The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials held in the Soviet Union at the instigation of Joseph Stalin between 1936 and 1938. The defendants included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the former leadership of the Soviet secret police. The Moscow Trials led to the execution of many of the defendants, including most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, and the trials are generally seen as part of Stalin's Great Purge which was an attempt to rid the party of current or prior party oppositionists, especially but not exclusively Trotskyists, and indeed any leading Bolshevik cadre from the period of the 1917 revolution or earlier, who might even potentially become a figurehead for the growing discontent in the Soviet populace resulting from Stalin's incompetent mismanagement of the economy.