If you believe that the Moscow Trials were a hoax then sure

In reality they were all guilty of the crimes charged against them.

When Kirov was assassinated in 1934 by Leonid the NKVD uncovered a wide ranging conspiracy to murder the Soviet leadership.

We're 80+ years from that event and bourgeois historians told the West nonstop for those 8 decades that Stalin killed Kirov to justify the crackdown on the opposition.

Because Kirovs assassin in custody gave up a circle of names in terrorist organisations and then those terrorists gave up ever more names.

If Stalin had Kirov killed then it shows the entire thing from the onset was a setup to justify the ensuing "Show Trials"

We're 80 years from those events and there has been 3 studies on the Kirov assasination,

By Kirilina, Lenoe and Grover Furr.

2 of them are bourgeois historians and come to the conclusion that Kirov was murdered by a "lone gunman" whilst Furr tears apart both their studies to show how disingenous their work is and shows how he was connected to a Trotskyite-Zinovieite bloc that show it was a bloc dedicated to assassinating the Soviet leadership

What's more, reading Lenoes study he spends 15 pages saying how much he hates socialism, hates stalin and hates the Soviets before stating his conclusion in the introduction (that Kirov wasn't killed by Stalin).

Because he knew that this tore down a key piece of Western propaganda against the Soviet Union, Stalin and socialism - that Kirov was genuinely assassinated and not murdered to justify the so-called "show trials"

Trotsky immediately pens a an article saying Stalin had Kirov killed and was such a monster he was a pall bearer at his funeral. IE. Stalin was such a ruthless killer he'd murder you then carry your coffin to the grave.

So we know Trotsky lied about Kirov and we know he lied about setting up an illegal bloc

In the year 2000, Tukhachevskys grandson (now a colonel in the Russian army) was granted access to the Tukhachevsky trial transcript that was made confidential under Kruschev and remained confidential to the wider public until 2018.

Tukhachevskys grandson was raised as an anti-Stalinist (and why not? Soviet leadership had his grandfather shot!).

He read the transcript and came away convinced his grandfather had been part of a conspiracy.

https://diplomaticpost.co.uk/index.php/2020/07/15/the-moscow-trials-colonel-viktor-alksnis-read-the-tukhachevsky-transcript-and-came-away-convinced-he-was-guilty/

In hindsight it all makes sense. Why would they be "show trials" when they were trials opened to the worlds press. The American ambassador at the time (trained as a lawyer) believed the trials were authentic.

People seem to forget the trials happened in the years preceding World War 2 when pretty much every government in Europe fell within days or weeks due to amazing Nazi foreign policy of building fifth columns inside countries.

There were many in the Soviet Union that would rather have ceded massive amounts of land to the Nazis in fear of war (particularly Ukraine which Hitler had already specifically mentioned he wanted for German 'Lebensraum' as well as the oil deposits).