Moscow trials


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.
  1. The "Case of the Trotskyite–Zinovievite Terrorist Center" ;
  2. The "Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" ; and
  3. The "Case of the Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites.
The defendants were Old Bolshevik Party leaders and top officials of the Soviet secret police. Most were charged under Article 58 of 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 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, 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 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 authoritarian rule.

Background

, Lev Kamenev, and Joseph Stalin formed 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 the interrogation proceedings.

The "Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center"

Conspiracy and investigation

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 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, 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 had discovered 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 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, possibly 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.

Trial

The trial, with 16 defendants, was held from 19 to 24 August 1936 in the small October Hall of the House of the Unions. 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 the arrest of Vladimir Ulyanov, 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 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 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 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 is as follows:
  1. Grigory Zinoviev
  2. Lev Kamenev
  3. Grigory Yevdokimov
  4. Ivan Bakayev
  5. Sergei Mrachkovsky, a hero of the Russian Civil War in Siberia and the Russian Far East
  6. Vagarshak Ter-Vaganyan,
  7. Ivan Nikitich Smirnov, People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs
  8. Yefim Dreitzer
  9. Isak Reingold
  10. Richard Pickel
  11. Eduard Holtzman
  12. Fritz David
  13. Valentin Olberg
  14. Konon Berman-Yurin
  15. Moissei Lurye
  16. Nathan Lurye