{"id":10681,"date":"2026-05-10T17:36:55","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T17:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/culturalleft.org\/cl\/2026\/05\/10\/a-damning-indictment-of-the-brutality-of-stalins-show-trials-reviews-culture-socialist-worker\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T17:36:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T17:36:55","slug":"a-damning-indictment-of-the-brutality-of-stalins-show-trials-reviews-culture-socialist-worker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturalleft.org\/cl\/2026\/05\/10\/a-damning-indictment-of-the-brutality-of-stalins-show-trials-reviews-culture-socialist-worker\/","title":{"rendered":"A damning indictment of the brutality of Stalin\u2019s show trials Reviews & Culture – Socialist Worker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"outraged\n

Outraged lawyer Alexander Kornyev, played by Aleksandr Kuznetsov, trapped in a bureaucratic maze<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Some of the most \u00adfrightening films are not based on the \u00addepiction of actual violence or gory special effects. Instead, they work by referencing our fears about the world around us now\u2014and what it might become.<\/p>\n

So it is with The Two Prosecutors, a Russian language period drama set amid the 1937 show trials in Joseph Stalin\u2019s Russia.<\/p>\n

The film opens with guards in a Soviet prison in the city of Bryansk ordering an elderly inmate to burn sacks of prisoners\u2019 appeal letters.<\/p>\n

One is from an \u201cold Bolshevik from before the \u00adrevolution.\u201d He appeals to \u201cComrade Stalin\u201d to come to his aid after the NKVD secret police fitted him up as a supporter of the \u201cTrotsky\u2011Zinoviev faction.\u201d<\/p>\n

One catches the inmate\u2019s eye. It is written in blood by a \u00adprisoner called Stepniak and it demands redress for false imprisonment.<\/p>\n

This note escapes the fire and finds its way to the newly qualified local prosecutor Alexander Kornyev, played by Aleksandr Kuznetsov.<\/p>\n

Enticed by the letter, Kornyev \u00adeventually secures an interview with its author in his cell in the special wing for political prisoners.<\/p>\n

To get there, Kornyev must worm his way through a maze of \u00adanonymous, dark corridors that reek of brutality yet remain eerily silent.<\/p>\n

From his cell, Stepniak tells of how he, a veteran of the 1917 revolution, came to be incarcerated, brutalised and tortured. In doing so, he tells the story of the degeneration of the \u00adrevolution itself.<\/p>\n

Stepniak had been a senior Soviet lawyer and someone who believed in the Bolshevik justice system. The sense of outrage that he, and soon Kornyev, share assumes that truth has somehow been subverted.<\/p>\n

In a line that resonates with our own times, Stepniak rages at the way \u201chonest, knowledgeable experts are substituted by ignorant charlatans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kornyev is quickly on a Moscow\u2011bound train in an attempt to bring news of the scandal in Bryansk to the attention of state prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky, played by Anatoliy Beliy. The journey provides the film\u2019s only moments of light relief.<\/p>\n

In Moscow, as in the prison, Kornyev has to travel through a warren of corridors before finally reaching the prosecutor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

And just like in the prison, he waits for hours. Only then can he make his explosive \u00adallegation\u2014that \u00adcounter\u2011revolutionaries in the NKVD are using torture and \u00adimprisonment to undermine justice.<\/p>\n

Vyshinsky hears Kornyev\u2019s story but orders him back to Bryansk for more evidence.<\/p>\n

Unknown to Kornyev\u2014and not indicated in the film\u2014Vyshinsky was the real state \u00adprosecutor during Stalin\u2019s show trials.<\/p>\n

And under his authority, all the old Bolshevik leadership were put to the sword.<\/p>\n

Two men are already sitting in his compartment when Kornyev boards the train home. They are cheery and welcoming, and have food and alcohol, and sing together.<\/p>\n

The men describe themselves as engineers fixing the work of factory \u201csaboteurs.\u201d But they are far from what they seem.<\/p>\n

And by now viewers are all too aware that Kornyev, the young believer, is heading for a fall.<\/p>\n

Two Prosecutors is a damning indictment of Stalinism and how it devoured the pioneers of October.<\/p>\n