1922 Moscow Trial of Socialist Revolutionaries

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The Moscow Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries was one of the first show trials of the Soviet Union, beginning on June 8, 1922. The trial was part of a process that entailed eliminating all opposition in the nascent Bolshevik state.

The previous years had witnessed the silencing of the Workers' Opposition and the suppression of the Mensheviks, the other major proletarian party. The Socialist Revolutionaries had long been a nuisance to the Bolsheviks. The party enjoyed the support of the largest demographic of the old Tsarist Empire, the agrarian peasantry, whilst the Bolsheviks were primarily supported by the radical intelligentsia, with some, albeit small, representation amongst soldiers and workers. The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 was the first action Lenin took against the Socialist Revolutionaries. The results of the voting made it clear that the assembly would not be overwhelmingly Bolshevik, and Lenin decided that it was counterrevolutionary. Fanny Kaplan, Lenin's would-be assassin, stated that her motive for the assassination was the dispersal of the assembly. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1918 that ended hostilities between Germany and Russia was also a point of serious disagreement between the Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries.

There were 12 main defendants in the trial, and a number of other turncoats who gave evidence for the prosecution. Among the notable Bolsheviks playing a part in the trial were Nikolai Krylenko, who was the prosecutor for the state, and Nikolai Bukharin, who was part of the defense counsel. Bukharin had even participated in demonstrations organized by the authorities that were occurring throughout Moscow, and demanded death for the 12 defendants. At the very outset, Georgy Pyatakov, announced that "the court does not intend to handle the case from a dispassionate, objective point of view but would be guided solely by the interests of the Soviet Government." The evidence against the accused consisted mainly of the statements of turncoats such as G. Semyonov, who joined the Bolsheviks in 1919, and became an agent provocateur. The trial concluded with death sentences for the 12, and acquittal for those who gave evidence. Upon further review by the tribunal, the death sentences were commuted. It was believed by Trotsky at least, that if the sentences were carried out, their party brethren would carry out terrorist violence against the Bolshevik government.

All of the defendants and participants in the trial would eventually become victims in Stalin's purges.

References

  • Kautsky, Karl. The Twelve Who Are to Die: The Trial of the Social Revolutionits in Moscow. Berlin: Delegation of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, 1922.
  • Richard Pipes. A Concise History of the Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1995.
  • Radzinskiĭ, Ėdvard. 1996. Stalin: the first in-depth biography based on explosive new documents from Russia's secret archives. New York: Doubleday.
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