After Vyshinsky arrived at the Foreign Ministry, the purge trials, for obvious reasons, were not a subject of lively discussion.

But unlike the purge trials conducted in the Soviet Union under Stalin, the sentence was relatively mild: life imprisonment.

The purge trials of 1949-54 were reviewed, for example, and some of those purged were rehabilitated.

Surely, not since Stalin's purge trials of the 1930's.

The special commission, whose chairman and members have not been publicly identified, was created by the Politburo in October to review the purge trials.

But two months later the Soviet government announced the first of its purge trials.

Sejanus began a series of purge trials of Senators in Rome.

All four were victims of the purge trials in the 1930's, those parodies of justice in which the innocent accused confessed their guilt.

During the great purge trials, he was accused of espionage.

Markish denounced writers charged in the purge trials of the 1930's.