HIST 236 Chapter Notes - Chapter reading: Moscow Trials, Lepiel, 1936 Soviet Constitution
19 Oct 2018
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Kochetov was a small soviet boss in a rural district. He fell victim to the purges that swept the bureaucracy, indicted for counterrevolutionary crimes and put on trial in aleshki. The aleshki trial was one of the dozens held in raion centers in the ussr in the fall of 1937 and were trials that displayed a political message. 1937 was the high of the purges where hundreds of thousands of members of the soviet communist elite were arrested and sent to labour camps or shot as enemies of the people. The moscow trials involved scenarios of conspiracy and treason and the raion trials were down to earth and straightforward. The core indictment of the raion trials was due to exploitation and abuse of peasantry not treason and political conspiracy. The trial scripts were drawn from the "master plot" and moscow was involved in framing and controlling the local show trials.
