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The Moscow Trials, which lasted from 1936 to 1938 will go down as the greatest frame-up in history. Their aim was to liquidate the entire remaining Bolshevik old guard and act as the means by which Stalin could consolidate his power as head of the bureaucratic caste that ruled the Soviet Union. Seventy-five years on, Jim Brookshaw - a former member of the British Communist Party - looks back at what happened and asks: why?