Leningrad Affair

The Leningrad Affair, or Leningrad case ("Ленинградское дело" in Russian, or "Leningradskoye delo"), was a series of criminal cases fabricated in the late 1940s–early 1950s in order to accuse a number of prominent members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of the Leningrad Party cell.^[1]

Researchers argue that the motivation behind the cases was Stalin's fear of competition from the younger and popular Leningrad leaders - who had been fêted as heroes following the city's siege. Stalin's desire to keep power was combined with his deep distrust of anyone from St. Petersburg/Leningrad from the time of Stalin's involvement in the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, execution of Zinoviev and the Right Opposition.^[2][3]

Events

In January 1949 Pyotr Popkov, Aleksei Kuznetsov and Nikolai Voznesensky organized a Leningrad Trade Fair to boost the post-war economy and support the survivors of the Siege of Leningrad with goods and services from all over the Soviet Union. The Fair was attacked by the Soviet official propaganda ^[4], and was falsely portrayed as a scheme to use the federal budget from Moscow for business development in Leningrad, although the budget and economics of such a trade fair were normal and legitimate with full approval of the State Planning Commission and the government of the USSR.^[5] A number of other accusations were added.

As a result of the first process of the series, on September 30, 1950, Nikolai Voznesensky (chairman of Gosplan), Mikhail Rodionov (chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers), Aleksei Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin^[6] were sentenced to death on false accusations of embezzlement of the Soviet State budget for "unapproved business in Leningrad", which was labeled as anti-Soviet treason. The verdict was announced after the midnight and the six major defendants were executed by shooting on October 1, for which measure Stalin's government reinstated^{[citation needed]} the death penalty in the Soviet Union. The rest of the alleged accomplices were sentenced to different prison terms.

About 2,000 of Leningrad's public figures were removed from leadership and over 200 of them were repressed, together with their relatives. Respected intellectuals, scientists, writers and educators, many of whom were pillars of the city's community, were exiled or imprisoned in the Gulag prison camps. Hard repressions were imposed on intellectuals for smallest signs of dissent, such as Nikolai Punin, who expressed his dislike of the Soviet propaganda and thousands of Lenin's portraits.^[7]

Simultaneously, the Soviet authorities replaced all communist party and administrative leadership in Leningrad by communists loyal to Stalin.

All of the accused were later rehabilitated during the Khrushchev Thaw, many of them posthumously.^[8]

References

1. ^ Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 1996, ISBN 0761507183
2. ^ "The Affair of Leningrad Centre...", from Russian Encyclopedia Krugosvet (Russian)
3. ^ Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives, 1997, ISBN 0385479549
4. ^ Malenkov against Zhdanov. Games of Stalin's favorites. (Russian)
5. ^ The "Leningrad Affair" (Russian)
6. ^ Stalin and the Betrayal of Leningrad by John Barber
7. ^ The Diaries of Nikolay Punin: 1904-1953. University of Texas Press (1999) ISBN 0292765894
8. ^ William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, London: Free Press, 2004