The preparation for this trial was delayed in its early stages due to the reluctance of some party members to denounce their comrades. Stalin personally intervened to speed up the process and replaced Yagoda with
Nikolai Yezhov. Only one defendant, Nikolai Krestinsky, initially refused to admit his guilt. He changed his position within a day, however, telling Public Prosecutor
Andrei Vyshinsky: "I fully and completely admit that I am guilty of all the gravest charges brought against me personally, and that I admit my complete responsibility for the treason and treachery I have committed." Bukharin's confession was limited in a different fashion. Observers have speculated that Bukharin had reached some sort of agreement with the prosecution: while he admitted guilt to general charges, he undercut that by denying any knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Bukharin typically would admit only what was in his written confessions and refused to go any further; at one point in the trial, when Vyshinsky asked him about a conspiracy to weaken Soviet military power, Bukharin responded "it was not discussed, at least in my presence", at which point Vyshinsky dropped the question and moved to another topic. There is other evidence that Bukharin had reached an agreement to trade his confession for personal concessions of some sort.
Anastas Mikoyan and
Vyacheslav Molotov claim that Bukharin was never tortured. Bukharin had been allowed to write four book-length manuscripts, including an autobiographical novel,
How It All Began, a philosophical treatise, and a collection of poems – all of which were found in Stalin's archive and published in the 1990s – while in prison. Bukharin also wrote a series of very emotional letters to Stalin protesting his innocence and professing his love for Stalin, which contrasts with his critical opinion of Stalin and his policies expressed to others and his conduct in the trial. Yet Bukharin appears to have strayed from that agreement at trial. While he had accepted responsibility "even for those crimes about which I did not know or about which I did not have the slightest idea" on the theory that he was the head of the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", he testified that the Bloc did not exist and its members had never met.) and saying that "the confession of accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in the trial that was solely based on confessions, he finished his last plea with "the monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all." Other defendants apparently still hoped for clemency. Yagoda, who had overseen the interrogations that led to the previous show trials, made a plea for mercy directly to Stalin, who may, according to
Solzhenitsyn, have been observing the proceedings: Just as though Stalin had been sitting right there in the hall, Yagoda confidently and insistently begged him directly for mercy: "I appeal to you!
For you I built two
great canals!" And a witness reports that at just that moment a match flared in the shadows behind a window on the second floor of the hall, apparently behind a muslin curtain, and, while it lasted, the outline of a pipe could be seen. In his final word, Vyshinsky said: "All our country, from small one to old one, awaits and demands one thing: traitors and spies who sold to the enemy our homeland to be shot like mad dogs. Our people demands one thing: crush the accursed vermin!" ==Verdict==