Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

by Stephen Kotkin

Nothing had ever erupted in the Soviet Union quite like the spectacle of the Shakhty trial, which opened on May 18, 1928, in the marble-walled Hall of Columns of the House of Trade Unions and lasted forty-one days.234 It was the first major Union-wide public trial since 1922 but far exceeded that affair. Other trials in 1928 that were also designed to instill political lessons, such as a military tribunal hearing about an alleged Anglo-Finnish “spy ring” in the Leningrad border zone, failed to acquire anything remotely resembling Shakhty’s intensity and significance.235 It was staged in Moscow for maximum exposure; nearly 100 handpicked foreign and Soviet journalists reported on the proceedings.236 More than 30,000 Soviet inhabitants would be led through the red-draped courtroom (the party would claim 100,000)—workers, Communist Youth League activists, out-of-town delegations.