A show trial is a public trial in which the guilt or innocence of the defendant has already been determined. It is a type of political trial. The purpose of holding a show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public, serving as an example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.OED (2014): "show trial".
Show trials tend to be retributive rather than corrective, and they are also conducted for propagandistic purposes. When aimed at individuals on the basis of protected classes or characteristics, show trials are examples of political persecution.
Etymology The first known use of the term was in 1928.
China After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, show trials were given to "rioters and counter-revolutionaries" involved in the protests and the subsequent military massacre.
Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo was given a show trial in 2009."Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo jailed for subversion". BBC News. 25 December 2009.
Soviet Union
As early as 1922, Lenin advocated staging several "model trials" ("показательный процесс", literally "a process showing an example") in Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine. The Bolsheviks emphasized media coverage of show trials as a mechanism to educate the public about class enemies and political enemies.
Show trials became common during Joseph Stalin's political repressions, such as the Moscow Trials of the Great Purge period (1937–38). Such trials paralleled the institution of self-criticism within Communist Party cadres and Soviet society.
Known show trials in Soviet Ukraine include "Union for the Liberation of Ukraine" trial (1930), (1930), "" trial (1931).
Russia During its full-scale invasion into Ukraine, around 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers were taken prisoners by Russia in Mariupol in May 2022. In 2023 Russia began criminal prosecutions against members of the Azov Regiment, on the charges of involvement in a terrorist organization and taking part in action to overthrow the Russia-backed authorities in the Donetsk region. Most of the Ukrainians standing trials in Russia are members of Ukrainian Armed Forces, which, according to HRW, makes them prisoners of war with corresponding status and protections per the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. According to HRW and Amnesty International, the charges are war crimes and, per HRW, are an excuse to prosecute Ukrainian soldiers for participating in the conflict. Observers called these prosecutions show trials.
The trials and sentences of Evan Gershkovich, Alexei Navalny and others were described as "ominously reminiscent of Soviet tactics".
Eastern Europe
Following some dissent within ruling communist parties throughout the Eastern Bloc, especially after the 1948 Tito–Stalin split, several party purges occurred, with several hundred thousand members purged in several countries. In addition to rank-and-file member purges, prominent communists were purged, with some subjected to public show trials. These were more likely to be instigated, and sometimes orchestrated, by the Kremlin or even Stalin himself, as he had done in the earlier Moscow Trials.
Such high-ranking party show trials included those of Koçi Xoxe in Albania and Traicho Kostov in Bulgaria, who were purged and arrested. After Kostov was executed, Bulgarian leaders sent Stalin a telegram thanking him for the help. In Romania, Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, Ana Pauker and Vasile Luca were arrested, with Pătrășcanu being executed. The Soviets generally directed show trial methods throughout the Eastern Bloc, including a procedure in which confessions and evidence from leading witnesses could be extracted by any means, including threatening to torture the witnesses' wives and children. The higher-ranking the party member, generally the more harsh the torture that was inflicted upon him. For the show trial of Hungarian Interior Minister János Kádár, who one year earlier had attempted to force a confession of László Rajk (and György Pálffy etc. etc.) in his show trial, regarding "Vladimir" the questioner of Kádár:
The evidence was often not just non-existent but absurd, such as Hungarian George Paloczi-Horváth's party interrogators claiming "We knew all the time—we have it here in writing—that you met professor Szentgyörgyi not in Istanbul, but in Constantinople." In another case, the Hungarian ÁVH secret police also condemned another party member as a Nazi accomplice with a document that had been previously displayed in a glass cabinet at the Institute of the Working Class Movement as an example of a Gestapo forgery. The trials themselves were "shows", with each participant having to learn a script and conduct repeated rehearsals before the performance. In the Slánský trial in Czechoslovakia, when the judge skipped one of the scripted questions, the better-rehearsed Slánský answered the one which should have been asked.
Yugoslavia In 1946, Draža Mihailović and other prominent figures of the Chetnik movement during World War II were tried for high treason and war crimes committed during WWII. The trial opened in the presence of about 60 foreign journalists. Mihailović and ten others (two in absentia) were sentenced to death by a firing squad; the others were convicted of penalties ranging from 18 months to 20 years in prison. In 2015, a Serbian court invalidated Mihailović's conviction. The court held that it had been a Communist political show trial that was controlled by the government. The court concluded that Mihailović had not received a fair trial. Mihailović was, therefore, fully rehabilitated.
During 1946–1949, several well-publicized show trials were held in the People's Republic of Slovenia. First was the Nagode Trial in which 32 non-communist intellectuals were tried as spies, three of them sentenced to death. Second was a series of so-called Dachau trials in which 37 members of the Communist Party were sentenced, 15 of them to death. In the 1940s, highly publicized show trials were employed against many real or alleged collaborators, and people with pro-Bulgarian views, who were sentenced to death for national treason, in the People's Republic of Macedonia.
Hungary
Show trials during the Horthy-regime 1920-1944 The Rákosi trials refer to the criminal trials held between July 12 and August 4, 1926, and then between January 21 and February 4, 1935. The first trial dealt with the case of communists arrested in September 1925. Following international and domestic protests, the summary trial court, which sat on November 14–16, 1925, ordered the case to be referred to a regular court. The first defendant in the case, Mátyás Rákosi, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, the second defendant, Károly Őry, to four years, and the third defendant, Ignác Gőgös, to three and a half years. Rákosi's sentence expired on 24 April 1934, but due to his role during the Hungarian Soviet Republic , he was convicted again in the so-called second Rákosi trial – for crimes of high treason, rebellion, 27 counts of murder as an accomplice, 17 counts of murder as an instigator, and counterfeiting of currency – and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Rákosi's defense attorney in the second trial was Vámbéry Rusztem. Rákosi exchanged for the Hungarian flags of 1848-49 and was extraditied to the USSR.
Show trials during German occupation and Arrow Cross Party rules (1944-45)
The show trials in Hungary between 1945-48 The show trials of the coalition period between 1945 and 1948 were initiated by the communists who controlled the interior ministry(and secret services). The main goal of these trials was to eliminate the multi-party system: to eliminate right-wing conservative politicians, to crush the very popular Independent Smallholder, Farmer and Citizen Party(Peasant party), and to perfect the "salami slicing tactics". They were primarily directed against certain leaders of the Smallholder Party, and later the Social Democratic Party(who were against to merge into the communist party). At the end of the era, a showdown against church leaders and Christian politicians also began. Although this became characteristic mainly from 1949, there were also showdowns due to rivalry within the communist party (Demény case).
The trials were made possible by the 1946. VII. tc. law on the criminal protection of the democratic state order and the republic, commonly known as the “Hangman Act”. Between 1946 and 1950, almost 6 thousand people were convicted.
These include: Plenty of People's Courts in Hungary(post WW2 trial against exnazis and war criminals but not all was criminal but enemies of the communist party) Hungarian Community trials trials of movements “exposed” in the Ministry of Agriculture MAORT trials Hungarian Resistance Movement trial in Szeged (1947 / showdown with the right wing in Szeged) Pócspetri case trial (1948 / intimidation of the Catholic Church).
Trials 1949-1956
Stalin's NKVD emissary coordinated with Hungarian General Secretary Mátyás Rákosi and his ÁVH head the way the show trial of Hungarian Minister of Interior László Rajk should go, and he was later executed. Trial of the Generals was a totalitarian show trial organized by the communist authorities of the Hungarian People's Republic, with hearings held on August 8 and 9, 1950. 66 arrested and tried from military, police, and civilian persons, 12 were sentenced to death (7 executed) and 6 were sentenced to forced labor. It was also known as the Sólyom trial (Sólyom-per).PURGES IN THE GOVERNMENT AND IN THE AVH, a CIA document
Trials 1956-1963 The "Nagy Imre per(trial)" was the most famous after the revolution. The trial of Imre Nagy and his associates was a secret concept trial following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, held between January 28 and June 15, 1958, against the Imre Nagy government and the 'Imre Nagy group'. The defendants were Imre Nagy, Géza Losonczy, Miklós Gimes, Pál Maleter, József Szilágyi, Sándor Kopácsi, Ferenc Donáth, Ferenc Jánosi, Zoltán Tildy and Miklós Vásárhelyi. The trial was decided in continuous consultation between the puppet government led by Kádár and the Soviet leadership.
During the trial, a series of illegalities were committed, the defense was intimidated, the defense was not allowed to bring witnesses, Vida constantly stifled the defendants, they were not allowed to present their evidence, and in the end, verdicts were made that suited the political purpose.
The verdict was announced on June 15, 1958. Imre Nagy was sentenced to death and complete confiscation of property, Ferenc Donáth to 12 years in prison, Miklós Gimes to death, Zoltán Tildy to 6 years in prison, Pál Maleter to death, Sándor Kopácsi to life imprisonment, Ferenc Jánosi to 8 years, and Miklós Vásárhelyi to 5 years in prison.
The death row convicts were hanged at dawn the next day. The execution was not made public until the next day. Géza Losonczy died in pre-trial detention from forced artificial feeding due to his hunger strike before the trial began. The case of the 9th defendant, József Szilágyi, was separated – because he refused to answer the interrogators’ questions – and he was hanged on April 24, 1958. Their bodies were buried in the prison yard, wired in tar paper. They were exhumed in 1961, and the wired bodies were buried face down in plot 301 of the New Public Cemetery, in an unmarked grave. They were rehabilitated and solemnly reburied in 1989, at the time of the change of regime.
The political leadership filmed the trial for later use in propaganda, but the footage was not suitable for inciting opposition to the revolution, so it was classified, and was only declassified in 2008.
Trials 1963-1989 Czechoslovakia