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Comrades Please Shoot Me: Confessional Trials in the Eastern Bloc after World War II
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April 18, 2009
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Max Kade Center, 3401 Walnut Street, Room 329A (Above Starbucks)
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Among the many peculiarities of the Communist system, one seems particularly baffling to its observer: the political trials of the Party鈥檚 highest leaders that raged throughout the Soviet Union during the 1930s. According to Robert Conquest鈥檚 classical study on the subject, The Great Purges (1968), what differentiates these trials from all other politically motivated miscarriages of justice is the zeal with which all the defendants admitted their guilt and ask the judges for the sternest punishment. For this very reason, he proposes to call them confessional. The planned conference will deal with a particular variety of such trials as they occurred in Russia and the People鈥檚 Democracies after WW II: the Jewish Anti-Nazi Committee in Moscow, Traicho Kostov in Sofia, L谩sl贸 Rajk in Budapest, Rudolf Sl谩nsk媒 in Prague, and Ana Pauker in Bucharest.
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The focus of the proposed meeting is deliberately inter-disciplinary: bringing together historians with students of literarure and culture. Its intellectual purpose is to question the traditional approach to confessional trials in terms of rational decision-making, i.e., achieving particular political objectives through available means in accord or in competition with others. Whether cast in terms of an intra-Party fight or of Stalin's paranoia all such interpretations seem lame in explaining why myriads of innocent Party leaders confessed to the most bizarre crimes of which they were accused and carried out their performance to the scaffoldings. The solution to this puzzle will be sought elsewhere: in the employment of the Leninist eschatology and the discursive forms in which it is cast. Put differently, by willingly accepting the role of traitors ascribed to them by the Party, these devoted men and women managed to demonstrate, under the most daunting conditions, their true Communist selves, to maintain their oneness with the movement to which they dedicated their lives.听
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Conference Program
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9:00 a.m. - 9:50 a.m. (followed by a 10-minute questions and answers period)
Melissa Feinberg, Rutgers University in New Brunswick.
"'Only an Imperialist Could Think up Such a Notion!' Political Trials and the Creation of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe"听
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10-minute break听
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10:10 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. (followed by a 10-minute questions and answers period)
Igal Halfin, Tel Aviv University.
"The Trial of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee: An Inquiry into Late Stalinist Demonology"听
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10-minute break听
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11:20 a.m. - 12:10 p.m. (followed by a 10-minute questions and answers period)
Vladislav Todorov, University of Pennsylvania.
鈥淭raicho Kostov: The Communist in Denial鈥澨�
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12:20 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.听
Discussion听
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1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Lunch Break听
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2:00 p.m. - 2:50 p.m. (followed by a 10-minute questions and answers period)
Istv谩n R茅v, Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
鈥淩econstruction Reconsidered: An Examination of Police Philology. The Case of L谩szl贸 Rajk鈥澨�
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10-minute break听
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3:10 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. (followed by a 10-minute questions and answers period)
Peter Steiner, University of Pennsylvania.
鈥淓dible Revolutionaries: The Rudolf Sl谩nsk媒 Trial as a Romance鈥澨�
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10-minute break听
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4:20 p.m. - 5:10 p.m. (followed by a 10-minute questions and answers period)
Mihai I. Spariosu, University of Georgia, Athens.
鈥淒evouring Their Own: Stalinist Trials of the 1950鈥檚 in Communist Romania鈥澨�
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5:20 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Discussion听
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