The Moscow Trials, beginning in 1936, were based on astounding claims: prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky accused many top Bolsheviks of conspiring with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to destroy the Soviet Union — the very working-class government the accused had helped create. Some 700,000 people were executed during the Great Purges. Can you give us a brief overview?

Before talking about the Moscow Trials, it’s important to understand the background underlying the Great Purges. In the years before 1936, Stalin and the bureaucracy had consolidated power by defeating various oppositionists inside the Soviet Communist Party. Even after becoming the paramount leader of the USSR, Stalin’s power was not unchallenged. Stalin’s policies of industrialization and collectivization had resulted in some genuine advances, but also led to a great deal of upheaval and social discontent in the USSR. As a result, there were figures inside the Communist Party who questioned Stalin’s line and even wanted him removed. In addition, the rise to power of Hitler and Nazism in Germany after 1933 meant that the Soviet Union was facing the very real possibility of war in the near future. All of these domestic and foreign events laid the groundwork for the Great Purges.

What set off the Purges was the assassination of Leningrad Party leader Sergei Kirov in December 1934. While the assassin was arrested almost immediately, Stalin believed that he was involved in a vast overarching plot involving former Oppositionists to overturn the government. Over the coming years, the Soviet security forces would attempt to root out all these “enemies of the people.” By 1937, the Purges ravaged all aspects of Soviet society, party, and state as a witch hunt atmosphere took hold. In their zeal, the Soviet police conducted mass arrests of innocent people and torture was routinely practiced.

In three show trials held in Moscow during 1936–38, former Communist Party leaders such as Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin confessed to fantastic crimes of working with Trotsky and fascist powers to wreck the economy, conduct espionage, and carry out terrorism with the aim of overthrowing Stalin and restoring capitalism in the USSR. All of them were found guilty with most being summarily shot. Trotsky himself was living in Mexican exile, but he was murdered by a Soviet agent in August 1940.

At the end of the Purges, pretty much all sources of opposition to Stalin, whether real or imagined, had been wiped out in the Soviet Union. Now the bureaucratic caste surrounding Stalin was able to consolidate power. While the bureaucracy professed loyalty to the goals and program of communism, they had done so by murdering leaders of the October Revolution. In many respects, the Purges helped to suffocate revolutionary consciousness in the Soviet and international working class. Even though the restoration of capitalism happened decades later, I would argue that its roots can be traced back to the consolidation of Stalinism and the Great Purges. 

Then and now, these accusations strain credulity. But lots of communists suppressed their doubts, saying that there must have been lots of counterrevolutionary conspiracies, and Stalin was at most overreacting to real threats. What was the material basis for the Purges?

As you mentioned, Communist Party members around the world pretty much accepted the “Trotskyite-Fascist” narrative given during the Moscow Trials. They believed that Stalin represented the historical necessity of communism. Questioning that would potentially lead to doubting the revolutionary cause itself. Any doubts amongst party members were expressed privately, if at all. It would only be after 1956 and Khrushchev’s Secret Speech that you’d see party members question Stalinist dogma. In my book, I detail how devastating that speech was for longtime militants.

On the other hand, anticommunists saw the Purges as proof that revolutions are like the Roman god Saturn eating their own children. For them, this was a sign that a proletarian revolution was bound to end in totalitarianism, terror, and the Gulag. A genuine understanding of the Purges means rejecting these twin narratives.

I would argue that there are four overlapping material processes that caused the Purges. The first is that Stalin and the government in Moscow wanted to impose centralized control on the more distant periphery. Contrary to popular understanding, Stalin did not exercise total control in the country but faced a great deal of passive resistance from regional bureaucrats. Eliminating these layers and replacing them with more compliant figures would allow Stalin to more easily implement directives for the whole country. It should be noted that this side of the Purges largely targeted loyal Stalinists. The late historian J. Arch Getty did extensive research on this.

The second element in the Purges involved the direction of Soviet foreign policy. After 1933, there was a back-and-forth between those who wanted collective security with Britain and France to contain Germany, including former right oppositionist Nikolai Bukharin and Red Army Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and others in the Soviet government who were more open to some kind of accommodation with Nazi Germany. The most prominent figures in the latter camp were Stalin and Molotov. It is likely the disagreements over foreign policy led to the purge of Bukharin and the Red Army.

A third cause of the Purges involved the longstanding struggles between Stalin and various opposition groups. By the 1930s, Stalin had triumphed over these groups, but the growth of the bureaucracy and privilege was a mockery of the egalitarianism of the October Revolution. Now Stalin wanted to consolidate his control by essentially “cleaning house” and wiping out opposition to its rule. This took the form of what the historian Vadim Rogovin called a “preventive civil war” by Stalin to discredit and destroy the real and potential communist opposition. Leon Trotsky was the most well-known figure with a clear alternative program. That’s why he was the central figure mentioned during all the trials. For Stalin, it was essential to paint Trotsky as just a fascist criminal in order to discredit his alternative to Stalinism.

The final element of the Purges was a vast hunt for “Trotskyites” with spy-baiting, hysteria, and general denunciation. By 1937, this got out of hand as the Purges affected all levels of the Soviet Union, leading to vast round-ups and mass arrests by the NKVD, the Soviet interior ministry. Stalin did not direct it, and this served no reasonable purpose. In other words, this was a process that got completely out of control. 

Defenders of Stalin would say something like: you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs — and this kind of bloody violence was necessary to save the revolution. Did the Moscow Trials indeed help protect the Soviet Union?

According to all the neo-Stalinists I discuss in my book — Domenico Losurdo, Ludo Martens, Grover Furr, and Bill Bland — the Purges safeguarded the Soviet Union by wiping out a dangerous pro-fascist fifth column. This was also the line promoted by Communist Party members during the 1930s and 1940s as well.

Simply put: they are completely and utterly wrong. In 1937, the Purge reached the Red Army and decimated the highest levels of its command. This had a devastating effect on the Red Army when World War II began. According to the historian Moshe Lewin, most of the frontline commanders had little experience when the Germans invaded. The army purges undoubtedly contributed to the high casualties and initial defeats that the Red Army suffered after Operation Barbarossa. While the USSR eventually won the war, the military purges were a self-inflicted wound by Stalin that made victory more costly than it should have been.

Among those purged was Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was not only a dedicated communist and anti-fascist, but a brilliant military thinker who developed new strategies to fight the Germans. Even though his theories were condemned, many of his strategic ideas were later adopted by the Red Army during World War II, enabling them to win at the crucial battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. I honestly would like someone to explain to me how purging a dedicated communist military leader helped the Soviet Union.

While for most people today, it’s obvious that the Moscow Trials were an enormous frame-up, you’ve written an entire book looking at the works of four Stalin apologists. Do you think their ideas are relevant today?

It’s true that most (correctly) people look at the Moscow Trials as frame-ups. So why write about blatant apologists when everyone already knows the truth?

Despite the collapse of the USSR, Stalinism in its various forms remains an important pole of attraction on the broader Left. In rejecting anticommunist propaganda about the Soviet Union, there is often a rush to the opposite pole, that “Stalin did nothing wrong.” It’s important to push back against these dogmatic and irrationalist views of Stalin by promoting a sober and rational Marxist approach.

Radicalizing people who are looking for alternatives to the dead-ends of social democracy and liberalism find Marxism-Leninism very attractive. We shouldn’t forget that there are five countries that claim its heritage, including China, Cuba, and Vietnam. I should add that Communist Parties remain major forces on the Left in many countries such as India, Greece, and others. In the United States, the Communist Party has experienced growth in recent years and their publishing house reprinted Stalin’s The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) (Short Course). This text was originally published in 1938 and served as the Soviet Bible, including the narrative of the trials. So neo-Stalinism remains a contender in contemporary politics and it is necessary to combat its ideas.

The most serious of the bunch is the Italian philosopher Domenico Losurdo. How does he try to justify the trials?

Before I answer, I want to say that Domenico Losurdo cannot be reduced to Stalinist apologia. Losurdo’s writings on subjects ranging from Hegel, Nietzsche, liberalism, and Bonapartism are major works deserving serious consideration. In providing a critical balance sheet for Losurdo or other pro-Soviet intellectuals such as Georg Lukács, Albert Soboul, Eric Hobsbawm, or W.E.B. Du Bois, we need to keep in mind that they made genuine contributions while often believing the most outlandish things about Stalin and the USSR.

Losurdo is unique amongst the figures I covered in that he does not rely primarily upon the confessions and verdicts of the Moscow Trials to make his case — but his conclusions are pretty much the same. The crux of Losurdo’s argument is based on his understanding of the revolutionary process more universally. He believes that all revolutions — whether in France, Russia, and China — necessarily pass from a utopian stage to a more conservative stage if they are to survive. According to Losurdo, Trotsky represented the egalitarian, utopian, and messianic hopes of 1917. To preserve the revolution, it was necessary to consolidate the new order by adopting more “realistic” policies. This is what Stalin did by promoting socialism in one country, the bureaucracy, material incentives, inequality, etc.

Losurdo argues that Trotsky could not understand this historic necessity, so he accused Stalin of betraying the revolution. This led to a “Bolshevik civil war” between Trotsky and Stalin, resulting in the fratricidal violence of the Purges. However tragic and horrible the Purges were, Losurdo claims that Trotsky’s defeat was required if the Soviet Union was to survive. Additionally, he believes that Trotsky’s opposition to Stalin meant that he objectively — if not subjectively — aligned himself with Adolf Hitler and fascism.

What makes Losurdo’s defense of Stalin unique is that he doesn’t depend upon the validity of the Moscow Trials. Rather, his argument is more overtly political. It does not matter if the confessions were absurd. What matters to Losurdo is that Stalin’s program represented historical necessity while Trotsky’s ideas did not. As a result, he sides with Stalin regardless. Interestingly, Losurdo’s position echoes the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who expressed the same idea in Humanism and Terror (1947), which is the most erudite philosophical defense of Stalinism ever written. Yet Losurdo’s method means that he is unable to recognize the counterrevolutionary nature of Stalinism. I discuss Losurdo specifically and Stalinism more generally at length in my book, Stalinism and the Dialectics of Saturn: Anticommunism, Marxism, and the Fate of the Soviet Union.

The most clownish defender of Stalin is certainly Grover Furr. You are probably one of just a handful of people who have read Furr’s numerous books full of conspiracy theories. Can you offer us insight into what he believes?

Furr is probably the most prolific defender of Stalin currently alive. If you believe his own account, he became interested in Stalin and Soviet history during the 1960s. From the 1980s onward, Furr has written a small library of books and articles on Soviet history during the Stalin era. Considering his professorship in medieval literature, his defense of the Stalinist Inquisition is rather ironic. I personally think Furr is absolutely sincere in his views.

His most (in)famous book is Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence that Every “Revelation” of Stalin’s (And Beria’s) “Crimes” in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “Secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Probably False. Based on that overlong title, he thinks that Khrushchev lied from beginning to end and that Stalin committed no crimes. To put it bluntly: he defends the official Soviet narrative on Stalin and the Moscow Trials.

Furr relies primarily on the confessions from the Moscow Trials. He claims that these confessions were truthful and that there was no coercion by the Soviet security forces involved. When it comes to the bloodstains on the document with Tukhachevsky’s confession, he argues they could have been from a nosebleed. Beyond this, he believes that the lack of physical proof for any “Trotskyite-Fascist” plot doesn’t matter. After all, conspirators are not supposed to leave any paper trail behind. Based on Furr’s logic, the best proof for Trotsky’s conspiracy is that there is no proof at all.

He refers to every rumor, half-truth, and piece of gossip to prove the conspiracy. He also has a habit of exaggerating these points while ignoring the widespread evidence that counters his arguments, including from the Soviet archives. Furr is also guilty of pretty much every logical fallacy that you can imagine.

Furr also believes that Stalin was a secret democrat whose plans to democratize the Soviet Union were thwarted by NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. Blaming Yezhov allows Furr to exonerate Stalin for the severe violence of the purges. In fact, he believes that both NKVD chiefs Yagoda and Yezhov were in league with Trotsky. Even though two figures later unmasked as “enemies of the people” led the NKVD during the period of the Moscow Trials, Furr doesn’t believe that this calls into question the verdicts. He thinks Yagoda and Yezhov were spies, but the evidence they produced was still reliable.

But I don’t think Furr is actually the most clownish defender of Stalin. One other person I cover is Bill Bland, who was a follower of Enver Hoxha. Bland not only defends Stalin but essentially declares him to be a divine being. Bland is the closest you see to the transformation of Stalinism into a religion. To my knowledge, Furr has not yet done that.

Stalinists believe they discovered the largest conspiracy in world history: hundreds of thousands of communists working with an array of imperialist powers, their sworn enemies. And even 80 years later, no one has found even a single scrap of paper offering proof. This is amazing when you consider that the archives of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan ended up in the hands of their enemies. 

You’re correct that no proof exists anywhere about the “Trotskyite-Fascist” conspiracy. No one has unearthed anything in the archives of the USSR, Poland, Germany, or Japan. Nor were high-ranking Nazis charged with anything relating to the Moscow Trials at Nuremberg, even though the Soviet Union had judges there.

Even though there was no proof of a “Trotskyite-Fascist” conspiracy, Communist Party members around the world believed it. If Stalin represented truth and progress, then Trotsky stood for falsehood and fascism. They acted upon it with tragic results. Throughout my book, I detail the rhetoric that you heard from Communist Party militants in France, Yugoslavia, Canada, and the United States condemning Trotsky as a hireling of fascism. I also show how this led to bloodletting in the Spanish Civil War, Trotsky’s murder, and the antisemitic show trials in Czechoslovakia. We can see the danger of what happens when people — even supposed Marxists — ignore objective truth and decide to act on a conspiracy theory.

There has been a certain growth of neo-Stalinism in recent years. How do you explain that? Is that what motivated you to write this book?

Anyone who has been online knows that weird people and even weirder ideas tend to find each other. You can see this with the most bizarre version of online neo-Stalinism which is “MAGA Communism” and the so-called American Communist Party. Although, I would argue the ACP is a degeneration of Stalinism toward more openly fascist positions.

Certainly, the persistence and growth of Marxist-Leninist parties was a motivation for me. Yet I was really motivated to write this book in order to combat the apologetics by Furr and others. Most people will ignore Furr, like we do with Holocaust deniers such as David Irving. Yet it is still necessary for someone to do the dirty work of exposing their falsehoods. No one has looked at Furr systematically and it was a necessary task. I will admit that the hardest part of this project was reading Furr’s whole corpus.

Beyond that, I think that there is a broader need to challenge neo-Stalinist ideas as part of a general struggle against irrationalism. In recent years, there has been an extraordinary growth in conspiracy theories and “alternative facts,” particularly in the United States. We’ve seen a resurgence of neo-Nazism and alt-right groups, who have all promoted various antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Many people understand the world through conspiracy theories. However, the methodology of conspiracism cannot allow us to actually know reality — it is akin to religious fundamentalism.

Neo-Stalinist conspiracism is a similar sort of conspiracism on the Left. And I believe that Marxists should train our members in reason and science — we are the true heirs to the heritage of the Radical Enlightenment, after all. Exposing the conspiracism of Losurdo, Martens, Bland, and Furr is a useful exercise in promoting critical thinking, materialist dialectics, and historical analysis. Always and everywhere, conspiracy theories are obstacles to reason and progress. If we want to really know the world, then we cannot use conspiracist nonsense. Rather, reason and historical truth can help us truly understand and change the world in the wider struggle for communism.

Doug Greene, In Stalin’s Shadow: Leon Trotsky and the Legacy of the Moscow Trials (London: Resistance Books, 2025), 272 pages, £18.