The third, and final, of the 1936-38 Moscow show trials begins. Known as the “Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites” (or, “The Trial of the Twenty One”), the proceedings target twenty-one prominent Bolshevik Party figures including former Politburo members Nikolai Bukharin and Aleksei Rykov. Both Bukharin and Rykov had supported the introduction the New Economic Policy in 1921 and had more recently argued for a gradual approach toward industrialization as opposed to the increasingly radical plans favored by Joseph Stalin. Genrikh Yagoda, former head of the NKVD, and Nikolai Krestinskii, a former Politburo member and Soviet ambassador to Germany (1923-30), are among other leading Party members brought to trial.
The accused are alleged to have engaged in a plot to kill Party leaders while working alongside Nazi Germany and Japan to defeat the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding the clear absurdity of the charges, all of those on trial eventually confess to the crimes. While some, including Bukharin, are believed to have sacrificed themselves “for the good of the Party” and the broader cause of socialism, NKVD personnel are known to have used physical torture and threats to the defendants’ loved ones and family members to secure some confessions. At the conclusion of the proceedings, eighteen of the defendants are found guilty and shot; the remaining three are sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging between fifteen and twenty-five years.
Along with prior show trials that take place in the late 1930s, the “Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites” enables Joseph Stalin to consolidate his dictatorial power by eliminating potential opposition within the Communist Party and uniting the public against alleged threats posed by foreign agents. However, the sham proceedings lead several prominent Western intellectuals to renounce Marxism and adopt staunchly anti-Communist positions. Among these is the Hungarian-British journalist and author Arthur Koestler who subsequently gains international fame in 1940 for Darkness at Noon – a fictionalized account of the 1938 proceedings exploring the defendants’ psychological reactions to being brought to trial and condemned to death.
The “Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites” unfolds in Moscow against the backdrop of a political crisis in Europe. On March 12th, German Chancellor and Nazi Party Führer, Adolph Hitler, orders his country’s 8th Army into the neighboring state of Austria. The country’s formal annexation into the German Third Reich (Anschluss) is announced the following day on 13 March, the last day of the trial.