Of
Sonja Zekri
If a show trial is a staged event whose outcome the director, i.e. the ruler in the Kremlin, knows from the outset, then the process needs the right framework. The scene of the Stalinist show trials in the 1930s, for example, was the Green Trade Union House in Moscow, not far from Red Square and the Lubyanka secret service headquarters. Built at the end of the 18th century for the Moscow aristocracy, the huge columned hall, the conference and concert halls offered artists and party congresses an ideal stage. Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev were laid out here, but also old communists who had fallen out of favor, such as Lev Kamenev or Nikolai Bukharin screamed, convicted and then executed.