Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 322 in the case of the anti-Soviet bloc of rights and Trotskyists, Part 1.

Last time, we covered the history of the city of Kiev.

Today, we will cover a trial during the Soviet times because my brother, Alex, gifted me a copy

of the court proceedings of the kangaroo trial that included Nikolai Buharn, Alexi Rikov, Genrik Jagada, and 18 others.

Translated into English, it is called, quote,

Report of Court Proceedings in the case of the anti-Soviet Block of Rights and Trotskyists

heard before the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR in Moscow, March 2nd through the 13th, 1938.

This trial turned many communist sympathizers outside the Soviet Union away from the Bolsheviks,

some becoming staunch anti-communists.

Fitzroy McLean, a junior British ambassador to the USSR,

witnessed parts of the trial and wrote about it,

claiming skepticism about the veracity of some of the defendant's testimony.

Of the 21 accused of treason, 18 were executed immediately after the trial. Three were sentenced to

between 15 and 25 years in prison, but all were shot after the Nazis invaded the Soviet

Union in 1941. Most of the men were old Bolsheviks, and some were very likely guilty of plotting to

assassinate Joseph Stalin. Almost all held important positions of the early days of the Bolshevik

takeover, with some being ambassadors to Western European countries. Here's the names of the defendants.

Nikolai Buharn, who was described by Vladimir Lenin as, quote,

most valuable and major theorist of the Communist Party,

as well as being Marxist theoretician,

former head of the Communist International and member of the Politburo.

...