50 Years Ago: The Reason for the Show Trials in Russia (1987)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Moscow correspondent of the Economist (February 27th, 1937) provides the answer to the question why did the Russian Government need the recent trials? It had to explain the breakdown of the grandiose five-year plans. This breakdown made it necessary to fend scapegoats, since no dictatorship ever dare let the population know that the dictator and his advisers may themselves have pushed their plans to a point where they became top-heavy and unworkable. Only, now that scapegoats have been found, is the population being told how badly some of the plans have worked:

Now that veteran Bolsheviks have confessed to deliberate sabotage in several major industries, the Government permits its people to learn of distressing conditions hitherto kept From them. Sabotage explains everything; revelation of gross inefficiency need not cast discredit upon central planning, which without some such explanation, might come into disrepute.

Official newspapers now reveal that conditions are most unsatisfactory on the railways. and in the non ferrous metal and chemical industries. Plants were designed hastily without an adequate knowledge of raw material resources. Capital was invested in the "least advantageous fields and those which presented the greatest difficulties for exploitation." For example, where lead and zinc ores were found together, only one or the other was utilised, Plans for new factories were altered locally, which resulted, according to one official newspaper, "in complete irresponsibility and confusion."

[From an article, The Reason for the Russian Trial, in the Socialist Standard June 1937.]