Shakhty Trial

The Shakhty Trial (Russian: Ша́хтинское де́ло) was the first important Soviet show trial since the case of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in 1922. The trial was conducted in 1928 in Moscow.

In 1928, the local OGPU arrested a group of engineers (including Peter Palchinsky, Nikolai von Meck and A. F. Velichko) in the North Caucasus town of Shakhty, accusing them of conspiring with former owners of coal mines (living abroad and barred from the Soviet Union since the Revolution) to sabotage the Soviet economy. The architect of these arrests and interrogations was Efim Georgievich Evdokimov. Technically retired from the OGPU in 1931, he would later lead a secret police team within the NKVD itself.

The Shakhty trials marked the beginning of a long series of accusations against class enemies within the Soviet Union, and was to become a hallmark of the Great Purge of the 1930s. On March 10, 1928, in response to the arrests, Pravda announced that the bourgeoisie were using sabotage as a method of class struggle. Joseph Stalin mentioned a month later that the Shakhty arrests proved that class struggle was intensifying as the Soviet Union moved closer to socialism.

Fifty Russian and three German technicians and engineers from the coal industry were to be tried publicly on charges of counter-revolutionary sabotage and espionage... This was Revolutionary Justice... the same Revolutionary Justice that had presided over the guillotine in the French Terror... the accused men were coming into the court pre-judged... We waited in vain for a genuine piece of impersonal and unimpeachable testimony... that did not carry the suspicion of G.P.U. extortion. The "far-reaching international intrigue" never did emerge... Only a very few [of the accused], among them two aged Jews, Rabinovich and Imineetov, retained their self-respect intact. Imineetov said, "One day another Zola will arise and will write another J'Accuse to restore our names to honor."

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