1931 Menshevik Trial
The Menshevik Trial was one of the early
Defendants
The defendants were:
Six out of the fourteen defendants were Jews. It was suggested in
The trial
The defendants were accused of setting up the "All-Union Bureau of Mensheviks." Vladimir Groman gave a public testimony that he and Vladimir Bazarov (who was not on trial) headed a counterrevolutionary group in Gosplan, purportedly organized in 1923, which attempted at "influencing the economic policy of the Soviet authorities so as to hold the position of 1923–25."[4] Groman, being a member of the Presidium of the Gosplan the star figure among the accused, damned himself and his colleagues with testimony that at Gosplan they had spent their time
Putting into the control figures and into the surveys of current business planning ideas and deliberately distorted appraisals antagonistic to the general Party line (lowering the rates of expansion of socialist construction, distorting the class approach, exaggerating the difficulties), stressing the signs of an impending catastrophe (Groman) or, what is close to this, assigning a negligible chance of success to the Party line directed toward the socialist attack (Bazarov, Gukhman) ...[5]
Final day
On the final day, the prisoners made confessions of their "crimes". "In the last minutes before my death", one of them was quoted saying, "I will think with disgust of the evil I have wrought; evil for which not we, but foreign Menshevists and the Second International must share responsibility."
Nikolai Krylenko, the Public Prosecutor, declared that Groman, Sher, Yakubovitch, Ginzburg, and Sukhanov were the principal leaders of the counter-revolutionary organization, and therefore, must suffer the death penalty. For the others he asked that they should be isolated "for long periods".[6]
Verdict
At 9 March 1931, after deliberating for twenty-five hours, the court sentenced seven defendants to ten years' imprisonment. The seven other defendants were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment, ranging from five to eight years. Those who received the ten years' sentence were Groman, Sher, Sukhanov, Ginzburg, Jakobovich, Petunina, and Finn-Enotaevsky.[7]
Reactions
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Litvin, A. L. "Men'shevistskii Protsess 1931 Goda". Retrieved 14 December 2013.
- Aberdeen Journal. British Newspaper Archive. 2 March 1931. Retrieved 17 May 2015.
- ^ Menshevik Trial in Moscow Arranged Specially As Move to Work Up Soviet Feeling Against Jews, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7 March 1931
- ^ Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties, pg. 136, citing the transcript of Groman's trial testimony published in Protsess kontrrevoliutsionnoi organizatsii Men'shevikov (1 marta—9 marta 1931): Stenogragramma sudebnogo protsessa. Moscow: Sovetskoe Zakonodatel'stvo, 1931; pg. 69.
- ^ Naum Jasny, Soviet Industrialization, 1928–1952. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961; pg. 69, quoting Protsess kontrrevoliutsionnoi organizatsii Men'shevikov, pg. 37.
- ^ "MOSCOW TRIAL ENDED". Western Morning News. British Newspaper Archive. 9 March 1931. Retrieved 17 May 2015.
- Aberdeen Journal. British Newspaper Archive. 10 March 1931. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
- ^ Abramovich, Rafail (14 March 1931). "Against Fascism and Bolshevik Slander!". Sotsialistichesky Vestnik. 5 (243): 11–12.
- marxists.org)
Further reading
- A.L. Litvin (ed.), Men'shevistskii Protsess 1931 goda: Sbornik dokumentov v 2-x knigakh (The Menshevik Trial of 1931: Collection of documents in 2 volumes). Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999.
- Protsess kontrrrevoliutsionnoi organizatsii Men'shevikov (1 Marta-9 Marta 1933 g.): Stenogramma sudebnoe protsess ... (Trial of the Counterrevolutionary Organization of Mensheviks, 1–9 March 1931: Stenogram of the Legal Trial ...). Moscow: Sovetskoe Zakonodatel'stvo, 1931.
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