Supreme Court

Details

Organization Timeline

First Moscow show trial begins

📅 19 August 1936

Sixteen defendants, including Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, were accused of conspiracy and terrorism. Confessions produced under coercion were treated as evidence; the trial made the liquidation...

Zinoviev, Kamenev, and co-defendants executed

📅 25 August 1936

The executions followed the first Moscow trial and marked a sharp escalation in the public purge of former party leaders. They were part of a broader machinery of repression reaching far beyond the...

Trial of Bukharin and other alleged “right-Trotskyists” opens

📅 2 March 1938

Nikolai Bukharin and co-defendants faced a public trial centered on conspiracy charges and coerced testimony. The trial connected elite purges to the wider system of policing, denunciation, and fear.

Bukharin and co-defendants sentenced

📅 13 March 1938

The Military Collegium issued death sentences after the final major Moscow show trial. The verdict consolidated the destruction of much of the old Bolshevik leadership.

Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee defendants executed

📅 12 August 1952

Thirteen Jewish writers and public figures were executed after a secret trial, following years of imprisonment and interrogation. Their deaths marked a major act of state antisemitism and erased a...