Trial of the Twenty One

The Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" (Russian: Процесс антисоветского «право-троцкистского блока»), also known as the Trial of the Twenty-One, was the last of the three public Moscow Trials,show trials charging prominent Bolsheviks with espionage and treason. The Trial of the Twenty-One took place in Moscow in March 1938, towards the end of the Soviet Great Purge.

The third show trial, in March 1938, known as The Trial of the Twenty-One, is the most famous of the Soviet Union show trials because of persons involved and the scope of charges, which tied together all loose threads from earlier show trials. It included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites":

They were all proclaimed members of the "right Trotskyist bloc" that intended to overthrow socialism and restore capitalism in Russia, among other things.

Meant to be the culmination of previous trials, it now alleged that Bukharin and others committed the following crimes:

All of the defendants confessed to these charges during the show trial with a few notable, but limited, exceptions.

The preparation for this trial was delayed in its early stages due to the reluctance of some party members to denounce their comrades. Stalin personally intervened to speed up the process and replaced Yagoda with Nikolai Yezhov. Some claim that Stalin also observed some of the trial in person from a hidden chamber in the courtroom.

Only one defendant, Nikolai Krestinsky, initially refused to admit his guilt. He changed his position within a day, however, telling Public Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky: "I fully and completely admit that I am guilty of all the gravest charges brought against me personally, and that I admit my complete responsibility for the treason and treachery I have committed."

Bukharin's confession was limited in a different fashion. Observers have speculated that Bukharin had reached some sort of agreement with the prosecution: while he admitted guilt to general charges, he undercut that by denying any knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Bukharin typically would admit only what was in his written confessions and refused to go any further; at one point in the trial, when Vyshinsky asked him about a conspiracy to weaken Soviet military power, Bukharin responded "it was not discussed, at least in my presence," at which point Vyshinsky dropped the question and moved to another topic.

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Wikipedia