CAMBRIDGE A2 HISTORY: SHOW TRIALS AND THE GREAT PURGE. Contains: show trial definition, Stalin's contribution, the Moscow trials, Trotski' s trial.

1. HISTORY CAMBRIDGE A2 (PAPER 4)
PRESENTATION 15
STALIN MODULE
4. USE OF REPRESSION AND TERROR
SHOW TRIALS AND
THE GREAT PURGE

2. POWERPOINT BASED ON
Lynch, Stalin’s Russia 1924-53 chapter 2
Busky, Donald F. (2002). Communism in History and Theory
Show Trials in China: After Tiananmen Square, Mark Findlay
China’s Show Trial of the Century, Ma Jian, Project Syndicate
Abbott Gleason (2009). A companion to Russian history
Bideleux, Robert; Jeffries, Ian (2007), A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change
Crampton, R. J. (1997), Eastern Europe in the twentieth century and after
Hodos, George H. Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe, 1948–1954
Showtrials Website of the European Union
Balázs Szalontai, Show trials

3. A SHOW TRIAL
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already
determined the guilt of the defendant.
The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the
verdict to the public as an impressive example and as a warning to other
would-be dissidents or transgressors.
Show trials tend to be retributive rather than correctional justice and also
conducted for propagandistic purposes.
The term was first recorded in the 1930s.

4. STALIN’S SHOW TRIALS
The show trials that took place in Stalin’s USSR had a very specific purpose
for Stalin. The show trials were not held in secret but were, as their title
suggests, in the open with foreign journalists invited and were there to
prove to those in the USSR who were interested that ‘enemies of the
state’ still existed despite the ‘Red Terror’ and that state leaders such as
Stalin were at risk.
There is little doubt that those who faced a show trial were going to be
found guilty and they served the main purpose of Stalin – to get rid of
anyone who might be a potential rival to him as leader.

5. THE MOSCOW TRIALS
Show trials were a significant part of Joseph Stalin's regime. The Moscow
Trials of the Great Purge period (1937–38) in the Soviet Union are
characteristic.
The authorities staged the actual trials meticulously. If defendants refused
to "cooperate" — i.e., to admit guilt for their alleged and mostly
fabricated crimes — they did not go on public trial, but suffered execution
nonetheless.
This happened, for example during the prosecution of the so-called
"Labour Peasant Party", a party invented by the NKVD, which, in
particular, assigned the notable economist Alexander Chayanov to it.

6. Sergei kirov
The excuse, if one was needed, that sparked off the purges and the show
trials was the murder of Sergei Kirov.
He was the Bolshevik Party’s leader in Leningrad and many believed that
he would succeed Stalin on his death. However, Kirov faced several huge
problems – he was popular with the people, good looking and very good
at his job.
Such a man brought Stalin’s paranoia or jealousy to the surface.

7. Stalin’s jealousy
It could be the case that Stalin felt threatened by the young man in
Leningrad but they always went on summer holiday together which
indicates the opposite.
However, Kirov was someone who was willing to stand up to Stalin and
argue against what he wanted even in public.
He may have been, in the mind of Stalin, a party functionary but he was
his own independent thinker and not someone who agreed with Stalin
simply because it was Stalin.
Kirov was also a man who was not scared to voice his beliefs in public.

8. TROTSKY’S CASE
However, Leon Trotsky was another case.
Few would have questioned the intellectual qualities of Trotsky and as a
member of the Bolshevik Old Guard, he did represent a threat to ‘the
Boss’ as did anyone, Stalin believed, who was associated with Trotsky.
To be labelled a ‘Trotskyite’ at the time of Stalin’s tenure in charge of the
USSR invariably brought with it imprisonment and death.
However, Stalin did not feel in sufficient control of the USSR to simply
allow the NKVD to round up ‘enemies of the state’ and have a second
version of the ‘Red Terror’.

9. PURGE OF THE PARTY
He needed an excuse to justify what was to happen.
Kirov played a vital part in this – he was murdered on December 1st 1934
by Leonid Nikolayev.
Historians are divided as to the extent Stalin played in this. Some believe
that he effectively organised it while others believe that supporters of
Trotsky made up the ‘evidence’ to discredit Stalin.
Whatever the case, Stalin asked the Politburo for a purge of the party to
rid it of those who were, in Stalin’s mind, betraying the November 1917
Revolution.
The Politburo agreed with Stalin.

10. THE ENEMIES OF THE STATE
The NKVD was handed a list of those who were now labelled ‘enemies of
the state’ – effectively the Bolshevik Party’s Old Guard – for example,
Kamenev, Zinoviev and Bukharin.
Anyone associated with these men was also under suspicion.
They were put on trial at heavily manipulated show trials where the
verdict was never in doubt.
The show trials had to prove their guilt preferably with a very public
admission of betraying the revolution and therefore the people.

11. ARRESTING TROTSKY’S SUPPORTERS
The first people arrested were known supporters of Trotsky who at this
time was living on an island off the coast of Turkey.
While he was safe for the time being, his supporters were not. Very few
survived long enough in a NKVD prison to make a public admission of
guilt. However, signed confessions were considered useful tools as well.
Why should men sign a confession knowing that it was probably nonsense
and knowing that such a signing was almost like signing their own
execution warrant.
Those who survived the NKVD prisons – and very few did – later wrote
about the brutal regime they faced.

12. NKVD AND THE ELECTRIC BULB
Cells would be windowless and a very strong electric light bulb – which
prisoners could not turn on or off – was left permanently on.
NKVD guards ensured prisoners were sleep deprived and exhausted when
it came to their interrogation.
A promise of better treatment was made to ensure the swift signature of
a confession.
However, the NKVD also wanted the names of anyone else associated
with the ‘crimes’ of the man who had just signed his own death warrant.

13. DARKNESS AT NOON
In his book ‘Darkness at Noon’ the author Arthur Koestler states his belief
that prisoners actually signed confessions knowing that it would lead to
their deaths but that death was better than the life they were leading
while in a cell.
If psychological torture did not work on a prisoner, then the NKVD turned
to his family. In June 1934, Stalin signed a decree that held the family of a
prisoner as guilty as he was and that the family (directed of course against
the Old Guard) was guilty in its own right. This law stated that children
over the age of 12 could be executed for the crimes of their father. Others
faced the prospect of a sentence in the brutal gulags that were being built
across the USSR.

14. TOUGH TIMES
There were some prisoners who would not play along with the dangerous
game played by the NKVD.
A different approach was needed.
The one the NKVD adopted was to get a prisoner to confess to crimes and
to sign the required confession in return for a document that guaranteed
their lives.
If all else failed then the victim was simply told that he would be executed
without the formality of a trial.

15. JUST A SHOW
The show trials became just that – a show.
Some of the ‘biggest’ names in the Bolshevik Party were made to stand
trial in public – men like Kamenev, Bukharin and Zinoviev.
For whatever reason, Stalin viewed these men as potential rivals and as
such they had to go. Both these men were charged with plotting to kill
Stalin.
Their guilt was never in doubt as the court had been provided with much
‘evidence’ obtained from other prisoners and they were executed in 1936
and 1938 in Bukharin’s case.

16. ZINOVIEV, AT HIS TRIAL:
At his trial Zinoviev said in public:
“I would like to repeat that I am fully and utterly guilty. I am guilty of having
been the organiser, second only to Trotsky, of that block whose chosen task
was the killing of Stalin. I was the principal organiser of Kirov’s
assassination. The party saw where we were going, and warned us. Stalin
warned us scores of times but we did not heed his warnings. We entered
into an alliance with Trotsky.”

17. KAMENEV, AT HIS TRIAL:
Kamenev said at his trial
“I Kamenev, together with Zinoviev and Trotsky, organised and guided this
conspiracy. My motives? I had become convinced that the party’s – Stalin’s
policy – was successful and victorious. We, the opposition, had banked on a
split in the party, but this hope proved groundless. We could no longer count
on any serious domestic difficulties to allow us to overthrow Stalin’s
leadership. We were actuated by boundless hatred and by lust of power.”

18. BUKHARIN, AT HIS TRIAL:
Nikolai Bukharin was charged with treason and admitted his crimes in
court just as Stalin wished.
Bukharin called his crimes “monstrous” and he was executed in 1938.
However, Stalin believed that he could not even trust the senior officers in the
Red Army. They along with anyone else Stalin believed he could no longer trust
also became victims of the purges.

19. OPENING ARCHIVES
Some solid public evidence of what really happened during the Moscow
Trials came to the West through the Dewey Commission (1937).
After the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), more information became
available. This discredited the New York Times reporter Walter Duranty,
who claimed at the time that these trials were actually fair.
According to declassified Soviet archives, with documents dating to 1937
and 1938, the NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people, of
whom 681,692 were executed.