Soviet secret police in the context of "Moscow trials"

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.