The first of the major treason trials, that of Kamenev, Zinoviev and others in August 1936, was the signal for what Bolsheviks began to call, instead of "the purge," "the great cleansing work." But under Lenin’s influence, Stalin soon switched to the more-militant policy of armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. Some sources go far as to say that nearly all of them were prosecuted and/or executed. According to D. A. Chygayev (as quoted by Mark Deutsch), in 1922 there were 44,148 living Old Bolsheviks.It is known that many of these were targeted by the Great Purge of the 1930s. When their coup d’état occurred in November (October, Old Style) 1917, he played an important role, but one less prominent than that of his chief rival, Leon Trotsky. 2. After kangaroo trials, Stalin purged and had the great Bolshevik leaders, Lev Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev and Ivan Smirnov, accused of being “leftist” Trotskyites shot in 1936 by his dreaded secret police, the NKVD, a precursor to the KGB. The term "Old Bolshevik" refers to those who joined the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Real Old Bolsheviks. You begun with bloody vengeance on former Trotskyites… [then] went on to destroy the old Bolsheviks” (Killingray 28)8. But for Stalin, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” Old Bolsheviks Cadres. The leaders of the uprising knew only too well what the … Note: The Bolshevik faction ”RSDLP (B)” emerged in 1903-1907. The 16 defendants in this trial, who included several "old Bolsheviks" of Lenin's generation, were found guilty and executed. Shortly after Stalin's death, Beria announced triumphantly to the Politburo that he had "done [Stalin] in" and "saved [us] all", according to … A man by the name of Raskolnikov wrote a letter to Stalin concerning the great purges: “No one, as he goes to bed, knows whether he will escape arrest in the night…. The Bolshevik Revolution put an end to the free circulation of guns among the general public. Robert Conquest emphasized Stalin's paranoia, focused on the Moscow show trial of "Old Bolsheviks", and analyzed the carefully planned and systematic destruction of the Communist Party. Stalin, together with Lev Kamenev, led the Bolsheviks for three weeks. Old Bolsheviks, such as Zinoviev and Kamenev, stood accused of conspiring against the Soviet government. Interestingly Right and ”Left” critics of Stalin don’t seem to consider the following group of people Old Bolsheviks despite the fact that they obviously were – or at least ignore them when arguing that ”Stalin killed the Old Bolsheviks”. Initially, it is worthwhile to understand that the Bolshevik party was not homogeneous and divided into numerous directions supporting its leader. For example, there was the biggest block - Stalin. Stalin's death prevented a final purge of Old Bolsheviks Mikoyan and Molotov, for which Stalin had been laying the groundwork in the year prior to his death. Then the very large block of Trotsky's. Shockingly, they confessed, confessed to submitting to Trotsky’s demands to assassinate Stalin and several of his subordinates.