Show trial

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Court show, Mock trial, or Showtrial (TV series).

People's Court trial of Adolf Reichwein, Nazi Germany, 1944[1]

A show trial is a public trial in which the guilt or innocence of the defendant has already been determined. The purpose of holding a show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public, serving as an example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.[2]

Show trials tend to be

corrective, and they are also conducted for propagandistic purposes.[3] When aimed at individuals on the basis of protected classes or characteristics, show trials are examples of political persecution. The term was first recorded in 1928.[4]

A similar concept is "kangaroo court".

China

After the

Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, show trials were given to "rioters and counter-revolutionaries" involved in the protests and the subsequent military massacre.[5]

Chinese

better source needed
]

Soviet Union

Main article: Moscow trials
Moscow trial

As early as 1922,

Soviet Ukraine.[8]

Show trials became common during

Soviet society.[9]

Some public evidence of actual events during the Moscow Trials came to

New York Times reporter Walter Duranty,[citation needed
] who claimed at the time that these trials were actually fair.

Eastern Europe

Captain Witold Pilecki, former prisoner at Auschwitz during a show trial conducted by communist authorities in Poland in 1948
See also: Eastern Bloc politics

Following some dissent within ruling communist parties throughout the Eastern Bloc, especially after the 1948 Tito–Stalin split,[10][11] several party purges occurred, with several hundred thousand members purged in several countries.[10][12] In addition to rank-and-file member purges, prominent communists were purged, with some subjected to public show trials.[12] These were more likely to be instigated, and sometimes orchestrated, by the Kremlin or even Stalin himself, as he had done in the earlier Moscow Trials.[13]

Such high-ranking party show trials included those of Koçi Xoxe in Albania and Traicho Kostov in Bulgaria, who were purged and arrested.[11] After Kostov was executed, Bulgarian leaders sent Stalin a telegram thanking him for the help.[13] In Romania, Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca were arrested, with Pătrășcanu being executed.[12] The Soviets generally directed show trial methods throughout the Eastern Bloc, including a procedure in which confessions and evidence from leading witnesses could be extracted by any means, including threatening to torture the witnesses' wives and children.[14] The higher-ranking the party member, generally the more harsh the torture that was inflicted upon him.[14] For the show trial of Hungarian Interior Minister János Kádár, who one year earlier had attempted to force a confession of Rajk in his show trial, regarding "Vladimir" the questioner of Kádár:[14]

Vladimir had but one argument: blows. They had begun to beat Kádár. They had smeared his body with mercury to prevent his pores from breathing. He had been writhing on the floor when a newcomer had arrived. The newcomer was Vladimir's father, Mihály Farkas. Kádár was raised from the ground. Vladimir stepped close. Two henchmen pried Kádár's teeth apart, and the colonel, negligently, as if this were the most natural thing in the world, urinated into his mouth.

The evidence was often not just non-existent but absurd,[

ÁVH secret police also condemned another party member as a Nazi accomplice with a document that had been previously displayed in a glass cabinet at the Institute of the Working Class Movement as an example of a Gestapo forgery.[15] The trials themselves were "shows", with each participant having to learn a script and conduct repeated rehearsals before the performance.[15] In the Slánský trial in Czechoslovakia, when the judge skipped one of the scripted questions, the better-rehearsed Slánský answered the one which should have been asked.[15]

Yugoslavia

In 1946,

Communist political show trial that was controlled by the government. The court concluded that Mihailović had not received a fair trial. Mihailović was, therefore, fully rehabilitated.[16][17][18]

During 1946–1949, several well-publicized show trials were held in the

People's Republic of Slovenia. First was the Nagode Trial in which 32 non-communist intellectuals were tried as spies, three of them sentenced to death. Second was a series of so-called Dachau trials
in which 37 members of the Communist Party were sentenced, 15 of them to death.

Hungary

Stalin's

ÁVH head the way the show trial of Hungarian Minister of Interior László Rajk should go, and he was later executed.[13]

Czechoslovakia

The

Rajk trials in Hungary led Moscow to warn Czechoslovakia's parties that enemy agents had penetrated even high into party ranks, and when a puzzled Rudolf Slánský and Klement Gottwald
inquired what they could do, Stalin's NKVD agents arrived to help prepare subsequent trials.

First, these trials focused on people outside the

high treason,[19] damaging the interests of the Czechoslovak Republic and the Soviet Union, and undermining the ability of the state to defend itself, Píka was not allowed to present a defence, and no witnesses were called. He was sentenced to death and hanged. During the Prague Spring of 1968, Píka's case was reopened at the request of Milan Píka (son of Heliodor) and the elder Píka's lawyer, and a military tribunal declared Heliodor Píka innocent of all charges.[20]

People's parties, in September 1948, held to discuss their response to the new political situation in Czechoslovakia. She was also accused of maintaining contacts with Czechoslovak political figures in exile in the West. The trial of Horáková and twelve of her colleagues began on 31 May 1950[22] and the State's prosecutors were led by Dr. Josef Urválek and included Ludmila Brožová-Polednová. The trial proceedings were carefully orchestrated with confessions of guilt secured from the accused, though a recording of the event, discovered in 2005, revealed Horáková's defence of her political ideals.[23] Horáková was sentenced to death, along with three co-defendants (Jan Buchal, Oldřich Pecl, and Záviš Kalandra), on 8 June 1950. Many prominent figures in the West, notably Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt, petitioned for her life, but the sentences were confirmed. She was executed by hanging in Prague's Pankrác Prison
on 27 June 1950.

The trials then turned to the communist party itself (

anti-Semitic overtones.[citation needed] All were found guilty, with three being sentenced to life imprisonment while the rest were sentenced to death. Slánský was hanged at Pankrác Prison
on 3 December 1952. His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered on an icy road outside of Prague.

Western Europe

Nazi Germany

Between 1933 and 1945,

Nazi regime.[24]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "German Resistance Memorial Center – Biographie". gdw-berlin.de. Retrieved 30 August 2020.
  2. ^ OED (2014): "show trial".
  3. ^ "SHOW TRIAL | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary". dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  4. ^ "Definition of SHOW TRIAL". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  5. ^ Show Trials in China: After Tiananmen Square, Mark Findlay, Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 352–359. Published by Wiley-Blackwell
  6. ^ "Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo jailed for subversion". BBC News. 25 December 2009.
  7. ^ China's Show Trial of the Century, Ma Jian, Project Syndicate, 20 August 2012
  8. ^ Chase, William (2005). "12: Stalin as producer: the Moscow show trials and the construction of mortal threats". In
    ISBN 9781139446631
    . Retrieved 25 September 2018. Lenin appreciated the power of show trials and was keen to use them [...]. [...] In a February 1922 letter [...] Lenin recommended 'staging a series of model trials' that would administer 'quick and forceful repression' in 'Moscow, Piter [Petrograd], Kharkov and several other important centres'.
  9. ^
    ISBN 9780199245130
    . Retrieved 4 April 2021. The characters who embodied these sins then confessed in a 'self-criticism' session. This type of political theatre obviously had a great deal in common with the political show trial and with rituals of 'self-criticism' in the party .
  10. ^ a b Bideleux & Jeffries 2007, p. 477
  11. ^ a b Crampton 1997, p. 261
  12. ^ a b c Crampton 1997, p. 262
  13. ^ a b c Crampton 1997, p. 263
  14. ^ a b c Crampton 1997, p. 264
  15. ^ a b c d Crampton 1997, p. 265
  16. ^ "Court rehabilitates WW2-era Chetnik leader Draza Mihailovic - English - on B92.net". B92.net. 14 May 2015. Retrieved 4 January 2019.
  17. ^ "Serbia Rehabilitates WWII Chetnik Leader Mihailovic". www.balkaninsight.com. 14 May 2015. Retrieved 4 January 2019.
  18. ^ ""Draza Mihailovic rehabilitated", May 14, 2015, InSerbia". 18 May 2015.
  19. ^ Hauner, Milan (Winter 2001–2002) (20 July 2011). "Crime and Punishment in Prague: The Strange Case of Karel Vaš and Gen. Heliodor Píka" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 25 June 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  20. ^ "Remembering General Heliodor Píka, first victim of the communist show trials". Radio Prague International. 19 June 2009. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  21. ^ "Milada Horáková – Radio Praha". old.radio.cz. Archived from the original on 27 June 2020. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  22. ^ "Dr. Horáková Milada a spol. – Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů". www.ustrcr.cz. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  23. ^ "Young director to bring story of Milada Horakova to silver screen". Radio Prague International. 6 April 2007. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  24. ^ Peter Hoffmann "The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945"p.xiii

References

External links

Media related to Show trials at Wikimedia Commons

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