Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary and Analysis

"The Law Matures," dealing with the great show trials first notes that Savinkov is the only Russian crazy enough to return without authorization, but plenty go the other direction. Lenin secretly favors deporting bourgeois intelligentsia after framing them as military spies. When many of the émigrés regard this as a gift, Dzerzhinsky turns to using the Gulag. The Criminal Code of 1926 makes "big, coordinated, well-organized" show trials possible. The first is Shakhty, dealing with coal miners in the Donets Basin. It is tried before a Special Assize of the Supreme Court under A.Y. Vyshinsky, with Krylenko as chief accuser. There are 53 defendants and 56 witnesses. Sixteen confess, 13 wriggle, and 24 admit nothing.

When the "conflictless trial" ends, Krylenko uses Yagoda's OGPU to create and uncover a nationwide organization of engineers headed by prominent wreckers. The first is the mining...