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The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police. After Stalin's death and Nikita Khrushchev's revelations in the 1950s, the Moscow Trials are today universally acknowledged as show trials in which the verdicts were predetermined, and then publicly justified through the use of coerced confessions, obtained through torture and threats against the defendants' families.
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First Moscow Trial (Trial of the Sixteen)
The first trial was held from August 19 to August 24, 1936 in the House of Trade Unions; the principal defendants were Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev. 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 full list of defendants is as follows:
- Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev
- Lev Borisovich Kamenev
- Grigory Yevdokimov
- Ivan Bakayev
- Sergei Vitalyevich Mrachkovsky, a hero of the Russian Civil War in Siberia and the Russian Far East
- Vagarshak Arutyunovich Ter-Vaganyan, leader of the Armenian Communist Party
- Ivan Nikitich Smirnov, People's Commissar for communications
- Yefim Dreitzer
- Isak Reingold
- Richard Pickel
- Eduard Holtzman
- Fritz David
- Valentin Olberg
- Konon Berman-Yurin
- Moissei Lurye
- Nathan Lurye
All of them were charged under Articles 58.8, 19 and 58.11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The main charge was forming a terrorist organization with the purpose of killing Joseph Stalin and other members of the Soviet government. They were tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, with Vasili Ulrikh presiding, and sentenced to death, the Prosecutor General being Andrei Vyshinsky.
At first, Zinoviev and Kamenev refused to confess, but after harsh interrogations and threats against their families, they agreed to confess on condition of a direct guarantee from the Politburo that their lives and those of their families and followers would be spared. This plea was accepted, but when they were taken to the supposed Politburo meeting, only Stalin, Kliment Voroshilov, and Yezhov were present. Stalin explained that they were the "commission" authorized by the Politburo and gave them the promised assurances. After the trial, however, Stalin not only broke his promise to spare the defendants, but also had most of their relatives arrested and shot.
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