Nagode Trial in which 32 non-communist intellectuals were tried as spies, three of them sentenced to death. Second was a series of so-called Dachau trials in which 37 members of the Communist Party were sentenced, 15 of them to death. Stalin's NKVD emissary coordinated with Hungarian General Secretary Mátyás Rákosi and his ÁVH head the way
4257-1060: The Politburo . On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed by Leonid Nikolaev at his offices in the Smolny Institute . Nikolaev and several alleged accomplices were convicted in a show trial and executed less than 30 days later. Kirov's assassination was used by Stalin as a reason for starting the Moscow trials and the Great Purge . Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov was born on 27 March [ O.S. 15 March] 1886 in Urzhum in Vyatka Governorate , Russian Empire , as one of seven children born to Miron Ivanovich Kostrikov and Yekaterina Kuzminichna Kostrikova ( née Kazantseva). Their first four children had died young, while Anna (born 1883), Sergei (1886), and Yelizaveta (1889) survived. Miron, an alcoholic , abandoned
4386-499: The Prague Spring of 1968, Píka's case was reopened at the request of Milan Píka (son of Heliodor) and the elder Píka's lawyer, and a military tribunal declared Heliodor Píka innocent of all charges. Milada Horáková , a Czech politician focused on social issues and women's rights, who was jailed during the German occupation for her political activity, was accused of leading a conspiracy to commit treason and espionage at
4515-411: The Smolny Institute offices and made his way to the third floor unopposed, waiting in a hallway until Kirov and his bodyguard Borisov stepped into the corridor. Borisov appeared to have stayed some 20 to 40 paces behind Kirov, with some sources alleging Borisov parted company with Kirov in order to prepare his lunch. Kirov turned a corner and passed Nikolayev, who then drew his revolver and shot Kirov in
4644-435: The Soviet Union in collusion with agents of the German and Japanese governments, among other preposterous charges. Even sympathetic observers who had stomached the earlier trials found it hard to swallow the new charges as they became ever more absurd, and the purge had now expanded to include virtually every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin. The preparation for this trial was delayed in its early stages due to
4773-812: The burning of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany in 1933. The fire at the Reichstag was often said to have been organized by the Nazis as a pretext for the mass persecution of the Communists and Social Democrats in Germany. The physical removal of Kirov meant the elimination of a future potential rival for Stalin; the principal objective, as with the fire at the Reichstag, was to manufacture an excuse for repression and control. Based on circumstantial evidence ,
4902-699: The show trial called The Trial of the Twenty-One accused of Kirov's death, while Tomsky committed suicide expecting his arrest by the NKVD . After his assassination, Kirov acquired a reputation for having repeatedly stood up to Stalin in private and for becoming so popular that he was a threat to Stalin's supremacy, as he displayed some independence from Stalin. In an alleged example from 1932, Stalin wanted to have Martemyan Ryutin executed for writing an attack on his leadership but Kirov and Sergo Ordzhonikidze talked him out of it. Alexander Orlov , who defected to
5031-412: The 1930s; this was the same Pospelov who had drafted the famous Secret Speech for Khrushchev at the 20th Congress . Khrushchev stated: There are reasons for the suspicion that the killer of Kirov, Nikolayev, was assisted by someone from among the people whose duty it was protect the person of Kirov. A month and a half before the killing, Nikolayev was arrested on the grounds of suspicious behavior, but he
5160-612: The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) , Kirov delivered the speech called "The Speech of Comrade Stalin Is the Program of Our Party", which refers to Stalin's speech delivered at the Congress earlier. Kirov praised Stalin for everything he had done since the death of Lenin. Moreover, Kirov personally named and ridiculed Nikolai Bukharin , Alexei Rykov , and Mikhail Tomsky —former party allies of Stalin. Bukharin and Rykov were later tried in
5289-689: The Dewey Commission. Emrys Hughes , the British MP, also attacked the Moscow trials as unjust in his newspaper Forward . All of the surviving members of the Lenin -era party leadership except Stalin, Trotsky and Kalinin , 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
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5418-472: The Eastern Bloc, including a procedure in which confessions and evidence from leading witnesses could be extracted by any means, including threatening to torture the witnesses' wives and children. The higher-ranking the party member, generally the more harsh the torture that was inflicted upon him. For the show trial of Hungarian Interior Minister János Kádár , who one year earlier had attempted to force
5547-534: The Leningrad NKVD to Minsk , Kirov refused to agree; in a rare move for Stalin, he had to accept defeat. In the first days when Leningrad was orphaned, Stalin rushed there. He went to the place where the crime against our country was committed. The enemy did not fire at Kirov personally. No! He fired at the proletarian revolution. — Pravda , 5 December 1934 On the afternoon of Saturday, 1 December 1934, Kirov's assassin, Leonid Nikolayev , arrived at
5676-526: The Moscow trials were generally viewed negatively by most Western observers, including many liberals. The New York Times noted the absurdity in an editorial on March 1, 1938: "It is as if twenty years after Yorktown somebody in power at Washington found it necessary for the safety of the State to send to the scaffold Thomas Jefferson, Madison, John Adams, Hamilton, Jay and most of their associates. The charge against them would be that they conspired to hand over
5805-404: The Moscow trials, signing An Open Letter To American Liberals in support of the trials for the March 1937 issue of Soviet Russia Today . In the political atmosphere of the 1930s, the accusation that there was a conspiracy to destroy the Soviet Union was not incredible, and few outside observers were aware of the events inside the Communist Party that had led to the purge and the trials. However,
5934-407: The NKVD in protecting such a high party official was without precedent in the Soviet Union." Kirov was cremated and his ashes interred in the Kremlin Wall necropolis in a state funeral , with Stalin and other prominent members of the CPSU personally carrying his coffin . After Kirov's death, Stalin called for swift punishment of the traitors and those found negligent in Kirov's death. Nikolayev
6063-411: The NKVD officers were executed in the aftermath, and none actually served time in prison. Instead, they were transferred to executive posts in Stalin's Gulag labour camps for a period of time—in effect, a demotion. According to Nikita Khrushchev , the same NKVD officers were later shot in 1937. Lajos Magyar , a Hungarian communist and refugee from the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 ,
6192-409: The People's Supply System. In his deposition, Kirchakov wrote that he had discussed Kirov's murder and the role of Fyodor Medved with Olsky. Olsky was of the firm opinion that Medved, Kirov's friend and NKVD security chief of the Leningrad branch, was innocent of the murder. Olsky also told Kirchakov that Medved had been barred from the NKVD Kirov assassination investigation. Instead, the investigation
6321-459: The RSFSR Penal Code with conspiring with imperialist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union, and restore capitalism . Several prominent figures (such as Andrei Bubnov , Alexander Beloborodov , Nikolai Yezhov ) were sentenced to death during the Stalin era outside these trials. The Moscow trials led to the execution of many of the defendants. The trials are generally seen as part of Stalin's Great Purge ,
6450-474: The Smolny Institute and then left. On 1 December 1934, the usual guard post at the entrance to Kirov's offices was supposedly left unmanned, even though the building housed the chief offices of the Leningrad party apparatus and was the seat of the local government. According to some reports, only a single friend, Commissar Borisov, an unarmed bodyguard of Kirov's, remained. Given the circumstances of Kirov's death, Alexander Barmine stated that "the negligence of
6579-529: The Smolny Institute where Kirov now worked. Although Nikolayev was initially passed by the main security desk at Smolny, he was arrested after an alert guard asked to examine his briefcase, which was found to contain the revolver. A few hours later, Nikolayev's briefcase and loaded revolver were returned to him, and he was told to leave the building. With Stalin's approval, the NKVD had previously withdrawn all but four police bodyguards assigned to Kirov. These four guards accompanied Kirov each day to his offices at
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#17327647993346708-428: The Soviet Union as old Bolsheviks and advised them that Trotsky was fomenting anti-Soviet sentiment amongst the proletariat in the world. Throughout spring and summer of 1936 the investigators were requesting from the arrested "to lay down arms in front of the party" exerting a continuous pressure on them. Furthermore, this loss of support, in the event of a war with Germany or Japan, could have disastrous ramifications for
6837-431: The Soviet Union signed The Moscow Trials: A Statement by American Progressives . These included Langston Hughes and Stuart Davis , who would later express regrets. Some contemporary observers who thought the trials were inherently fair cite the statements of Molotov , who, while conceding that some of the confessions contain unlikely statements, said there may have been several reasons or motives for this—one being that
6966-401: The Soviet Union to review the Kirov murder case was made by the Politburo Commission headed by Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev in 1989. After two years of investigations, the working team of the Commission concluded that no materials were found to support Stalin's or NKVD's participation in Kirov's murder. Kirov's assassination became a major event in the history of the Soviet Union because it
7095-400: The Soviet Union. To Kamenev specifically, Yezhov showed him evidence that his son was subject to an investigation that could result in his son's execution. According to one witness, at the beginning of the summer the central heating was turned on in Zinoviev's and Kamenev's cells. This was very unpleasant for both prisoners but particularly for Zinoviev, who was asthmatic and could not tolerate
7224-437: The Soviet government was in his view the victim of false confessions. Nonetheless, he said the evidence of mostly out-of-power Communist officials conspiring to make a power grab during a moment of weakness in the upcoming war truly existed. This defense collapsed after the release of Khrushchev's Secret Speech to the Twentieth Congress. In Britain, the lawyer and Labour MP Denis Nowell Pritt , for example, wrote: "Once again
7353-458: The Trial of Sixteen), with 16 defendants, was held from 19 to 24 August 1936 in the small October Hall of the House of the Unions (chosen instead of the larger Hall of Columns, used for earlier trials). The defendants were tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR , with Vasili Ulrikh presiding. The Prosecutor General was Andrey Vyshinsky , a former member of the Menshevik Party who in 1917 had undersigned an order for
7482-403: The United States to George III ." For Bertram Wolfe , the outcome of the Bukharin trial marked his break with Stalinism. In May 1937, the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, commonly known as the Dewey Commission , was set up in the United States by supporters of Trotsky to establish the truth about the trials. The commission was headed by
7611-481: The West, listed a series of incidents in which Kirov allegedly clashed with Stalin, based on rumours he must have heard from fellow NKVD officers. Kirov's reputed rivalry is a major theme of the historical novel Children of the Arbat , by Anatoli Rybakov , who wrote: In his hunger for popularity, Kirov opted for the simple style. He lived on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt in a large house , inhabited by all sorts of people, he walked to work, wandered on his own around
7740-402: The West. The trial of Horáková and twelve of her colleagues began on 31 May 1950 and the State's prosecutors were led by Dr. Josef Urválek and included Ludmila Brožová-Polednová . The trial proceedings were carefully orchestrated with confessions of guilt secured from the accused, though a recording of the event, discovered in 2005, revealed Horáková's defence of her political ideals. Horáková
7869-427: The accused must have been guilty of an offense which in the Soviet Union would merit the death penalty. The Bukharin trial six months later developed evidence which, if true, more than justified this action. Undoubtedly those facts were all full known to the military court at this time. All "confessions" were extracted under the most severe torture. Images of the accused were not shown. The Tukhachevsky Affair
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#17327647993347998-410: The arrest of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) , according to the decision of the Russian Provisional Government , but the October Revolution quickly intervened, and the offices which had ordered the arrest were dissolved. In 1920, after the defeat of the Whites under Denikin and the end of the Russian Civil War , Vyshinsky joined the Bolsheviks . The main charge was forming a terror organization with
8127-441: The artificially increased temperatures. Finally the exhausted prisoners agreed to a deal with Stalin who promised them, on behalf of the Politburo, their lives in exchange for participation in the anti-Trotskyist spectacle. Kamenev and Zinoviev agreed to confess on condition that they receive a direct guarantee from the entire Politburo that their lives and those of their families and followers would be spared. When they were taken to
8256-432: The back of the neck. Nikolayev was well known to the NKVD , which had arrested him for various petty offences in recent years. Various accounts of his life agree that he was an expelled party member and a failed junior functionary, with a murderous grudge and an indifference to his own survival. Nikolayev was unemployed, with a wife and child, and in financial difficulties. According to Orlov, Nikolayev had allegedly told
8385-414: The basis of protected classes or characteristics, show trials are examples of political persecution . The term was first recorded in 1928. A similar concept is " kangaroo court ". After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 , show trials were given to "rioters and counter-revolutionaries" involved in the protests and the subsequent military massacre. Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo
8514-432: The behest of the United States, Great Britain, France and Yugoslavia. Evidence of the alleged conspiracy included Horáková's presence at a meeting of political figures from the National Socialist, Social Democrat and People's parties, in September 1948, held to discuss their response to the new political situation in Czechoslovakia. She was also accused of maintaining contacts with Czechoslovak political figures in exile in
8643-413: The better-rehearsed Slánský answered the one which should have been asked. In 1946, Draža Mihailović and a number of other prominent figures of the Chetnik movement during World War II were tried for high treason and war crimes committed during WWII. The trial opened in the presence of about 60 foreign journalists. Mihailović and ten others (two in absentia) were sentenced to death by a firing squad;
8772-451: The brutality of the forced agricultural collectivization had led to an acute economic and political crisis in 1928–1933, which led to the worsened conditions of Soviet workers and peasants. Stalin was acutely conscious of this fact and took steps to prevent it taking the form of an opposition inside the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to his increasingly totalitarian rule . Grigory Zinoviev , Lev Kamenev , and Joseph Stalin formed
8901-436: The case and ascertain whether Trotsky was involved. State Security Commissar of the 2nd Class Georgy Molchanov, a chief of the Secret-political department of the NKVD Main Directory of State Security (a predecessor of KGB ), played a key role in the investigation. The central office of the NKVD that was headed by Genrikh Yagoda was shocked when it was learned that Yezhov (at that time a mere party functionary) had discovered
9030-406: The character of the accused, their long terms of service, their recognized distinction in their profession, their long-continued loyalty to the Communist cause, it is scarcely credible that their brother officers ... should have acquiesced in their execution, unless they were convinced that these men had been guilty of some offense. It is generally accepted by members of the Diplomatic Corps that
9159-613: The charges are war crimes and, per HRW, are an excuse to prosecute Ukrainian soldiers for participating in the conflict. Observers called those prosecution show trials. Following some dissent within ruling communist parties throughout the Eastern Bloc , especially after the 1948 Tito–Stalin split , several party purges occurred, with several hundred thousand members purged in several countries. In addition to rank-and-file member purges, prominent communists were purged, with some subjected to public show trials. These were more likely to be instigated, and sometimes orchestrated, by
9288-699: The charges. However, he changed his plea the next day after "special measures," which dislocated his left shoulder among other things. Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known that his interrogators were given the order "beating permitted" and were under great pressure to extract confessions out of the "star" defendant. Bukharin held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence", wore him down. However, when he read his confession, amended and corrected personally by Stalin, he withdrew his whole confession. The examination started all over again, with
9417-770: The city of Baku , the capital of Azerbaijan, erected on a hill in 1939. The statue was dismantled in January 1992, shortly after Azerbaijan gained its independence. The Kirov Prize, a speedskating match in the city of Kirov, was named for him. The Kirov Prize is the oldest annual organised race in speedskating, apart from the World Speed Skating Championships and the European Speed Skating Championships . The English communist poet John Cornford wrote an eponymous poem in his honour. The Soviet Navy cruiser Kirov
9546-631: The colonel, negligently, as if this were the most natural thing in the world, urinated into his mouth. The evidence was often not just non-existent but absurd, such as Hungarian George Paloczi-Horváth 's party interrogators claiming "We knew all the time—we have it here in writing—that you met professor Szentgyörgyi not in Istanbul , but in Constantinople ." In another case, the Hungarian ÁVH secret police also condemned another party member as
9675-433: The commission, Olga Shatunovskaya , as having knowledge of the Kirov murder. Kirchakov confirmed that he did talk to Shatunovskaya and Trunina about some of the unexplained aspects of the Kirov murder case and agreed to provide the commission with a written deposition. He stressed that his statement was based on the testimony of one Comrade Yan Olsky, a former NKVD officer who was demoted after Kirov's murder and transferred to
9804-507: The committee sessions, Olsky said he was present when Stalin asked Leonid Nikolayev why Comrade Kirov had been killed. To this Nikolayev replied that he carried out the instruction of the " Chekists " (meaning the NKVD) and pointed towards the group of "Chekists" (NKVD officers) standing in the room; Medved was not among them. Khrushchev's report, "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences",
9933-409: The conspiracy, because the NKVD had no connection to the case. In June 1936, Yagoda reiterated his belief to Stalin that there was no link between Trotsky and Zinoviev, but Stalin promptly rebuked him. This would have led to the inevitable conclusion about the unprofessionalism of the NKVD leaders who completely missed the existence of the conspiratorial Trotskyist center. Bewilderment was strengthened by
10062-539: The day after Kirov's assassination, allegedly falling from a moving truck while riding with a group of NKVD agents. According to Orlov, Borisov's wife was committed to an insane asylum , while Nikolayev's mysterious friend and alleged provocateur, who had supplied him with the revolver and money, was later shot on Stalin's personal orders. Several NKVD officers from the Leningrad branch were convicted of negligence for not adequately protecting Kirov and sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years. According to Barmine, none of
10191-759: The defendants at the Reichstag fire Trial were acquitted. Between 1933 and 1945, an estimated 12,000 Germans were killed on the orders of the "special courts" set up by the Nazi regime . In the current Iranian regime there are no juries in Islamic Revolutionary Courts – trial by peers only exists in some special courts – with verdicts set before the trial; have been several occasions of trials being labeled show for their proceeding. [REDACTED] Media related to Show trials at Wikimedia Commons Sergey Kirov Sergei Mironovich Kirov (born Kostrikov ; 27 March 1886 – 1 December 1934)
10320-612: The fact that both Zinoviev and Kamenev for a long time were under constant operational surveillance and after the murder of Kirov were held in custody. The basis of the scenario was laid in confessions, extracted under torture, from three of the arrested. One was NKVD agent Valentin Olberg who taught at the Gorky Pedagogic Institute. The others were Soviet statesmen and former members of the internal Party opposition, Isaac Rejngold and Richard Pikel. Firmly believing in
10449-447: The family around 1890, and Yekaterina died of tuberculosis in 1893. Sergei and his sisters were raised for a brief time by their paternal grandmother, Melania Avdeyevna Kostrikova, but she could not afford to take care of them all on her small pension of 3 rubles per month. Through her connections, Melania succeeded in having Sergey placed in an orphanage at the age of seven, but he saw his sisters and grandmother regularly. In 1901,
10578-416: The former Soviet archives, went as far as to claim that "the conventional narratives are almost entirely myth". Edvard Radzinsky argued in his biography of Stalin that written documents about Stalin ordering the assassination of Kirov were never found simply because they never existed and could not exist. Radzinsky believes that Stalin was behind the assassination, but given the prominent status of Kirov as
10707-463: The handful who made doubtful confessions were trying to undermine the Soviet Union and its government by making dubious statements in their confessions to cast doubts on their trial. Molotov postulated that a defendant might invent a story that he collaborated with foreign agents and party members to undermine the government so that those members would falsely come under suspicion, while the false foreign collaboration charge would be believed as well. Thus,
10836-412: The interrogation proceedings. In December 1935, the original case surrounding Zinoviev began to widen into what was called the "Trotsky-Zinoviev Center". Stalin allegedly received reports that correspondence from Trotsky was found among the possessions of one of those arrested in the widened probe. Consequently, Stalin stressed the importance of the investigation and ordered Nikolai Yezhov to take over
10965-738: The issue of Stalin's theory of Socialism in One Country . It was Trotsky who most clearly represented the wing of the CPSU leadership which claimed that the survival of the revolution depended on the spread of communism to the advanced European economies, especially Germany. This was expressed in his theory of permanent revolution . A few years later, Zinoviev and Kamenev joined the United Front in an alliance with Trotsky which favored Trotskyism and opposed Stalin specifically. Consequently, Stalin allied with Nikolai Bukharin and defeated Trotsky in
11094-524: The meeting mentioned the initial theory that fascist agents had been responsible for the assassination. Barmine asserts Stalin even used the Kirov assassination to eliminate the remainder of the Opposition leadership, accusing Grigory Zinoviev , Lev Kamenev , Abram Prigozhin, and others who had stood with Kirov in opposing Stalin (or who had simply failed to acquiesce to Stalin's views), of being "morally responsible" for Kirov's murder, and therefore guilty of complicity. Barmine also claimed that Stalin arranged
11223-428: The more faint-hearted socialists are beset with doubts and anxieties," but "once again we can feel confident that when the smoke has rolled away from the battlefield of controversy it will be realized that the charge was true, the confessions correct and the prosecution fairly conducted," while socialist thinker Beatrice Webb "was pleased that Stalin had 'cut out the dead wood'." Communist Party leader Harry Pollitt , in
11352-413: The murder with the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, who armed Nikolayev and sent him to assassinate Kirov. In his Secret Speech in 1956, Khrushchev said that the murder of Kirov was organized by NKVD agents who were tasked with protecting Kirov and were eventually shot in 1937. Khrushchev entrusted Pyotr Pospelov , Secretary of the Central Committee, to form a commission to investigate the repression of
11481-648: The mythical conspiracy, Rejngold executed the Party task with which he thought himself to be entrusted. The confessions present the standard items of supposed conspiratorial activities: the murder of Kirov; preparations to assassinate the leaders of the Soviet Communist Party; and the readiness to seize power in the USSR in order to "restore capitalism". In July 1936, Zinoviev and Kamenev were brought to Moscow from an unspecified prison. When interrogated they denied being part of any Trotsky-led conspiracy. Yezhov appealed to Zinoviev's and Kamenev's devotion to
11610-521: The night of June 11/12, immediately after the verdict delivered by a Special Session of the Supreme Court of the USSR . This trial triggered a massive purge of the Red Army. The third show trial, in March 1938, popularly known as The Trial of the Twenty-One , tied together all the loose threads from earlier trials. The fact that Genrikh Yagoda was one of the accused showed the speed at which
11739-459: The noted American philosopher and educator John Dewey , who led a delegation to Mexico, where Trotsky lived, to interview him and hold hearings from April 10 to April 17, 1937. The hearings were conducted to investigate the allegations against Trotsky who publicly stated in advance of them that if the commission found him guilty as charged he would hand himself over to the Soviet authorities. They brought to light evidence which established that some of
11868-439: The others were convicted of penalties ranging from 18 months to 20 years in prison. In 2015, a Serbian court invalidated Mihailović's conviction. The court held that it had been a Communist political show trial that was controlled by the government. The court concluded that Mihailović had not received a fair trial. Mihailović was, therefore, fully rehabilitated. During 1946–1949, several well-publicized show trials were held in
11997-562: The prisons became their centers of activities. In December 1934, Sergei Kirov was assassinated and, subsequently 15 defendants were found guilty of direct, or indirect, involvement in the crime and were executed. Zinoviev and Kamenev were found to be morally complicit in Kirov's murder and were sentenced to prison terms of ten and five years, respectively. Both Kamenev and Zinoviev had been secretly tried in 1935 but it appears that Stalin decided that, with suitable confessions, their fate could be used for propaganda purposes. Genrikh Yagoda oversaw
12126-404: The promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina , was sent to a labor camp, but she survived. The trial included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" : Communist Party leaders in most Western countries denounced criticism of the trials as capitalist attempts to subvert Communism. A number of American communists and " fellow travellers " outside of
12255-405: The purges were consuming their own. Meant to be the culmination of previous trials, it now alleged that Nikolai Bukharin and others had conspired to assassinate Lenin and Stalin numerous times after 1918 and had murdered Soviet writer Maxim Gorky by poison in 1936. The group also stood accused of espionage . Bukharin and others were claimed to have plotted the overthrow and dismemberment of
12384-697: The purpose of killing Stalin and other members of the Soviet government. Defendant Ivan Nikitich Smirnov was blamed by his co-defendants for being the leader of the Center which planned Kirov's assassination. He, however, had been in prison since January 1933 and refused to confess. Another defendant, the Old Bolshevik Eduard Holtzman, was accused of conspiring with Trotsky in Copenhagen at the Hotel Bristol in 1932, where Trotsky
12513-407: The reluctance of some party members to denounce their comrades. It was at this time that Stalin personally intervened to speed up the process and replaced Yagoda with Yezhov. Stalin also observed some of the trial in person from a hidden chamber in the courtroom. On the first day of the trial, Nikolai Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all
12642-441: The rest were sentenced to death. Slánský was hanged at Pankrác Prison on 3 December 1952. His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered on an icy road outside of Prague. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany established a large number of Sondergerichte that were frequently used to prosecute those hostile to the regime. The People's Court was a kangaroo court established in 1934 to handle political crimes, after several of
12771-492: The show trial of Hungarian Minister of Interior László Rajk should go, and he was later executed. The Rajk trials in Hungary led Moscow to warn Czechoslovakia's parties that enemy agents had penetrated even high into party ranks, and when a puzzled Rudolf Slánský and Klement Gottwald inquired what they could do, Stalin's NKVD agents arrived to help prepare subsequent trials. First, these trials focused on people outside
12900-822: The specific charges made at the trials could not be true. The Dewey Commission published its findings in the form of a 422-page book titled Not Guilty . Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow trials. In its summary the commission wrote: "Independent of extrinsic evidence, the Commission finds: The commission concluded: "We therefore find the Moscow Trials to be frame-ups." For example, in Moscow, Pyatakov had testified that he had flown to Oslo in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight had taken place. In Britain,
13029-528: The streets of the city, took his children for rides in his car and played hide-and-seek with them in the yard ... as if to emphasize that Stalin lived in the Kremlin, with guards, didn't wander the streets or play hide-and-seek with his children, thus underlining the idea that Stalin was afraid of the people, whereas Kirov was not. At the end of the Communist Party's Seventeenth Congress in February 1934, there
13158-490: The supposed Politburo meeting, they were met by only Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov . Stalin explained that they were the "commission" authorized by the Politburo, and Stalin agreed to their conditions in order to gain their desired confessions. After that the future defendants were given some medical treatment. The trial (officially known as " процесс «Антисоветского объединенного троцкистско-зиновьевского центра» ", also known as The First Moscow Trial [ ru ] , or
13287-465: The terrorist organization but sympathizing with us, people who from liberalism, from a Fronde against the Party, gave us this help." By the third organization, he meant the last remaining former opposition group called Rightists led by Bukharin, whom he implicated by saying: I feel guilty of one thing more: even after admitting my guilt and exposing the organisation, I stubbornly refused to give evidence about Bukharin. I knew that Bukharin's situation
13416-499: The time of Kirov's assassination, and who had no demonstrable connection to Nikolayev, were found guilty of complicity in the "fascist plot" against Kirov, and summarily executed; however, a few days later, during a subsequent Communist Party meeting of the Moscow District, the party secretary announced in a speech that Nikolayev had been personally interrogated by Stalin the day after the assassination, something unheard-of for
13545-453: The time, many Western observers who attended the trials said that they were fair and that the guilt of the accused had been established. They based this assessment on the confessions of the accused, which were freely given in open court, without any apparent evidence that they had been extracted by torture or drugging. U.S. ambassador Joseph E. Davies wrote in Mission to Moscow : In view of
13674-424: The traces of the organizers of Kirov's killing. Pospelov's committee came to the conclusion that Kirov’s murder was facilitated by NKVD officers who were responsible for his security, and that NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda was declared a hero, instead of holding him responsible. Pospelov spoke to Dr. Kirchakov and former nurse Trunina, former members of the party, who had been mentioned in a letter by another member of
13803-547: The trial was solely based on coerced confessions. He finished his last plea with "the monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable, especially in the new stage of the struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all." Romain Rolland and others wrote to Stalin seeking clemency for Bukharin, but all the leading defendants were executed except Rakovsky and two others (they were killed in prison in 1941). Despite
13932-766: The trials were also subject to criticism. A group called the British Provisional Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky was set up. In 1936, the Committee published an open letter in the Manchester Guardian calling for an international inquiry into the Trials. The letter was signed by several notable figures, including H. N. Brailsford , Harry Wicks , Conrad Noel , Frank Horrabin and Eleanor Rathbone . The Committee also supported
14061-587: Was a secret trial before a military tribunal of a group of Red Army generals, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky , in June 1937. It featured the same type of frame-up of the defendants and it is traditionally considered one of the key trials of the Great Purge . Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the senior military officers Iona Yakir , Ieronim Uborevich , Robert Eideman , August Kork , Vitovt Putna , Boris Feldman , and Vitaly Primakov were accused of anti-Communist conspiracy and sentenced to death; they were executed on
14190-581: Was a Russian and Soviet politician and Bolshevik revolutionary. Kirov was an early revolutionary in the Russian Empire and a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . Kirov became an Old Bolshevik and personal friend to Joseph Stalin , rising through the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ranks to become head of the party in Leningrad and a member of
14319-399: Was a curious mix of fulsome confessions and subtle criticisms of the trial. After disproving several charges against him (one observer noted that he proceeded to demolish, or rather showed he could very easily demolish, the whole case), Bukharin said that "the confession of the accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence", his point being that
14448-601: Was arrested once again, but this time jailed for over three years, charged with printing illegal literature. Soon after his release, Kirov again took part in revolutionary activity, once again being arrested for printing illegal literature. After a year in custody, Kirov moved to the Caucasus , where he stayed until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II after the February Revolution in March 1917. By this time, Kirov had shortened his last name from Kostrikov to Kirov,
14577-531: Was carried out by a senior NKVD chief, Yakov Agranov , and later by another NKVD bureau officer whose name he did not remember. The other NKVD official may have been Yefim Georgievich Yevdokimov (1891–1939), a Stalin crony, mass-killing specialist, and architect of the Shakhty purge trials , who continued to lead a secret police team within the NKVD even after technically retiring from the OGPU in 1931. During one of
14706-441: Was falsely accused of complicity in Kirov's assassination. Magyar was convicted as a " Zinovievite -Terrorist" and sent to a Gulag, where he died in 1940. A Communist Party communiqué initially reported that Nikolayev had confessed his guilt as an assassin in the pay of a " fascist power," having received money from an unidentified " foreign consul " in Leningrad. The same author claims 104 defendants who were already in prison at
14835-535: Was given a show trial in 2009. Chinese writer and dissident Ma Jian argued that Gu Kailai , the wife of purged Communist Chinese leader Bo Xilai , was given a show trial in 2012. As early as 1922, Lenin advocated staging several "model trials" ("показательный процесс", literally "demonstrative trial", "a process showing an example") in Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine . Show trials became common during Joseph Stalin 's political repressions, such as
14964-738: Was giving a public lecture. A week after the trial it was revealed by a Danish Social Democratic newspaper that the hotel had been demolished in 1917. Vyshinsky achieved international infamy as the prosecutor at the Zinoviev–Kamenev trial, lashing its defenseless victims with vituperative rhetoric. He often punctuated speeches with phrases like "Dogs of the Fascist bourgeoisie", "mad dogs of Trotskyism ", "dregs of society", "decayed people", "terrorist thugs and degenerates", and "accursed vermin". This dehumanization aided in what historian Arkady Vaksberg calls "a hitherto unknown type of trial where there
15093-570: Was in agreement with Stalin on all major issues and that on the Seventeenth Party Congress, at least 86,5% of voting delegates were in favour of Stalin's membership of the Central Committee; hence, Stalin had little to fear from Kirov. Moreover, nothing in Nikolaev's personal diary indicates that he did not carry out the assassination on his own. Alla Kirilina and Oleg Khlevniuk , who did not find any orders of assassination in
15222-476: Was in his written confession and refused to go any further. The fact that he was allowed to write in prison (he wrote four book-length manuscripts including an autobiographical novel, How It All Began , a philosophical treatise, and a collection of poems – all of which were found in Stalin's archive and published in the 1990s) suggests that some kind of deal was reached as a condition for his confession. He also wrote
15351-511: Was just as hopeless as my own, because our guilt, if not juridically, then in essence, was the same. But we are close friends, and intellectual friendship is stronger than other friendships. I knew that Bukharin was in the same state of upheaval as myself. That is why I did not want to deliver him bound hand and foot to the People's Commissariat of Home Affairs. Just as in relation to our other cadres, I wanted Bukharin himself to lay down his arms. At
15480-548: Was later read at closed-door Party meetings. Afterwards, new material was received by the Pospelov Committee, including the assertion by Kirov's chauffeur, Kuzin, that Commissar Borisov, Kirov's friend and bodyguard, who was responsible for Kirov's round-the-clock security at the Smolny Institute, was intentionally killed, and that his death in a road accident was not an accident at all. The last attempt in
15609-479: Was named after him, and by extension the Kirov -class cruiser . The Kirov name was again used for the battlecruiser Kirov and the Kirov -class battlecruiser . The Khai-3 tailless airplane was also named after him. Kirov was married to Maria Lvovna Markus (1885–1945) since 1911, although they never formally registered their relationship. Yevgenia Kostrikova (1921–1975), who claimed to be Kirov's daughter,
15738-567: Was not the slightest need for evidence: what evidence did you need when you were dealing with 'stinking carrion' and 'mad dogs'?" Vyshinsky would later be responsible for the Soviet preparations for the trial of the major German war criminals by the International Military Tribunal . All of the defendants were sentenced to death and were subsequently shot in the cellars of Lubyanka Prison in Moscow by NKVD chief executioner Vasily Blokhin . The full list of defendants
15867-551: Was released and not even searched. It is an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist [Borisov] assigned to protect Kirov was being brought for an interrogation, on 2 December 1934, he was killed in a car "accident" in which no other occupants of the car were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD were relieved of their duties and were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume that they were shot in order to cover
15996-667: Was renamed Kropyvnytskyi by the Ukrainian Parliament on 14 July 2016. In 2019, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine approved the change of the oblast's name to Kropyvnytskyi Oblast, or Kropyvnychchyna. The S. M. Kirov Forestry Academy in Leningrad was named after him but renamed the Saint Petersburg State Forest Technical University. For many years, a huge granite and bronze statue of Kirov dominated
16125-996: Was sentenced to death, along with three co-defendants (Jan Buchal, Oldřich Pecl, and Záviš Kalandra ), on 8 June 1950. Many prominent figures in the West, notably Albert Einstein , Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt , petitioned for her life, but the sentences were confirmed. She was executed by hanging in Prague's Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950. The trials then turned to the communist party itself ( Slánský trial ). In November 1952 Rudolf Slánský and 13 other high-ranking Communist bureaucrats (Bedřich Geminder, Ludvík Frejka, Josef Frank, Vladimír Clementis , Bedřich Reicin , Karel Šváb, Rudolf Margolius , Otto Šling , André Simone , Artur London , Vavro Hajdů and Evžen Löbl), 10 of whom were Jews, were arrested and charged with being Titoists and Zionists , official USSR rhetoric having turned against Zionism . Party rhetoric asserted that Slánský
16254-613: Was spared as he implicated others, including Nikolai Bukharin , Alexei Rykov , and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky , setting the stage for the Trial of Military Leaders and the Trial of the Twenty One. Radek provided the pretext for the purge on a massive scale with his testimony that there was a "third organization separate from the cadres which had passed through [Trotsky's] school" as well as "semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth-Trotskyites, people who helped us, not knowing of
16383-678: Was spying as part of an international western capitalist conspiracy to undermine socialism and that punishing him would avenge the Nazi murders of Czech communists Jan Šverma and Julius Fučík during World War II. The trial of the 14 national leaders began on 20 November 1952, in the Senate of the State Court, with the prosecutor being Josef Urválek . It lasted eight days. It was notable for its strong anti-Semitic overtones. All were found guilty, with three being sentenced to life imprisonment while
16512-546: Was tried alone and secretly by Vasili Ulrikh , Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR . He was sentenced to death by shooting on 29 December 1934, and the sentence was carried out that very night. The Soviet government , led by Stalin, stated that their investigation proved that the assassin was acting on behalf of a secret Zinovievist group. The hapless Commissar Borisov died
16641-515: Was used by Stalin to justify Moscow trials and his campaign of terror known as the Great Purge . At the time of Kirov's murder, Maxim Litvinov , the Soviet Foreign Minister, was out of the country; his daughter Tanya implied that Litvinov realised this event might be an excuse for Stalin to unleash a reign of terror. This view was confirmed by Anastas Mikoyan's son, who stated that the murder of Kirov had certain similarities to
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