ABSTRACT
I 1930s, observers worldwide were shocked to witness a set of highly publicized trials in the Soviet Union, in which powerful Bolshevik leaders confessed to terrible crimes against the Soviet state, including sabotage, espionage and murder. One by one, the most idolized associates of Lenin (Gregory Zinoviev, Nikolai Bukharin, Lev Kamenev, Yuri Pyatakov, Christian Rakovsky, Karl Radek and many others) admitted to participating in a vast international conspiracy designed to destroy the Soviet experiment and return the government to the hands of enemy “White Guardists and capitalists.” is conspiracy was allegedly led by exiled Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, who engineered elaborate plots against Soviet leaders, as well as sabotage eff orts to destroy industrial enterprises, agricultural collectives, and the Red Army.
