Stalin Show Trials

In the 1930s, the Soviet Union was building up a status of being a superpower. However, there was a problem, the problem being that, like in every dictatorship, people who were against the dictatorship were suddenly disappearing. It was the Great Purge were anyone he suspected of being against him were removed from positions of power from 1934-1938.
During which, there were 3 show trials that were public and one secret held in Moscow. At theses show trials, senior communist party leaders and military members were tried.

At the Trial of the 16 in August 1936, Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 others were tried and were charged with collaborating with foreign powers to overthrow Stalin. All 16 confessed to these charges to these unfounded charges of treason. Prisoners who were interrogated were often tortured physically and their families were threatened. The accused were later shot in Lubyanka Prison's cellars in Moscow.
1937 saw two show trials, one in January that was public and one that was secret in June.

The January 1937 show trial was the trial of the 17 and saw Grigori Sokolnikov, Yuri Pyatakov and Nikolai Muralov among 15 others being accused of attempting to overthrow the Soviet system similar to the first trial but with the bonus detail here being that they were accused of being hired by Leon Trotsky as agents to carry out acts of sabotage. Trotsky was once head of the Red Army until he was removed from power by Stalin in 1929 which forced him into exile. 13 of those that were tried at the Trial of the 17 were shot while the remaining 4 were sent to labour camps as part of a prison sentence were they all died.

The Secret Trial in June 1937 saw Marshal Tukhachevsky and the army generals being tried for a very peculiar reason. The reason being due to the fact that Stalin feared the power of the Red Army. In fact, the Great Purge happened because Stalin was quite paranoid about power.
The last show trial was the Trial of the Twenty One which was held in March 1938. Leading Bolshevik scholar Nikolai Bukharin and former head of the secret police Genrikh Yagoda were among those shown as double agents. All but three of the 21 men were found guilty of having committed extremely grave state offences covered by the Criminal Code and were executed by firing squad.

By the end of 1938, only Stalin and Trotsky (who would later be assassinated) remained of Lenin's Politburo and of the 139 Central Committee members from 1934, over 90 of them had been shot.