Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) in the context of Wrecking (Soviet crime)

The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of the "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1. The "Case of the Trotskyite–Zinovievite Terrorist Center" (or Zinoviev–Kamenev Trial, also known as the 'Trial of the Sixteen', August 1936);
2. The "Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" (or Pyatakov–Radek Trial, also known as the 'Trial of the Seventeen', January 1937); and
3. The "Case of the Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites'" (or the Bukharin–Rykov Trial, also known as the 'Trial of the Twenty-One', March 1938).

The defendants were Old Bolshevik Party leaders and top officials of the Soviet secret police. Most were charged under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code with conspiring with imperialist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union, and restore capitalism. Several prominent figures (such as Andrei Bubnov, Alexander Beloborodov, Nikolai Yezhov) were sentenced to death during the Stalin era outside these trials.

Wrecking (Russian: вредительство or vreditel'stvo [vrʲɪˈdʲitʲɪlʲstvə], lit. "inflicting damage", "harming") was a crime specified in the criminal code of the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. It is often translated as "sabotage"; however, "wrecking", "diversionist acts", and "counter-revolutionary sabotage" were distinct sub-articles of Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) (58-7, 58–9, and 58-14 respectively), and the meaning of "wrecking" is closer to "undermining".

"Traitor to the Motherland family members" (Russian: ЧСИР: члены семьи изменника Родины, romanized: ChSIR: chleny sem'i izmennika Rodiny, lit. 'members of the family of a traitor of the Motherland') was a term in Article 58 of the Criminal Code of Russian SFSR (as amended on 8 June 1934 from the original wording of 1927). The amended article dealt with the criminal prosecution of wives and children (kin punishment) of all people who were arrested and convicted as "traitors of the Motherland" in the Soviet Union during Stalinist purges of the 1930s and later.