COMRADES PLEASE SHOOT ME:
CONFESSIONAL TRIALS IN THE EASTERN BLOC AFTER WORLD WAR II

Presenters Up Close:

Melissa Feinberg, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University in New Brunswick

Areas of interest: gender history, Eastern Europe, the history of human rights, political culture, emotions in politics, and the history of feminism.

Selected publications: Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006); “Establishing a New World: Show Trials and the Production of a Cold War Reality in Eastern Europe, 1948-1954” in Bernd Stover and Dierk Walter, eds.; The Politics of Fear in the Cold War (forthcoming, 2008)

"'ONLY AN IMPERIALIST COULD THINK UP SUCH A NOTION!' POLITICAL TRIALS AND THE CREATION OF THE IRON CURTAIN IN EASTERN EUROPE."

My talk will examine the proliferation of show trials across Eastern Europe from 1948-1954 and show how these trials worked to produce the "script" of the early Cold War. In the world the trials described, socialism was the only path to happiness. Mysterious enemies linked to Western imperialism constantly threatened to destroy socialism’s achievements and did often manage to commit sabotage. This was a bipolar world, a place where West continually menaced East with the possibility of war and nuclear annihilation. I will examine these “facts” of Cold War life as presented by trial scriptwriters in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. The “reality” created in these scripts, authored by local Communist leaders, their security police and their Soviet advisers may have been grounded in lies, but it was the world East Europeans had to live in, regardless of its “truth.” Through these staged dramas, East Europeans learned the parts they were supposed to play in the Cold War, and also discovered the potential consequences that could come from refusing to accept their roles.

Igal Halfin, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, Israel

Areas of interest: Russian and Soviet history, intellectual history, political philosophy, Marx and contemporary Marxism, theory of psychoanalysis.

Selected publications: Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009); Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918-1928, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007); Terror in My Soul. Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Harvard University Press, 2003)

"THE TRIAL OF THE JEWISH ANTI-FASCIST COMMITTEE: AN INQUIRY INTO LATE STALINIST DEMONOLOGY."

Through a close reading of the transcripts of the trial of the Anti-Jewish Committee, I shall discuss the function and meaning of juridical ritual in Stalinist culture. While all the accused (except one) in that trial were condemned and executed, they had been fully enfranchised, active participants in the trial. They were allowed to explain why they confessed to crimes they did not commit, why they believed they were not traitors, and how they understood Jewish identity. It is at this time that "Zionism" became a key term in Stalinist political discourse (its usage tantamount to treason) and , at the same time, this discursive change affected the notion of culpability and guilt.

István Rév, Professor of History and Political Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, and Director of Open Society Archives: revist@ceu.hu

Research interests: Death and dying, historical recollection, the nature of historical evidence, and the changing nature of collecting analyzing and interpreting historical information.

Selected publications: "The Man in the White Raincoat,” in Oksana Sarkisova and Péter Apor, eds., Past for the Eyes: East European Representations of Communism In Cinema and Museums after 1989, (Central European University Press, 2008); Retroactive Justice: Prehistory of Post-communism (Stanford University Press, 2005); “In Mendatio Veritas (In Lies There Lies the Truth),” Representations, vol. 35, Summer 1991.

“RECONSTRUCTION RECONSIDERED: AN EXAMINATION OF POLICE PHILOLOGY. THE CASE OF LÁSZLÓ RAJK.”

In 1969 the department in charge of counterinsurgency activities in the Ministry of Interior, initiated a strictly secret reexamination of the Rajk trial of September 16-24, 1949. The investigation revealed, that in February 1961, on the order of the Central Committee of the party, all the documents of the original trial were shred, and in April of the same year, even the audio recordings of the proceeding at the Hungarian Radio (which, in 1949 broadcast the trial live) were burnt.

The examination of 1969 had to rely on the reconstruction of the review of the trial back in the summer of 1954, as a result of which Rajk became rehabilitated, and reburied on October 6, 1956 as a prelude to the 1956 revolution. The 1954 review could still make use of the original trial proceedings, however those documents did not survive the 1961 order of destruction. In 1989 the last Communist government set up a committee of historians in charge of reexamining the show trials of the Communist period. The Committee, in lack of original documents, had to make use of the surviving files of both the 1954 and 1969 reviews; the latter could be considered as a reinterpretation of the 1954 process.

My presentation aims at reconstructing the logic and working method(s) of the philological activities of the (secret) police; considering the text as real text; the relationship of the different versions to the canon of the show trials; I will try to examine both form and meaning of the police language; the changes of the concerns in the different layers of the texts; and argue for the futility to find the 'original' version.

Mihai I. Spariosu, Distinguished Research Professor of Comparative Literature, and Director of the East Central European Program University of Georgia, Athens

Areas of interest: Intercultural studies in the context of globalization, including East Central European regional studies.

Selected publications: Remapping Knowledge: Intercultural Studies for a Global Age (Berghahn Publishers2006); Global Intelligence and Human Development: Toward an Ecology of Global Learning (MIT Press, 2005); The Wreath of Wild Olive: Play, Liminality and the Study of Literature (State University of New York Press, 1997).

“DEVOURING THEIR OWN: STALINIST TRIALS OF THE 1950’S IN COMMUNIST ROMANIA.”

The paper will look at the Stalinist trials of the 1950’s in Romania as an expression of the struggle for power within the Romanian communist leadership, specifically between Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and the “foreign” group of Communist leaders, belonging to the Soviet Comintern (mostly Jewish and Russian), such as Ana Pauker, Teohari Georgescu, and Vasile Luca. The paper will argue that the purges were not chauvinistic or anti-semitic per se, being concerned primarily with establishing supremacy within the Romanian communist leadership. But Gheorghiu Dej, cynically and opportunistically, used smoldering nationalistic, anti-Russian, and anti-semitic feelings within and outside the party to oust his political opponents and to tighten his dictatorial stranghold on the country.

Peter Steiner, Professor of Slavic Literature at University of Pennsylvania:

Areas of interest: Modern Russian and Czech literature, theory of literature, intercultural communication, European studies.

Selected publications: Deserts of Bohemia: Czech Fiction and Its Social Context (Cornell University Press, 2000); Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics (Cornell University Press, 1984).

“EDIBLE REVOLUTIONARIES: THE RUDOLF SLÁNSKÝ TRIAL AS A ROMANCE.”

“Revolution is like Saturn,” observed Danton in Georg Büchner’s play with the eponymous title,“ it devours its own children.” Of the many ironies this catchy quip triggers, I will concentrate on the historical: the reiteration of a saturnal paedophagy in time. And the show trial of Rudolf Slánský, General Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and thirteen co-defendants in 1952 that resulted in eleven death penalties provides ample material for such a study.

My discussion will proceed from Karl Marx’s insight that historical irony is a product of generic catachresis: a tragic event turning comic when repeated for a second time. Which begs the obvious question: to which genre does a confessional trial belong?

Marx’s master story about the downfall of humankind from primitive communism to various forms of a classed society and its ascent to the classless harmony of a communist future exhibits the basic characteristics of a romance. This generic matrix is further enhanced by Vladimir Lenin’s claim that socialist revolution is above all an identity quest: the recognition by the proletariat of their historical role and their acting accordingly. The self-confessions of Slánský and his fellow conspirators, I will argue, actualize this romantic script. They are records of a heroic struggle against the false consciousness to which the defendants previously had succumbed, culminating in their (re)discovery of true class awareness, an end to their embarrassing alienation from the history of humankind as outlined in the Marxist narrative.

Vladislav Todorov, Senior Lecturer of Slavic Studies at University of Pennsylvania:

Areas of interest: Modernism, political aesthetics, performing and visual arts, terrorism and global governance.

Selected publications: Chaotic Pendulum: Inquiries in Terrorism and Governmentality (Espace Culture, 2005); Short Paradox for the Theater and Other Figures of Life (Sofia University Press, 1997); Red Square, Black Square: Organon for Revolutionary Imagination (State University of New York Press, 1995).

“TRAICHO KOSTOV: THE COMMUNIST IN DENIAL.”

Traicho Kostov’s trial was conducted according to the standard well-designed and repeatedly tested score provided by Moscow instructors. Surprisingly, it failed to reach its intended result and the case against Kostov was about to collapse since he rejected the testimonies he “gave” during the investigation. A key witness was promptly produced to testify against Kostov and create grounds for his death sentence. What makes this trial stand out among the rest of the show-trials in Eastern Europe, is precisely the fact that the main culprit openly refused to confess to the alleged crimes and engage in public self-denunciation. He did so after he had already engaged himself in an increasingly uncompromising self-flagellation and self-criticism during party forums months before the trial. Incrementally, he admitted that he had committed grave political mistakes and fatal administrative errors before the Central Committee. Evidently, Kostov drew a firm line between self-denunciation in court and self-criticism before the party, between political errors and state treason, between party justice and litigation, between party discipline and legal culpability. This presentation examines the works of the communist self-correcting consciousness and the production of truth at the confessional show trials. It discusses the techniques of self-criticism and self-denunciation, the nature of the oedipal inquiries and how one investigates oneself until found guilty. Confession renders treason into discourse and thus exposes it to public sanction.