1922 Moscow Trial of Socialist Revolutionaries
The Moscow Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries was a political trial in the Soviet Union, beginning on June 8, 1922. The trial was for Right SR conspiratorial military coup on October 29th, 1917 (old style) that attempted to overthrow the democratically elected Soviet government. The Right SRs admitted their complicity in this adventure that found them allied with the notorious "unguided missile" Vladimir Purishkevich, pogromist and organizer of the anti-Semitic Union of Russian People. Right-wing apologists have attempted to portray this trial as a "show trial" as under Stalin, but as historian Oliver Radkey has shown, the evidence against the SR conspirators was overwhelming.[1]
The Right Socialist Revolutionaries had long been opponents to the Bolsheviks. The Right SR party had only marginal support of the largest demographic of the old Tsarist Empire, the agrarian peasantry, the overwhelming majority of peasants supported the Left SRs who united with the Bolsheviks to win both a majority of the Soviets and in the elections of November 1917. In most areas the electoral slates did not distinguish between the Left SRs and Right SRs but in the few areas that it did, the Left SRs won overwhelmingly. The RIght SRs used their positions within the SRs to stack the electoral slates in their favor and claim popular support. As E.H. Carr has shown, a single soldier shut down another Right SR coup attempt, the Constituent Assembly gathering in January 1918.
There were 12 main defendants in the trial, and SR coup participants 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 overwhelming evidence against the accused included statements of former SR participants in the military coup attempt 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
- ↑ 1
- Radkey, Oliver, Hammer Under the Sickle: The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the Early months of Soviet Rule, 1964,
- 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.
- Radzinskiĭ, Ėdvard. 1996. Stalin: the first in-depth biography based on explosive new documents from Russia's secret archives. New York: Doubleday.