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[[File:Stalin show trial.jpg|right|300|thumb|'''Stalinist show trials'''. Top leaders were executed. Millions of ordinary people or those unemployed were sent to [[gulag]]s.]]

[[File:Stalin show trial.jpg|right|300|thumb|'''Stalinist show trials'''. Top leaders were executed. Millions of ordinary people or those unemployed were sent to [[gulag]]s.]]

The '''Great Purge''', also known as the '''Moscow show trials''', began in [[Moscow]] on 15 August 1936 with the trial of 'the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre'.<ref>Isaac Deutscher, ''The Great Purges'', edited by Tamara Deutscher (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1984), p. 72.</ref> Besides vengeance and elimination of the opposition, the show trials were intended to intimidate anyone who dared  to challenge the [[Leftist]] [[Deep state]].

The '''Great Purge''', also known as the '''Moscow show trials''', began in [[Moscow]] on 15 August 1936 with the trial of 'the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre'.<ref>Isaac Deutscher, ''The Great Purges'', edited by Tamara Deutscher (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1984), p. 72.</ref> Besides [[vengeance]] and elimination of the opposition, the show trials were intended to intimidate anyone who dared  to challenge the [[Leftist]] [[Deep state]].

Throughout the decade of the 1930s the leadership dispute between the founder of the [[Red Army]] [[Leon Trotsky]] and [[CPSU]] General Secretary [[Josef Stalin]] was the focus of [[far left]] political discussions. From various places of exile in Turkey, France and Norway, Trotsky ceaselessly criticized Stalin. The [[Bolshevik]] hierarchy - Trotskyists, Zinovievists, Bukharinists and Stalinists listened intently to every word of Trotsky. In Bolshevik eyes, Trotsky represented the sole alternative to Stalin and Stalinism; and so the whole Stalinist [[propaganda]] machine concentrated immense eftorts upon discrediting him.<ref>Deutscher, ''The Great Purges'', p. 69.</ref>  

Throughout the decade of the 1930s the leadership dispute between the founder of the [[Red Army]] [[Leon Trotsky]] and [[CPSU]] General Secretary [[Josef Stalin]] was the focus of [[far left]] political discussions. From various places of exile in Turkey, France and Norway, Trotsky ceaselessly criticized Stalin. The [[Bolshevik]] hierarchy - Trotskyists, Zinovievists, Bukharinists and Stalinists listened intently to every word of Trotsky. In Bolshevik eyes, Trotsky represented the sole alternative to Stalin and Stalinism; and so the whole Stalinist [[propaganda]] machine concentrated immense eftorts upon discrediting him.<ref>Deutscher, ''The Great Purges'', p. 69.</ref>