Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"

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The Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites" (or "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites"; Russian: Процесс антисоветского «право-троцкистского блока»), also known as the Trial of the Twenty-One, was the last of the three public Moscow trials charging prominent Bolsheviks with espionage and treason. The Trial of the Twenty-One took place in Moscow in March 1938, towards the end of the Soviet Great Purge. The accused were tortured to extract confessions and publicly admitted their guilt during the show trial. Most of the accused, including Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov and Genrikh Yagoda, were convicted, and sentenced to death. All charges are considered fabricated except those against NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda of poisoning Valerian Kuybyshev, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, and Maxim Gorky; Yagoda might indeed have conducted the poisoning with the assistance of "Kremlin's doctors" Dmitry Pletnyov and Lev Levin, but they did it on the orders from Stalin himself.

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