The Soviet 1937–1938 provincial show trials revisted

I want to say briefly how the Shakhty affair was exposed and to whom we are indebted for the discovery of this Shakhty affair. We are indebted to com. Stalin... In 1927 I met with com. Stalin in Sochi. He, as usual, asked me how things were. I told him. In particular I told him about this affair [the ‘sabotage’ in industry]. He listened carefully and asked detailed questions about the affair. At the end of the conversation I said the following: ‘For me it is clear that we are dealing with people who are consciously undermining production, but it is not clear to me, who their leader is. Either it is the general staffs [of hostile powers], in particular the Polish general staff, or it is the firm which in the past owned these enterprises, and which has an interest in undermining production, i.e. the Belgian company’. I remember clearly that com. Stalin said to me, ‘When you finish your investigation, send the materials to the CC’. You yourselves will understand, that I reared up, like a war-horse.... [When I had completed my investigation] I sent the CC an overview of the Shakhty affair. E.V. Evdokimov     

Reviews

J. S. Prybyla, Market and plan under socialism: The bird in the cage, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1987, xv + 348 pp. p/b $18.95.

Thomas A. Wolf, Foreign Trade in the Centrally Planned Economy, Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1988, ix + 77 pp., $33.00.

Arie Bloed, The External Relations of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1988, xvi + 257 pp., Df1.135, US$66, £39.50.

Roger E. Kanet, ed., The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xi + 233 pp., £25.00 h/b.

Stevan K. Pavlowitch, The Improbable Survivor: Yugoslavia and its Problems, 1918 1988, London: C. Hurst & Company, 1988, 167 pp., £17.50 h/b., £7.50 p/b.

Ronald H. Linden, Communist States and International Change: Romania and Yugoslavia in Comparative Perspective, New York: Allen and Unwin, 1987, xviii + 201 pp., £28.00.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe, Soviet Civil Law, Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 36, Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988, ix + 383 pp., £62.00.

M. M. Boguslavskii, Private International Law: The Soviet Approach, Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 35, Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988, ix + 261 pp., £49.50.

Edward A. Allworth, ed., Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1988, xvi + 396 pp., $52.50.

Timothy Edward O'Connor, Diplomacy and Revolution: G. V. Chicherin and Soviet Foreign Affairs, 1918 1930, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988, xx + 250 pp., $24.95.

Aleksander Kan, I Påvente av frigjeringa. Sovjetisk historieteori mellom Stalin og Gor‐batsjov, [Fråtysk ved Jostein Stokkeland] Det Norske Samlaget, Oslo, 1988, 304 pp.

Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks after October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1987, xviii + 329 pp., $39.95.

Leopold H. Haimson, The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past, in collaboration with Ziva Galili y Garcia and Richard Wortman. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, ix + 515 pp., $49.50, £37.50.

Allen K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army, Volume II: The Road to Soviet Power and Peace, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, xv + 443 pp., £34.40.

Nurit Schleifman, Undercover Agents in the Russian Revolutionary Movement: the SR Party, 1902 14, London: Macmillan, in association with St Antony's College Oxford, 1988, xvii + 222 pp., £29.50.

Christopher Rice, Russian Workers and the Socialist‐Revolutionary Party Through the Revolution of 1905 07, London: Macmillan, 1988, xiv + 272 pp., £33.00.