The 1938 Moscow trial charged Yagoda and doctors with murdering Maxim Gorky and his son; 18 defendants were sentenced to be shot

Maxim Gorky died on 18 June 1936 at his dacha near Moscow. The official cause was pneumonia after a long illness. He had lived under unannounced house arrest since the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, and his son Maxim Peshkov had died suddenly in May 1934. Stalin and Molotov carried his urn at the funeral. In March 1938, in the third Moscow Trial, the prosecution charged 21 defendants, among them the former NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda and the Kremlin doctors Lev Levin, Ignaty Kazakov and Dmitry Pletnev, with a plot that included killing Gorky and his son. The trial record runs from 5 to 12 March 1938. On 13 March the court sentenced 18 defendants, including Yagoda, Levin and Kazakov, to be shot with confiscation of all property. Pletnev received 25 years. Historians consider nearly all the charges fabricated. Some hold that Yagoda poisoned Gorky on Stalin's orders^†. No court has tested that claim. The 1938 verdict is the only court finding on the question^†.