Bloomsbury has published a new edited
collection on law and the justice system under Joseph Stalin.
ABOUT THE BOOK
From the 'show'
trials of the 1920s and 1930s to the London Conference, this book examines the
Soviet role in the Nuremberg IMT trial through the prism of the ideas and
practices of earlier Soviet legal history, detailing the evolution of Stalin's
ideas about the trail of Nazi war criminals.
Stalin believed that an international trial for Nazi war criminals was the best
way to show the world the sacrifices his country had made to defeat Hitler, and
he, together with his legal mouthpiece Andrei Vyshinsky, maintained tight
control over Soviet representatives during talks leading up to the creation of
the Nuremberg IMT trial in 1945, and the trial itself. But Soviet prosecutors
at Nuremberg were unable to deal comfortably with the complexities of an open,
western-style legal proceeding, which undercut their effectiveness throughout
the trial. However, they were able to present a significant body of evidence
that underscored the brutal nature of Hitler's racial war in Russia from
1941-45, a theme which became central to Stalin's efforts to redefine
international criminal law after the war.
Stalin's Soviet Justice provides a nuanced analysis of the Soviet
justice system at a crucial turning point in European history and it will be
vital reading for scholars and advanced students of the legal history of the
Soviet Union, the history of war crimes and the aftermath of the Second World
War.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
David M. Crowe is Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, USA and Professor
Emeritus of History & Law at Elon University, USA. He has been a Visiting
Scholar at Columbia University's Harriman Institute and a Fellow at the Center
for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the recipient of the Southern Conference on
Slavic Studies' 2010 Richard Stites Senior Scholar Award for Contributions to
the Field of Slavic Studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction, David M. Crowe (Elon
University, USA)
1. Late Imperial and Soviet 'Show' Trials, 1878-1938, David M. Crowe
(Elon University, USA)
2. Traitors or War Criminals: Collaboration on Trial in Soviet Courts in the
1940s, Alexander V. Prusin (New Mexico Institute of Mining and
Technology, USA)
3. 'Nikto ne zabyt': The Politicization of Soviet War Dead, Thomas
Earl Porter (North Carolina A&T State University, USA)
4. The Human Face of Soviet Justice: Aron Trainin and the Origins of the Soviet
Doctrine of International Criminal Law, Valentyna
Polunina (Heidelberg University, Germany)
5. 'May Justice be Done!': The Soviet Union and the London Conference (1945), Irina
Schulmeister-André (Independent Scholar, Germany)
6. The Soviet Union at the Palace of Justice: Law, Intrigue, and International
Rivalry in the Nuremberg Trials, Francine Hirsch (University of
Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
7. Soviet Journalists at Nuremberg: Establishing the Soviet War
Narrative, Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
8. From Geneva to Nuremberg to New York: Andrei Vyshinsky, Raphaël Lemkin, and
the Struggle to Outlaw Revolutionary Violence, State Terror, and
Genocide, Douglas Irvin-Erickson (George Mason University, USA)
Select Bibliography
Index
