The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia

by Tim Tzouliadis

The show trials had a long and very checkered history in the Soviet Union. A decade earlier, when the trials were still in the process of being properly managed, there were obvious kinks in the mechanism, missteps in the elaborate choreography between prosecutor and defendant. These were the cases when the victim, expected only to confess, remained silent before shouting, “Comrades, how could I not sign?” and then tore off his shirt to reveal a tortured back “streaked with deep, purple bruises and swollen welts.”20 In past trials, brother had testified against brother, and a teenage son against his father, all anxious to profess their greater loyalty to the Soviet state: “I denounce my father as a whole-hearted traitor and an enemy of the working class. I demand for him the severest penalty. I reject him and the name he bears. Hereafter, I shall no longer call myself Kolodoob.”