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35-645: In 1928, the local OGPU arrested a group of engineers, including Peter Palchinsky , Nikolai von Meck and A. F. Velichko, in the North Caucasus town of Shakhty , accusing them of conspiring with former owners of coal mines, who were living abroad and barred from the Soviet Union since the Revolution, to sabotage the Soviet economy. The group was charged with a multitude of crimes, including planning

70-654: A fear that Germans and revolutionaries were threatening the country. German Secretary of the state Karl von Shubert felt that the Soviet Union handling of the Shakty trials was wrong. He felt Russia should have informed them of these crimes. If the crimes fit the bill then the Germans could have been deported from Russia but that wasn't the case. The trial resulted in eleven of the fifty-three accused engineers being sentenced to death. Thirty-four were sent to prison, four were acquitted and four were given suspended sentences. Six of

105-556: A judge. The OGPU's powers increased greatly in 1926, when the Soviet criminal code  [ ru ] was amended to include Article 58 , a section on anti-state terrorism . The provisions were vaguely written and very broadly interpreted. Even before then, OGPU had set up tribunals to try the most exceptional cases of terrorism, usually without calling any witnesses. In time, the OGPU's de facto powers grew even greater than those of

140-638: A moment." Bukharin and Rykov were tried and convicted of treason in 1937 in one of the Moscow Show Trials , similar to the Shakhty Trial. These show trials were used as a means of presenting to the soviet people what was perceived as major threats to the Soviet Union. This played an important part in creating the cultural atmosphere leading to the Great Purge in the 1930s. Fifty Russian and three German technicians and engineers from

175-550: A new field — engineering — not only knew nothing about the resistance of materials but could not even conceive of the potential resistance of souls . . . despite ten years of already sensational activity as a prosecutor. Krylenko's choice turned out to be a mistake. Palchinsky resisted every pressure the OGPU knew—and did not surrender; in fact, he died without signing any sort of nonsense at all. N. K. von Meek and A. F. Velichko were subjected to torture with him, and they, too, appear not to have given in. The Shakhty trials marked

210-597: A public decree that any and all opposition views should be considered dangerous and gave the OGPU the authority to seek out "hostile elements." That led in March 1928 to the Shakhty Trial , which saw the prosecution of a group of supposed industrial saboteurs allegedly involved in a hostile conspiracy. That would be the first of many trials during Stalin's rule. The OGPU planned and set up the Gulag system, and also became

245-505: A series of articles in 1928, the newspaper Pravda used the arrests to announce that the bourgeoisie were using sabotage as a method of class struggle . Stalin mentioned later that the Shakhty arrests proved that class struggle was intensifying as the Soviet Union moved closer to socialism . The trial caused the worker population to turn on engineers, factory administrators and technicians. The worker population already had issues with

280-692: A very few [of the accused], among them two aged Jews, Rabinovich and Imineetov, retained their self-respect intact. Imineetov said, "One day another Zola will arise and will write another J'Accuse to restore our names to honor." Lyons, Eugene (1937), Assignment in Utopia , Transaction Publishers, pp. 114–133, ISBN   978-0887388569 OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (Russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление , IPA: [ɐbjɪdʲɪˈnʲɵn(ː)əjə ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əjə pəlʲɪˈtʲitɕɪskəjə ʊprɐˈvlʲenʲɪje] ), abbreviated as OGPU (Russian: ОГПУ ),

315-563: The Dekulakization campaigns during the First Five-Year Plan through extrajudicial special troikas of local OGPU agents, Communist Party officials, and state procurators with the authority to sentence suspects to exile or death without a formal trial in the Soviet judicial system . OGPU troops took part in Soviet invasion of Xinjiang . Menzhinsky's health had deteriorated rapidly during his directorship of

350-496: The Politburo , but Stalin insisted that international capital was trying to "weaken our economic power by means of invisible economic intervention, not always obvious but fairly serious, organizing sabotage, planning all kinds of 'crises' in one branch of industry or another, and thus facilitating the possibility of future military intervention". He said: "We have internal enemies. We have external enemies. We cannot forget this for

385-678: The Cheka. The OGPU achieved perhaps its most spectacular success with the Trust Operation of 1924–1925. OGPU agents contacted White émigrés and anti-communists in Western Europe and pretended to represent a large group, known as "the Trust", working to overthrow the communist régime. Exiled Russians gave "the Trust" large sums of money and supplies, as did foreign intelligence agencies. Soviet agents finally succeeded in luring one of

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420-644: The OGPU and Stalin tended to deal with his first deputy, Genrikh Yagoda , who essentially took over as head in the late 1920s. Menzhinsky spent his last years as an invalid until his death in May 1934, for which Yagoda would later be blamed in the Trial of the Twenty One . In July 1934, two months after Menzhinsky's death, the OGPU was dissolved and reincorporated into the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD),

455-557: The OGPU's first chief. The OSNAZ ( ОСНАЗ ), a militarised section of the Cheka, had originated in 1921; it became a component of OGPU. The OGPU, like the GPU before it, was in theory supposed to operate with more restraint than the Cheka, which had orchestrated the Red Terror from 1918 to 1922. Unlike the Cheka, the OGPU could not shoot " counter-revolutionaries " at will, and most suspected political criminals had to be brought before

490-564: The Shakhty Trials came a flood of social expulsion, primarily in secondary schools. Any children who were part of an illegal social organization, such as religious groups or the Boy Scouts, would be expelled. With the rise of the academic basis, many universities began implementing social discrimination in enrollment as political and social criteria took over. The Central Committee stated that more communists should be enrolled into

525-471: The Soviet Union's forced collectivization of agriculture under the leadership of Joseph Stalin , crushing resistance and deporting millions of peasants to the growing network of Gulag forced labor camps. The OGPU operated both inside and outside the country, persecuting political criminals and opponents of the Bolsheviks such as White émigrés , Soviet dissidents , and anti-communists . Following

560-641: The Soviet government's arm for the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church , the Greek Catholics , the Roman Catholic Church , Islam and other religious organizations, in an operation headed by Yevgeny Tuchkov . The OGPU was also the principal secret police agency responsible for the detection, arrest, and liquidation of anarchists and other dissident left-wing factions in the early Soviet Union. It also enforced

595-639: The USSR ( Объединённое государственное политическое управление при СНК СССР , Ob"yedinyonnoye gosudarstvennoye politicheskoye upravleniye pri SNK SSSR ), though the name is also translated as the All-Union State Political Administration or as Unified State Political Directorate. Felix Dzerzhinsky , who had served as the chairman of the State Political Directorate and of the Cheka, was appointed as

630-494: The beginning of a long series of accusations against class enemies within the Soviet Union, and were to become a hallmark of the Great Purge of the 1930s. In the 1920s under the leadership of Joseph Stalin the Soviet Union began to move away from the policies of the New Economic Policy (NEP) introduced by Vladimir Lenin , introducing a series of Five-Year Plans with an emphasis on rapid industrialization. By

665-557: The coal industry were to be tried publicly on charges of counter-revolutionary sabotage and espionage... This was Revolutionary Justice... the same Revolutionary Justice that had presided over the guillotine in the French Terror ... the accused men were coming into the court pre-judged... We waited in vain for a genuine piece of impersonal and unimpeachable testimony... that did not carry the suspicion of G.P.U. extortion. The "far-reaching international intrigue" never did emerge... Only

700-448: The companies they worked for due to low wages and poor working conditions. The trial contributed to their distrust and resentment towards them. This also caused a trend of support for the government. The Soviet government used the resentment the low level workers had to gain their support of the government. During and after the trial there was an increase of government industrial loan bond purchases by low level workers. The trial also created

735-401: The convicted person may be required to abide by specified conditions or may lose the benefit of the commutation. The conditions must be lawful and reasonable, and will typically expire when the convicted completes any remaining portion of their sentence. For example, the pardon may be conditioned upon the person's being a law-abiding citizen, such that if the beneficiary of the commutation commits

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770-412: The court (a full overturning is equal to an acquittal ), a commutation does not affect the status of a defendant's underlying criminal conviction. Although the concept of commutation may be used to broadly describe the substitution of a lesser criminal penalty for the original sentence, some jurisdictions have historically used the term only for the substitution of a sentence of a different character than

805-460: The death sentences were commuted as reward for their confessions. Peter Palchinsky was executed in 1929 for his political positions, as well as Nikolai Karlovich von Meck, Tchaikovsky's nephew by marriage, who was accused of "wrecking" the state railway system. The trial marked the beginning of " wrecking " as a crime within the Soviet Union, as found in Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) . Following

840-641: The end of the 1920s, Soviet industry suffered from a high rate of industrial accidents caused by the forceful execution of unrealistic production plans and low management skills of the politically appointed directors. Stalin, however, saw this as an opportunity to clean up the management of "the old specialists", professionals whose skills were critical to the industry but were not sufficiently engaged with communism politically. In his 1923-1925 speeches, he frequently expressed hostility to this group, and inspired public resentment against them, for example, based on their relatively high earnings. Accusing them of "sabotage"

875-521: The explosions in the mines, buying equipment from foreign companies that was not needed, incorrectly administering labor laws and safety protocols, and failing to properly set up new mines. The architect of these arrests and interrogations was Yefim Yevdokimov . Although he retired from the OGPU in 1931, he later led a secret police team within the NKVD itself. Among those accused in similar trials and executed

910-755: The formation of the Soviet Union in December 1922, the ruling Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) saw the need for a unified intelligence service to exercise control over state security throughout the new union. At the time, the State Political Directorate (GPU) served as the secret police for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and was successor to the Cheka . It

945-541: The leading anti-communist operators, Sidney Reilly , into Russia to meet with the Trust. Once in the Soviet Union in September 1925, Reilly was arrested and executed. The Trust was then dissolved, having become a huge propaganda success. Dzerzhinsky died in 1926 and was succeeded as chief of the OGPU by deputy chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky . From 1927 to 1929, the OGPU engaged in intensive investigations of an opposition coup d'etat . Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issued

980-576: The newly created interior ministry of the Soviet Union, becoming its Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) under the leadership of Yagoda. The OGPU would later be transformed into the more widely known Committee for State Security (KGB) in 1954. Commutation (law) In law, a commutation is the substitution of a lesser penalty for that given after a conviction for a crime. The penalty can be lessened in severity, in duration, or both. Unlike most pardons by government and overturning by

1015-449: The original conviction. For example, someone convicted of capital murder may have their sentence of death commuted to life imprisonment, a lessening of the punishment that does not affect the underlying criminal conviction, as may occur on a discretionary basis or following upon a change in the law or judicial ruling that limits or eliminates the death penalty. In some jurisdictions a commutation of sentence may be conditional, meaning that

1050-460: The universities and that control over the technical faculties and schools should be transferred over to the Vesenkha . This helped lead to the creation of a new group of intelligentsia elites of "cultured and educated workers" that included later soviet leaders Khrushchev and Brezhnev . Nikolai Bukharin , Alexei Rykov , and Mikhail Tomsky opposed Stalin's new policy on repression from within

1085-454: Was Nikolai Karlovich von Meck, Tchaikovsky's nephew by marriage, who was accused of "wrecking" the state railway system. The trial marked the beginning of " wrecking " as a crime within the Soviet Union, as found in Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) . They picked this Palchinsky to be the chief defendant in a grandiose new trial. However, the [prosecutor] Krylenko , stepping into what was for him

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1120-448: Was a convenient way of replacing "the old specialists" with people with more appropriate political views. The trials constituted a shift in policy toward the intelligentsia, the "bourgeois specialists" that had previously been tolerated and protected due to their needed skills, to then be replaced by the "young proletarian communist specialist". This marked the use of the concept of class warfare to motivate changes in soviet culture. In

1155-425: Was originally imposed by the court. For example, the substitution of a sentence of parole for the original sentence of incarceration. A jurisdiction that uses that definition of commutation would use another term, such as a remission, to describe a reduction of a penalty that does not change its character. A commutation does not reverse a conviction and the recipient of a commutation remains guilty in accordance with

1190-629: Was responsible to the Council of People's Commissars , which functioned as the highest executive body of the Soviet Union after the formation. On 15 November 1923, the GPU was dissolved and reformed into the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) with its jurisdiction covering the entirety of the Soviet Union. Its official full name was the Joint State Political Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of

1225-506: Was the secret police of the Soviet Union from November 1923 to July 1934, succeeding the State Political Directorate (GPU). Responsible to the Council of People's Commissars , the OGPU was headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky until 1926, then by Vyacheslav Menzhinsky until replaced by the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) within the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). The OGPU played an important role in

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