| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, October 25, 2013 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM | Seminar Room 208N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place |
Although both the bolshevik regime in the era of Lenin and Stalin and the Nazi regime disposed of nearly allmighty political police apparatuses, which played the central role in carrying out the mass persecutions so characteristic for these dictatorships, they still never completely dispensed with political justice as a tool of their governing practice.
Andrey Vyhinsky and Roland Freisler respectivly became emblematic figures in this regard. What did the regimes hope to gain by organizing political trials, that took far more efforts and expenses than having virtual or real enemies liquidated without “unnecessary formalities” by the political police? This is the key question of Dr. Zarusky’s ongoing project on “Political Justice Under Lenin, Stalin and Hitler”, on which he will give a workshop report. The project aims at comparing those practices of political persecution that included and apparently required legitimization by the use of legal proceedings. By contrasting the preconditions, institutional framework, legal norms, forms of political control and, in an exemplary way, the concrete practice of political justice under Bolshevism and Nazism it is hoped to obtain new insights into the dynamics of the respective politics of persecution. This is also intended to contribute to badly needed scholarly answers to the highly politicized discussion about comparing Stalin’s and Hitler’s dicatatorship.
Dr. Jürgen Zarusky is a historian at the Institute of Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte München – Berlin, IfZ) in Munich. Together with Hartmut Mehringer he edited “Widerstand als ‘Hochverrat’ 1933-1945”
[“Resistance as ‘High Treason’ 1933-1945”] München 1994-1998, a microform edition that includes indictments and verdicts from more than 1800 political trials in Nazi Germany. He is also interested in Russian/Soviet History and has published inter alia on German-Soviet interaction and on the life and works of Soviet writer Vasily Grossman. Dr. Zarusky is deputy editor in chief of IfZ’s journal “Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte”.
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