1. Propaganda, Purges & The Totalitarian State
Stalin’s Show Trials
Propaganda, Purges & The Totalitarian State

2. Factors in Stalin’s Show Trials
Collectivisation
Economic Modernisation
Leon Trotsky
The Ryutin Platform
The ‘Old Bolsheviks’
Kirov

3. Stalin’s Route to Power

4. The Old Bolsheviks Grigory Zinoviev Lev Kamenev Nikolai Bukharin
The original, surviving members of the October Revolution of 1917, including Lenin & Stalin.
Would present an obstacle to Stalin’s revisionism of his minor role in the October Revolution of 1917.
Stalin targeted these Old Bolsheviks as traitors who sought to undermine the Communist Revolution.
Most of these, particularly Trotsky, advocated International Communism, while Stalin advocated ‘Socialism in One Country’.
Grigory Zinoviev
Lev Kamenev
Nikolai Bukharin
Genrikh Yagoda
Karl Radek
Sergey Kirov
Vyacheslav Molotov

5. Leon Trotsky: Shadow of the Revolutionary
Commander of Red Guards in October Revolution 1917
Founder of the Red Army
Very capable organiser & public orator
Considered the natural successor to Lenin
“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”

6. Collectivisation: an Ideological & Economic Imperative
An attempt to end private ownership of land by peasants and introduce large, collectively-owned farms in which machinery, labour & profits were shared. In some cases, collective farms were state-owned, where farmers were paid a wage similar to workers in a factory.
Opposed bitterly by the ‘Kulaks’: peasant land owners.
‘Kulaks’ were an inconsistency with Communism – a wealthy, land-owning class in a Communist State. They were created by Lenin’s New Economic Policy of Many communists supported the forced eradication of these private land owners.
Due to opposition to collectivisation, Stalin introduced forced collectivisation by 1929.
Kulaks slaughtered their animals in protest and in some cases burnt their grain. Famines resulted in Roughly five million people died.
In response, Stalin attempted to eradicate the Kulaks, sending out requisition squads who either killed the Kulaks or sent them to prison in the Gulags.
Roughly five million Kulaks had been dispossessed and/ or imprisoned by

7. The Five - Year Plans: Economic Miracle at a Price
INDUSTRIAL AIMS:
AGRICULTURAL AIMS

8. SERGEI KIROV
Leader of the Communist Party in Leningrad
Loyal supporter of Stalin
Supported Stalin’s policies of Collectivisation and even the readication of the Kulaks.
Very popular member of the Communist Party who was elected to the Central Committee in 1934.
Crucially, Kirov was in favour of a more relaxed style of Communism, even including certain dissidents in the Politburo.
Assassinated in 1934, probably by order of Stalin, who feared his growing popularity & influence throughout the Communist movement.

9. N.k.v.d. Peoples’ Commissariat for internal affairs
Origin: The ‘Cheka’ (1917 Revolution)
State police founded in 1934 from reorganisation by Stalin to be both regular police force and state security apparatus
The NKVD, from 1934 onwards, were given a wide mandate & enormous power, including control of fire services, security of borders, civil acts & responsibily for the operation of ‘Gulags’
Chief state instrument of Stalin’s purges and the Show Trials
Prominent leaders of the NKVD: Yagoda, Yezhov & Beria

10. Genrikh Yagoda Director of NKVD (1934-1936)
Director of the NKVD, 1934 – 1936
Responsible for the deaths of 7 – 10 million Ukranians during forced seizures of grain supplies under the regulations of Collectivisation
Organised the Trial of the Sixteen (1936), including the arrest, detention and interrogation of the ‘Old Bolsheviks’ e.g. Kamenev, Zinoviev.
Replaced by Yezhov in September when Stalin accused him of being ‘’unable’’ to expose the true extent of the ‘Trotskyite conspiracy’.
Was put on Trial in 1938 (Trial of the Twenty-One), found guilty and shot.

11. ANDREI VYSHINSKY Prosecutor-General

12. The 1st Show Trial: The Trial of the sixteen: (1936)
‘Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre’

13. Verdict: All guilty & sentenced to be shot
Trial of the Sixteen (1936)
Charges
The Accused
Accused of murdering Sergei Kirov
Accused of plotting to murder Stalin
Accused of working with Trotskyites in an effort to undermine Communism in USSR
Zinoviev
Kamenev
14 other leading ‘Old Bolsheviks’
Verdict: All guilty & sentenced to be shot

14. Trial of the Sixteen The ‘Influence’ of Trotsky
Each of the Sixteen defendants took turns to denounce themselves, pleading guilty, incriminating themselves under the false pretense that their lives would be spared once they had publicised Trotsky’s anti-Soviet conspiracy.
“I am guilty of this that after Trotsky, I was the second organizer of the Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc which set itself the aim of murdering Stalin, Voroshilov and a number of other leaders of the party and the government.”
- Grigory Zinoviev (1936)

15. The 2nd Show Trial: The Trial of the sixteen: (1937)

16. The 3rd Show Trial: The Trial of the sixteen: (1938)