David M. Crowe, ed. Stalin's Soviet Justice: "Show" Trials, War Crimes Trials, and Nuremberg. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 256 pp. $114.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-350-08334-9.
Reviewed by Andreas Hilger (German Historical Institute, Moscow)
Published on H-Russia (October, 2020)
Commissioned by Eva M. Stolberg (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany)
In general, one does not link Stalin’s Soviet Union to progress in the development of international (criminal) law. In recent years, however, the opening of Russian archives has provided new documentation about corresponding Soviet thinking and endeavors during Stalin’s reign. On this basis, historical research as well as analyses of the history of law have established a more differentiated picture. So, Soviet academic—above all, Aron Trainin’s—ideas about conspiracy and wars of aggression significantly contributed to central points of the Nuremberg accusation and trial. Besides, Soviet political determination to present in detail Nazi crimes and, by implication, Soviet suffering and heroism during World War II to the world appeared to be a strong argument for an international public trial after the end of the war. Nevertheless, at the same time, Soviet positions and maneuvers demonstrated peculiarities of both the Soviet legal system and Soviet core understandings of (international) law, which proved to be incompatible with Western convictions and approaches. In the final analysis, Trainin’s main conceptualizations perfectly corresponded with general Stalinist assumptions regarding Moscow’s urgent needs to defend the socialist fatherland against capitalist encirclement and imminent capitalist aggression. Trainin and the political mastermind in the Kremlin shared two underlying basic ideas. Firstly, they were inclined to use criminal law “as a weapon against war and fascism” (p. 9). Secondly, they believed—or claimed—that only capitalist countries would commit wars of aggression. In principle, these convictions delineated possibilities and limits of legal cooperation between the ideological opponents in Moscow and the West. The combination of these inherent contradictions with continuing quarrels about important questions of warfare and future international relations, like, for instance, the timing of the second front, the fate of Rudolf Heß, or the future of Poland, could not but impede long-term Allied legal cooperation.
David M. Crowe opens the collection with a compact overview of the history of Russian and Soviet show trials (1878-1938). This approach automatically raises the question of legal continuities between tsarist and postrevolutionary as well as between Lenin’s and Stalin’s approaches to legal questions. Fundamental differences between tsarist legal undertakings and Soviet trials make a strong case against decisive continuities from pre- to postrevolutionary times, core questions of publicity, and—attempted or realized—concerted use of media notwithstanding. Here, readers would welcome a more general discussion of characteristics, mechanisms, functions, and logics of political justice itself. This could help to determine specific developments in Russia/the Soviet Union. In the USSR, Stalin combined Soviet experiences of early educational trials with Leninist ideas about the legalization of terror and with the Bolshevist eternal belief in the omnipresence of sinister alliances between domestic and foreign enemies. Stalin’s political and ideological preferences brought the state back into the center of legal conceptualizations. Docile cadres like Andrey Vyshinsky and legal fictions allowed for strict state control of justice and necessary legal flexibility. In addition, monstrous constructions of the infamous trials of the late 1930s reflected increasing international tensions. All in all, “purges and Vyshinsky’s ‘show’ trials,” sentences of extrajudicial institutions like the troika, and the instrument of mass deportations created a distinct Soviet mechanism for dealing with upcoming challenges and horrors of World War II (p. 66). Nevertheless, final assessments of Moscow’s concrete persecution of war and other crimes that were committed by Soviet enemies during the Second World War have to include the specific nature of the German war of annihilation against the Soviet state and its peoples. The new quality of real crimes influenced Moscow’s legal activities during and after the war. Equally, it seemed to change legitimacy, adequacy, and acceptability of Soviet instruments.
The following chapters discuss in detail the emerging ambivalence of Soviet contributions to the Allied persecution of, above all, German crimes during war and the early postwar period—or, in other words, during the emergence of the Cold War. The volume does not provide spectacular new findings but serves as a concise survey of several important threads of the ongoing discussion about the contradictory relationship between Stalin’s justice and international law and justice. In so doing, the chapters underline the importance of distinguishing several dimensions of corresponding Soviet-Western interactions. Several British and American jurists, for example, considered Trainin to be “an agreeable man to do business with” (p. 130). Nevertheless, extent and success of translation of academic mutual respect and cooperation into concrete activities in Nuremberg remained contingent on foreign policy considerations and convictions. In this respect, the collection forcefully demonstrates that not only did the Nuremberg International Tribunal have to determine crimes and culprits, but the indictment, proceedings, and verdict also were expected to establish a valid narrative and interpretation of Nazi crimes as well as of the immediate origins of World War II. At the same time, the corresponding narrative would deliver an authoritative catalogue of lessons learned. In this regard, US assistant prosecutor Robert M. W. Kempner correctly described the International Military Tribunal as “the greatest history seminar ever held” (p. 176). Nevertheless, given the increasing tensions between the victors and the interconnections between prewar and postwar constellations and worldviews, the tribunal’s work, findings, and analysis could not but reflect contested histories. The volume, especially the chapters by Irina Schulmeister-André/David M. Crowe, Francine Hirsch, and Jeremy Hicks excel in highlighting these complex interdependencies between power politics, legal positions, court proceedings, and official reconstructions of the past. Altogether, they aptly describe Soviet influence on legal concepts and concrete wording of the statute of the Nuremberg Tribunal; insufficient Soviet institutional, professional, and organizational preparations and capabilities for Western-style court proceedings; the increasing rift in Soviet-Western relations that was mirrored by a decreasing readiness to compromise and cooperate in legal and procedural questions; the fragility of Soviet official positions on Katyn and the Hitler-Stalin Pact; the narrow Soviet focus on German crimes against the Soviet state and on atrocities against Russians and other Slavic peoples; and, finally, the international struggle for the master narrative of the prehistory and history of World War II, which was decided in favor of non-Soviet interpretations.
Finally, the contributions open or reopen additional important research questions. Valentyna Polunina’s remarks on Judge Radhabinod Pal’s discussion of Soviet academic works may serve as one example. In his dissenting vote at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Indian judge rejected Trainin’s “idea that a new international society had developed since the Moscow Declaration of 1943” (p. 136). Instead, Pal insisted that the declaration signaled only the beginning of new international departures. Definitely, Pal missed the integration of anti-colonial aspiration into the great power’s framework of international law. Indeed, Pal criticized the other judges’ “static idea of peace” that would criminalize future anti-colonial resistance as well.[1] Pal’s questioning of simple East-West dichotomies—or, in that case, of northern cooperation against the South—in the development of international law may contribute not only to our understanding of early Soviet relations with the global South but also to the general discussion about Eurocentric biases in the development of international norms (and institutions) after World War II alike.
Altogether, the collection focuses on the preparation and work of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. While the Nuremberg project was central for Allied cooperation, it was inseparably linked to corresponding persecutions on the national levels, including the activities of Stalin’s Soviet justice in the USSR and in countries under Soviet occupation. These public and secret trials constituted a core element of general Stalinist approaches. Therefore, a more detailed analysis of the interconnections between international Soviet approaches and autonomous national Soviet projects would enrich, differentiate, and strengthen the main arguments of the collection. The neglect of corresponding insights from meticulous research on some tens of thousands Stalinist trials against real and alleged German war criminals seems to be especially regrettable. Indeed, quantity, timing, and quality of these Soviet trials reflected Moscow’s uncertainty and deep-seated distrust with regard to perspectives of parallel international legal cooperation. At the same time, trials in the Soviet Union and the corresponding announcements and media coverage clearly demonstrated an unshakeable Soviet determination to enforce its own interpretation of the past. During the preparations for Nuremberg, for example, the Soviet leadership defined its preferred composition of the Nuremberg dock. Since Moscow’s proposals failed, some of the defendants were charged in public trials in places like Kiev. In general, after the war, more than fifteen public trials against German soldiers, SS men and policemen, and civilians in the Soviet Union and in Sachsenhausen impressively presented Soviet counter-narratives about a capitalist-German aggression against Slavic and socialist peoples. In general, the increasing Soviet and Western unwillingness to cooperate in concrete questions of exchange of material, incriminating documents, witnesses, and the accused beyond the Nuremberg trial additionally undermined the alliance.[2] So, in the final analysis, the volume makes for a recommendable but incomplete discussion of Stalin’s approaches to “show trials,” war crimes trials, and Nuremberg.
Notes
[1]. Radhabinod Pal, Dissentient Judgment of Pal (Tokyo: Kokusho-Kankokei, Inc., 1999), 116.
[2]. Summarized by Andreas Hilger, “‘Die Gerechtigkeit nehme ihren Lauf’? Die Bestrafung deutscher Kriegs- und Gewaltverbrecher in der Sowjetunion und der SBZ/DDR” [May justice be done? Punishment of German war and violent criminals in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Zone of Occupation/GDR], in Transnationale Vergangenheitspolitik: Der Umgang mit deutschen Kriegsverbrechern in Europa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg [Transnational politics of the past: Dealing with German war criminals in Europe after the Second World War], ed. Norbert Frei (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006), 180-246; and case studies in Andreas Weigelt, Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, and Mike Schmeitzner, eds., Todesurteile sowjetischer Militärtribunale gegen Deutsche (1944-1947): Eine historisch-biographische Studie [Death sentences by Soviet Military Tribunals against Germans (1944-1947): A historical-biographical study] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015).
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Citation:
Andreas Hilger. Review of Crowe, David M., ed., Stalin's Soviet Justice: "Show" Trials, War Crimes Trials, and Nuremberg.
H-Russia, H-Net Reviews.
October, 2020.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55733
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