Sham Trials

Collective-farm meetings sentenced deported Chechens to an 8-year banishment from their places of settlement - without trial, investigation or defense. The government of the USSR established this procedure by its resolution of 2 June 1948: the general meeting of a collective farm or village passed a "public sentence" of banishment "for malicious evasion of labor activity in agriculture and the leading of an antisocial, parasitic way of life," and these meetings were conducted by the organs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The ministry itself reported: "The banishment measures were determined by general meetings of collective farms and village peasants, conducted by the organs of the MVD"^[1]. The Ministry of Internal Affairs admitted in a 1950 report: "deportees maliciously evading work on the collective farms are being banished by decisions of collective-farm meetings for 8 years to remote regions of the country" - this was done in the Kzyl-Orda, Kustanai, Pavlodar and South Kazakhstan oblasts of Kazakhstan^[2]. The ministry itself called banishment without trial merely an "erroneous practice" and an "incorrect application of the measure of punishment": under its own order such people were supposed to be put on trial^[2]. Historian V. A. Kozlov writes from the ministry's documents: "The more far-sighted police officials were forced to admit that punishing the Chechens and Ingush for evasion of work was inexpedient" - or else "a natural defense mechanism will kick in - the single monolithic community will behave as one person - you cannot punish them all!"^[2].