Thirteen Jewish poets were executed in Moscow for espionage based on false confessions.

The Night of the Murdered Poets was the execution of thirteen Soviet Jews in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow on 12 August 1952. The arrests were first made in September 1948 and June 1949. All defendants were falsely accused of espionage and treason as well as many other crimes. After their arrests, they were tortured, beaten, and isolated for three years before being formally charged. There were five Yiddish writers among these defendants, all of whom were part of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.

A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. When some degree of coercion is involved, studies have found that subjects with low intelligence or with mental disorders are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, and have a significantly higher rate of false confessions than adults. Hundreds of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit – but years later, have been exonerated. It was not until several shocking false confession cases were publicized in the late 1980s, combined with the introduction of DNA evidence, that the extent of wrongful convictions began to emerge – and how often false confessions played a role in these.