The Russian Revolution and The Moscow Trials: What the evidence showed

Sun, Oct 8, 2017: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
The Russian Revolution and The Moscow Trials:
What the evidence showed

In the western world, and it includes a majority those who identify themselves as Marxists, it is an article of faith today that the three 1936, 1937 & 1938 Moscow Trials of high Party and state officials and the military court martial of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and 7 other high level commanders were “Kangaroo Court” affairs; that the defendants in these three trials, a total of 68, were innocent of the charges to which most if not all themselves admitted.

Some of these defendants were posthumously rehabilitated by Khrushchev’s Commission and the rest by Gorbachev’s Commission, set up to examine these men, with the notable exception of Leon Trotsky. These men, it is prevailing wisdom, were eliminated so that Stalin could be the absolute dictator of the USSR or that he was a paranoid leader who damaged his own party, state and the military just as the USSR was facing a determined enemy in Hitler’s Germany. But what does the evidence show?
We will examine that in this presentation by following the development of the revolution from 1903 onwards thru these trials.

Raj Sahai is a researcher long associated with NPML and has spent the past 26 years studying the history of the USSR, in particular the history of 1903 thru 1956.