Editing Great Purge (section)

===Third Moscow trial===
{{See also|Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"}}
[[File:1934 agranov yagoda unknown redens.jpg|thumb|[[NKVD]] chiefs responsible for conducting mass repressions (left to right): [[Yakov Agranov]]; [[Genrikh Yagoda]]; unknown; [[Stanislav Redens]]. All three were themselves eventually arrested and executed.]]

The third and final trial, in March 1938, known as the [[Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"|Trial of the Twenty-One]], is the most famous of the Soviet show trials, because of persons involved and the scope of charges which tied together all loose threads from earlier trials. Meant to be the culmination of previous trials,{{POV statement|date=May 2021}} it included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", supposedly led by Nikolai Bukharin, the former chairman of the [[Communist International]], former premier [[Alexei Rykov]], [[Christian Rakovsky]], [[Nikolai Krestinsky]], and [[Genrikh Yagoda]], recently disgraced head of the NKVD.<ref name=":2"/>

Although [[Bloc of Soviet Oppositions|an Opposition Bloc]] led by Trotsky and with zinovievites really existed, [[Pierre Broué]] asserts that Bukharin was not involved.<ref name=":2"/> Differently from Broué, one of his former allies,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cohen|first=Stephen|title=Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution}}</ref> [[Jules Humbert-Droz]], said in his memoirs that Bukharin told him that he formed a secret bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev in order to remove Stalin from leadership.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Humbert-Droz|first=Jules|title=De Lenine à Staline. Dix ans au service de l'Internationale communiste 1921–1931}}</ref>

The fact that Yagoda was one of the accused showed the speed at which the purges were consuming their own. It was now alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murder [[Maxim Gorky]] by poison, partition the USSR and hand its territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain, and other charges.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

Even previously sympathetic observers who had accepted the earlier trials found it more difficult to accept these new allegations as they became ever more absurd, and the purge expanded to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin and [[Mikhail Kalinin|Kalinin]].{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}} No other crime of the Stalin years so captivated Western intellectuals as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing.<ref name="Corey Robin, Fear, Page 96">Corey Robin, "Fear", p. 96</ref> For some prominent communists such as [[Bertram Wolfe]], [[Jay Lovestone]], [[Arthur Koestler]], and [[Heinrich Brandler]], the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism, and even turned the first three into fervent anti-communists eventually.<ref>Bertram David Wolfe, "Breaking with communism", p. 10</ref>{{sfn|Koestler|1940|p=258}} To them, Bukharin's confession symbolized the depredations of communism, which not only destroyed its sons but also conscripted them in self-destruction and individual abnegation.<ref name="Corey Robin, Fear, Page 96"/>

====Bukharin's confession====
[[File:Bucharin.bra.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|[[Nikolai Bukharin]], Russian [[Bolshevik]] [[Russian Revolution|revolutionary]] executed in 1938]]

On the first day of trial, Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. However, he changed his plea the next day after "special measures", which dislocated his left shoulder among other things.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=352}}

[[Anastas Mikoyan]] and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known{{POV statement|date=May 2021}} that his interrogators were given the order "beating permitted", and were under great pressure to extract confession out of the "star" defendant. Bukharin initially held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. But when he read his confession amended and corrected personally by Stalin, he withdrew his whole confession. The examination started all over again, with a double team of interrogators.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=364–335}}

Bukharin's confession in particular became subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel ''[[Darkness at Noon]]'' and philosophical essay by [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]] in ''Humanism and Terror''. His confessions were somewhat different from others in that while he pleaded guilty to "sum total of crimes", he denied knowledge when it came to specific crimes.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions (of being a "degenerate fascist" working for "restoration of capitalism") and subtle criticisms of the trial. One observer noted that after disproving several charges against him, Bukharin "proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case."<ref>Report by Viscount Chilston (British ambassador) to Viscount Halifax, No. 141, Moscow, 21 March 1938</ref> He continued by saying that "the confession of the accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in a trial that was based solely on confessions. He finished his last plea with the words:<ref>Tucker, Robert. "Block of Rights and Trotskyites." ''Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet''. pp. 667–668.</ref><blockquote>[T]he monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all.</blockquote>[[Romain Rolland]] and others wrote to Stalin seeking clemency for Bukharin, but all the leading defendants were executed except Rakovsky and two others (who were killed in [[Medvedev Forest massacre|NKVD prisoner massacres]] in 1941). Despite the promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife, [[Anna Larina]], was sent to a labor camp, but she survived to see her husband posthumously [[Rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitated]] a half-century later by the Soviet state under [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] in 1988.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}