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Moscow trials

1936–1938 show trials held by Stalin to purge political opposition

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 29, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

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.The "Case of the Trotskyite–Zinovievite Terrorist Center" ;

The "Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" ; and

The "Case of the Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites'".

Editorial summary

“Moscow trials” enters the record as 1936–1938 show trials held by Stalin to purge political opposition. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Moscow, trials and show can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1936, 1938—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Moscow, trials and show.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Moscow trials” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Moscow, trials and show provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1936 and 1938.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Moscow trials”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Moscow trials primary sources, Moscow trials archive and Moscow research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Moscow trials” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.