Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

Stalin’s prejudices do not require an explanation: in Russia and Eastern Europe anti-Semitism was its own reward. Of greater interest are Stalin’s purposes in mounting the whole charade of purges, indictments, confessions and trials. Why, after all, did the Soviet dictator need trials at all? Moscow was in a position to eliminate anyone it wished, anywhere in the Soviet bloc, through ‘administrative procedures’. Trials might seem counter-productive; the obviously false testimonies and confessions, the unembarrassed targeting of selected individuals and social categories, were hardly calculated to convince foreign observers of the bona fides of Soviet judicial procedures. But the show trials in the Communist bloc were not about justice. They were, rather, a form