page_title: Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries
section_title: Preparation for the Trial
hierarchical_section_title: Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / History / Preparation for the Trial
caption_attribution_description: English: Belgian politician Émile Vandervelde (1866-1938)
context_page_description: The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries was an internationally publicized political trial in Soviet Russia, which brought twelve prominent members of the anti-Bolshevik Party of Socialist Revolutionaries before the bar. The trial, which took place in Moscow from June 8 to August 7, 1922, was ordered by Lenin and is regarded as a precursor to the later show trials during the Stalin regime.
  Owing in great measure to international pressure, the death sentences rendered in the trial were subsequently commuted, although none of the defendants would ultimately survive the Great Terror of the late 1930s.
context_section_description: In 1921, in an effort to restore the shattered economy Lenin and the Soviet government embarked on a program of economic liberalization known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). This critical change meant abandonment of the old force-based system of commodity acquisition and the ration-based system of product distribution, in favor of a restoration of stable currency and the use of markets — a change which implied the delegation of greater power to the producing peasantry. With the political position of the Bolshevik regime commensurately weakened, the Soviet government intensified its effort to suppress and eliminate all political opposition within the country.
  On December 28, 1921, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) [RKP(b)] secretly voted to organize a public trial of the Central Committee of the PSR, with a three member commission consisting of party leaders Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin and Cheka head Felix Dzerzhinsky appointed to determine the timing of the public announcement of this controversial decision. There would be an interval of two months before this official announcement was made.
  Lenin himself defined the Communist Party's objective in the trial of their opponents with a Feb. 20, 1922 letter to People's Commissar of Justice Dmitrii Kurskii, sent one week before public announcement of the trial. Lenin called for:
  "intensification of the repression of the political enemies of the Soviet regime and the agents of the bourgeoisie (in particular the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries); the use of such repression by Revolutionary Tribunals and People's Courts in the quickest and, for the revolution, most effective manner; the compulsory organization of a number of model trials (which will stand model as regards the explanation of their significance to the masses of the people by the court and in the press) in Moscow, Petrograd, Kharkov, and other major centers;... — all this must be taken in hand systematically, resolutely, and with determination.
  This internal document was rewritten by lawyer Iakov Brandenburgskii for public dissemination and published in Pravda on March 23, emphasizing that the trials be structured and publicized in such a way that the workers and peasants of the country should not only hear about them but understand their underlying political message. In short, historian Marc Jansen has observed, "the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries was intended not to bring the truth to light but to arouse public opinion against the Socialist Revolutionaries."
  During the night of February 24/25, 1922, the members of the Central Committee of the PSR were moved from their cells in Butyrka prison to the so-called "Inner Prison" located at secret police headquarters on Lubyanka Square in Moscow, where they were confined in strict isolation.
  Certain that a repressive trial with preordained grim results was in the offing, the official representatives of the PSR abroad, organized as a body called the Foreign Delegation of the PSR, began an international publicity campaign in support of their imprisoned comrades. On March 7 members of the PSR gathered in Berlin to form an international committee against the trial, leading to an official appeal of the Foreign Delegation of the PSR to all socialist parties in the world two days later. This came at a time when the Communist International (Comintern) was closely pursuing sensitive united front negotiations with the two international federations of non-communist socialist parties — the remnant of the Second International and their more radical counterparts in the short-lived so-called Two-and-a-Half International based in Vienna. The Soviet regime was thus in a position in which it was particularly sensitive to radical criticism.
  The March 9 appeal of the Foreign Delegation of the PSR was met with a wave of support from the various political organizations of the non-communist left. The Second International was virtually universal in its condemnation of a show trial as an opaque attempt to stifle socialist dissent in Russia
caption: Belgian social democratic leader Émile Vandervelde was admitted to the trial as a defense attorney for the Socialist Revolutionary defendants.
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