Shortly thereafter, in March 1938, he was put on trial along with Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Krestinsky and other Old Bolsheviks, on charges of conspiring with Trotsky to overthrow Stalin, the third Moscow Show Trial—known as the Trial of the Twenty One. In his forced confession to Andrey Vyshinsky, he admitted to all the charges—including having been a spy (for Japan) and a landowner. He made attempts to point out that his revenue had been used to support socialism, and that he had a grasp of "revolutionary practices", but was attacked by Vyshinsky, who persistently referred to Rakovsky as "a counterrevolutionary". In his final statement, Rakovsky argued: "from my young days I honestly, truthfully and devotedly performed my duty as a soldier of the cause of the emancipation of labor. After this bright period a dark period set in, the period of my criminal deeds".