Moderate views on economic planning and the treatment of the opposition had carried the day at the 1934 party congress: A subcommission under Stalin's chairmanship had rejected Molotov's high industrial targets, and Stalin had noted that the opposition had been “smashed” in the party and that “there is no one left to fight.” But mid-1936 would see a resurrection of debate on both these issues as N. I. Ezhov and V. M. Molotov reasserted radical solutions to these controversies. Although this resurgent radical current did not at first threaten the party apparatus, its effects eventually created a climate that did.

The assassination of Kirov in December 1934 had seen a brief flurry of diffuse antiopposition radicalism. The Moscow leadership had been unprepared for the shooting, and, at first, Pravda did not know whom to blame for the killing. Rather than moving forcefully against key leaders of the opposition, the regime lashed out at White Guards, “former people,” and persons already in prison. Such blind rage against traditional class enemies does not suggest a major planned campaign against leading dissidents, and it would be more than a year before the first capital trial of the opposition leadership.

Yet the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev for moral complicity, combined with certain maneuvers in local party committees, showed that radicals did make a halfhearted and unsuccessful attempt to incite the party against the opposition.