August 19, 2026
Exactly ninety years ago today, on August 19, 1936, the
USSR's Supreme Court Military Collegium initiated the “Trial of the Sixteen,”
the first Moscow Trial. This event marked the Stalinist regime's effort to
eliminate the generation of Bolsheviks responsible for the October Revolution
physically. Over five days, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and fourteen others
confessed to an elaborate plot, supposedly led by Leon Trotsky, to assassinate
Stalin and the Soviet leadership. Within a day of sentencing, all sixteen
defendants were executed.
This was not a genuine judicial proceeding but the initial
phase of the Great Terror: a political setup aimed not at uncovering crimes but
at bloodily destroying the program and leaders of the October Revolution. Nine
decades later, the Moscow Trials remain a pivotal moment of the twentieth
century. Revisiting them isn't just historical curiosity; it directly relates
to a key political issue of our time: which social forces caused the first
workers’ state to decline and collapse, and what lessons should the
international working class learn from this experience?
A Trial Without a Crime
The charges from 1936–1938 were fabricated without any
material evidence. Confessions, which were the only basis for convictions, were
obtained through well-documented techniques: extended sleep deprivation,
threats to family members held hostage, and psychological torment aimed at men
who had previously endured Tsarist prisons and underground activities, but
could not withstand the GPU’s brutal tactics employed by former comrades.
Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky turned the courtroom into a
political spectacle. His accusations were more like propaganda than legal
arguments, aimed at justifying the defendants' physical elimination and
intimidating the Soviet people. Foreign observers who took the trials at face
value— including many Western liberals, socialists, and some Trotsky sympathisers—
unknowingly or not, played a role in one of the most effective frame-ups in
recent history.
The 1937 Coyoacán-based Commission of Inquiry, led by
American philosopher John Dewey, examined the charges with the scrutiny that
Soviet courts denied. Trotsky testified under oath for an entire week. The
Dewey Commission concluded that the Moscow Trials were fabricated from start to
finish, a finding confirmed by later Soviet archival releases, including the
posthumous rehabilitation of nearly all defendants during Khrushchev and
Gorbachev's eras.
The Political Logic of the Terror
Viewing the Moscow Trials simply as the result of one man’s
paranoia or a solely Russian illness misses the core issue they present. The
purging of the Bolshevik Old Guard—the entire Political Bureau that took power
in 1917, except Stalin, most of the Central Committee elected at the last
Leninist Party Congress, and the Red Army's top commanders—was not a mere side
effect of building "socialism in one country.” Rather, it was a deliberate
and essential strategy employed to achieve that goal.
By the mid-1930s, Stalin’s faction had shifted from the
original internationalist goal of 1917. They forsook global revolution in favour
of accommodating imperialist powers and establishing a privileged bureaucratic
class that ran a planned economy they neither founded nor fully controlled. The
presence of a cadre still recalling the revolutionary ideals of October was
intolerable. Trotsky and the Left Opposition consistently highlighted this
contradiction. The Moscow Trials served as the bureaucracy’s response—not as a defence,
but as a means of eliminating opposition.
This explains why the Terror extended beyond the destruction
of known political opponents. It also targeted hundreds of thousands of
ordinary Communists, trade unionists, and, starting with Marshal Tukhachevsky
in June 1937, a large part of the Red Army officer corps. This destructive
purge would cost the Soviets dearly in blood when the Wehrmacht invaded four
years afterwards.
Trotsky’s Answer
From exile—initially in Norway and later in Mexico—Trotsky
conducted a nearly solo effort to fight against the Kremlin’s setup of false
charges. He recognised, accurately, that the true stakes extended beyond his
personal reputation to the political destiny of the international working
class. His insights, notably in The Revolution Betrayed (1936) and during his
testimony before the Dewey Commission, framed the Terror as a result of Soviet
bureaucratic decline from a Marxist perspective: a privileged class derived
from nationalised property established by October, but gradually seizing
political power from the working class and defending its rule against either
capitalist restoration or proletarian revolution.
History has confirmed this analysis. The bureaucracy Trotsky
described did not defend the property forms it administered. Four decades after
the last of the Moscow defendants were shot, that same bureaucracy — or its
direct heirs — presided over the dissolution of the USSR and the seizure of its
nationalised industry as private capital. The class that emerged in 1991 did
not spring from nowhere; its formation is unintelligible without the physical
extermination, beginning in 1936–1938, of the political forces within the
Soviet state that opposed bureaucratic consolidation.
The Moscow Trials and Current Academic Historiography
The Moscow Trials are among the most well-documented
political frame-ups of the twentieth century. Investigations ranging from the
Dewey Commission to recent Soviet archival releases have confirmed that the
charges were fabricated, confessions coerced, and the trials designed to
eliminate the Bolsheviks responsible for the October Revolution. Despite this,
modern academic history still shows a notable ambivalence towards this
political crime.
The facts are recognised, but their significance is stripped
away. The trials are portrayed as results of Stalin’s paranoia, characteristics
of “totalitarianism,” or customs of Soviet political culture. While these
explanations use different words, they share a common purpose: to disconnect
the Terror from the class struggles that caused it. The killing of the
Bolshevik Old Guard is seen as a psychological event, a cultural act, or an
unavoidable consequence of revolutionary beliefs — anything except a deliberate
political move by a bureaucratic class tightening its grip over the first
workers’ state.
This methodological evasion is deliberate. Addressing the
political logic of the Terror means confronting the historical divide between
Bolshevism and Stalinism. The bureaucracy's destruction of the revolutionary
cadre was not the conclusion of October but its negation. It became the method
by which a privileged layer—based on nationalised property but opposed to
workers’ political power—reinforced its dominance. The subsequent collapse of
the USSR and the privatisation of state assets were not unforeseen; they
resulted from the long-term counter-revolution that started with the 1936–1938
trials.
Current historiography tends to merge Bolshevism and
Stalinism into one indistinct phenomenon, serving a political purpose similar
to the Kremlin’s distortions. This approach makes the revolutionary experience
difficult for new generations to understand and blocks meaningful engagement
with the Marxist critique of bureaucratic decline. The Moscow Trials are often
seen merely as warnings about ideology, extremism, or authoritarian mindsets,
rather than lessons on the risks posed by a privileged class that seizes
political power from the working class.
A thorough evaluation of the Moscow Trials demands more than
just verifying archival records. It also involves reestablishing the political
significance that academic historiography has removed: that the Terror was the
bureaucracy’s fight against the October Revolution’s ideals. Recognising this
history is crucial for any modern effort to reconnect with the internationalist
and socialist vision for which Zinoviev, Kamenev, and countless others were
killed.
Ninety Years On
Ninety years after the first Moscow Trial, an honest
reckoning with Stalinism’s crime of the century remains inseparable from the
fight to reclaim the internationalist and revolutionary program in whose name
Zinoviev, Kamenev, and thousands of others were murdered. The lessons of
1936–1938 are not historical curiosities. They are strategic questions for the
working class today.
Sources and Bibliography on the Moscow Trials and Current
Academic Historiography
Primary Sources
- The
Moscow Trial Transcripts (1936–1938): Official Soviet publications of
the Trial of the Sixteen (1936), Trial of the Seventeen (1937), and Trial
of the Twenty-One (1938). Note: These were staged documents, but
remain essential primary material.
- The
Red Book on the Moscow Trials, Leon Sedov: A contemporary Trotskyist
analysis documenting the frame-up from exile.
- The
Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes, Alexander Orlov Memoir by a former
NKVD officer who defected; provides insider testimony on the fabrication
of charges.
- The
Dewey Commission Report (1937) Not Guilty: Findings of the
Commission of Inquiry chaired by John Dewey, which concluded the trials
were frame-ups.
Classic Scholarly Analyses (1950s–1970s)
These works established the foundational critique of the
trials and remain central to historiography.
- Ritual
of Liquidation: The Case of the Moscow Trials, Nathan Leites &
Elsa Bernaut (RAND, 1954). A psychological and political analysis of the
trials as staged political ritual.
- The
Great Purge Trial, eds. Robert C. Tucker & Stephen F. Cohen (1965)
A documentary collection with commentary by two major scholars of Soviet
history.
- Power
and the Soviet Elite, Boris Nicolaevsky (1965). Examines the political
logic of elite purges and bureaucratic consolidation.
- Ritual
of Liquidation, Nathan Leites & Elsa Bernaut (Free Press, 1954) A
seminal psychological-political interpretation of the trials.
- From
Purge to Coexistence, David J. Dallin (1964). A Cold War-era analysis
of the political mechanisms of the Terror.
Historiography and Rehabilitation Studies
These works examine how Soviet and post-Soviet
historiography has treated the trials.
- “Soviet
Historiography and the Moscow Trials: After Thirty Years,” Jane P. Shapiro
(JSTOR). A detailed study of how Soviet historians handled (and
suppressed) the memory of purge victims, including the process of
rehabilitation under Khrushchev.
- “Rehabilitation
— and Perdition,” Leopold Labedz (Problems of Communism, 1963). A key
analysis of the political and historiographical meaning of Khrushchev-era
rehabilitation.
Contemporary Academic Historiography
These works represent the dominant trends in current
scholarship — culturalist, totalitarian, and revisionist approaches.
- Sheila
Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism; Tear Off the Masks!
Culturalist interpretations that treat the trials as political performance
and social ritual.
- J.
Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges: Revisionist
scholarship emphasising institutional dynamics and downplaying
intentionality.
- Oleg
Khlevniuk, Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle.
Uses post-Soviet archives to reconstruct Stalin’s decision-making and the
bureaucratic mechanisms of the Terror.
- Stephen
Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler: A monumental biography that
integrates political, cultural, and geopolitical factors.
- Timothy
Snyder, Bloodlands: Places the Terror within a broader regional
history of mass violence (though not focused on the trials specifically).
Trotskyist and Marxist Analyses
These works provide the essential class-based interpretation
absent from most academic historiography.
- Leon
Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1936): The foundational
Marxist analysis of bureaucratic degeneration and the political logic of
the Terror.
- Trotsky’s
Testimony Before the Dewey Commission (1937): A systematic refutation
of the charges and a theoretical explanation of Stalinism.
- Vadim
Rogovin, Was There an Alternative? (7-volume series) The most
comprehensive post-Soviet Marxist history of the Left Opposition and the
political context of the Terror.
Online Scholarly Resources
- UMKC
School of Law: “The Moscow Purge Trials (1936–38): Bibliography and
Selected Links” A curated bibliography with primary documents and
commentary.
Summary of What the Search Reveals
The search results highlight three key clusters of
scholarship:
- Classic
Cold War analyses (Dallin, Nicolaevsky, Leites & Bernaut) that
treat the trials as political repression and psychological theatre.
- Soviet
and post-Soviet historiography (Shapiro, Labedz) focusing on
rehabilitation and the politics of memory.
- Contemporary
academic approaches that often depoliticise the trials through
culturalist or institutional frameworks.
These sources collectively demonstrate the historiographical
tension and the overwhelming factual evidence of a political frame-up versus
the persistent academic tendency to obscure its class logic.
