Zigzag by Michael J. Apter

Author:Michael J. Apter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

The Truth About Stalinist Show Trials

An even more dramatic form of other-oriented motivation is illustrated in the Soviet ‘show trials’ of the nineteen thirties. In this case, as we shall see, the victims can be understood as trying to achieve something in the mastery state. In this sense their experience was more like that of the concentration camp prisoners than of the Stockholm syndrome captives.

These show trials consisted of three huge public trials of former Communist party leaders, “Old Bolsheviks,” whose attachment to the party went back to the Revolution itself in 1917. The trials took place in Moscow between 1936 and 1938. Arising in the context of what historians call the ‘great purge,’ Stalin used these trials as part of his successful attempt to stamp out any kind of dissidence in the Soviet Union, and enforce his totalitarian rule. All 54 defendants were accused of plotting to assassinate him and restore capitalism.(16) Needless to say, these events were not really trials at all, but exercises in political power.

We now know that the accused were in fact innocent, and that confessions were extracted often through torture, or through threats to their families. (This was admitted by Krushchev during his historical denouncement of Stalin in 1956). But the astonishing thing is that many of the accused, in their public statements, not only admitted their guilt, but, despite their knowledge of the deep unfairness that they were suffering from, extolled the virtues of the Soviet Union and pleaded with people to continue to pursue the aims of the Party. And in their self-criticism they took the part of the Party against themselves, characterising themselves as “the dregs of the land,” “fascist murderers,” and “traitors who should be shot.” One of them even seriously asked Stalin if he could personally execute his fellow “traitors” as an act of contrition. (This request was refused.) (17)

Nikolai Bukharin, who had played a particularly important part in the historical development of Russian communism, in his last plea before the court, captured this identification with the Party:

“For three months I refused to say anything. Then I began to testify. Why? Because while in prison I made a revaluation of my entire past. For when you ask yourself: ‘If you must die, what are you dying for?’ – an absolute black vacuity suddenly arises before you with startling vividness. There was nothing to die for, if one wanted to die unrepented. And, on the contrary, everything positive that glistens in the Soviet Union acquires new dimensions in a man’s mind. This in the end disarmed me completely and led me to bend my knees before the Party and the country… The monstrousness of my crimes is immeasurable, especially in the new stage of the struggle of the USSR… It is in the consciousness of this that I await the verdict. What matters is not our personal feelings of the repentant enemy but the flourishing progress of the USSR and its international importance.” (18)

There seems to be something more going on in this self-abasement than submission to torture, understandable though this would be.

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