Industrial Party Trial

The Industrial Party Trial (November 25 – December 7, 1930) (Russian: Процесс Промпартии, Trial of the Prompartiya) was a show trial in which several Soviet scientists and economists were accused and convicted of plotting a coup against the government of the Soviet Union.

Nikolai Krylenko, deputy People's Commissar (minister) of Justice, assistant Prosecutor General of the RSFSR and a prominent Bolshevik, prosecuted the case. The presiding judge was Andrey Vyshinsky, later Krylenko's opponent who became famous as the prosecutor at the Moscow Trials in 1936-1938.

The defendants were a group of notable Soviet economists and engineers, including Leonid Ramzin, Osadchy (Осадчий), Charnovsky (Чарновский), Fedotov (Федотов), Larichev (Ларичев), Ochkin (Очкин), Sitnin, Kalinnikov, and Kupryanov. They stood accused of having formed an anti-Soviet "Union of Engineers’ Organisations" or Prompartiya ("Industrial Party") and of having tried to wreck the Soviet industry and transport in 1926-1930.

In a related development, a number of prominent members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (Yevgeny Tarle, Sergei Platonov, Nikolay Likhachov, Sergei Bakhrushin, etc.) were arrested in 1930. They were mentioned during the "Industrial Party" trial as co-conspirators. However, no subsequent trial took place and they were quietly exiled to remote areas of the country for a few years.

The Industrial Party Trial was the first post-NEP trial in which the defendants were accused of plotting a coup against the Soviet regime. The plot was supposedly hatched by emigre Russian industrialists in Paris, and allegedly involved the governments of France, England and some smaller countries like Latvia and Estonia. For participating in the coup France would supposedly be rewarded parts of Ukraine while the English would get a share in the Caucasus oil. Upon the arrival of the invasion forces the defendants would sabotage Soviet industry and create chaos in the transportation networks (charges of this kind were to become standard in later show trials of the 1930s). The trial was also notable in that it was the first Soviet show trial at which the defendants "confessed" their supposed crimes, including co-operating with the Prime Minister of France Raymond Poincaré (all the confessions were extracted through various torture methods). The latter had to issue a public refutation, published in Pravda, which was presented at the trial as an additional "proof" by the prosecution.

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