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Thread: Soviet voices for acquittal after WWII?

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    Headless Senior Member Pannonian's Avatar
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    Default Soviet voices for acquittal after WWII?

    I'm reading a history of 1918, and there is a comparison made between what one soldier advocated for Germany's leaders post-Great War, and what happened post-WWII. It occurred to me that, while I've read of Allied arguments for the acquittal of Axis defendants, I've not read of any similar from Soviet prosecutors/witnesses. Did the Soviets speak up for any defendants, if only for form's sake?

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    Praefectus Fabrum Senior Member Anime BlackJack Champion, Flash Poker Champion, Word Up Champion, Shape Game Champion, Snake Shooter Champion, Fishwater Challenge Champion, Rocket Racer MX Champion, Jukebox Hero Champion, My House Is Bigger Than Your House Champion, Funky Pong Champion, Cutie Quake Champion, Fling The Cow Champion, Tiger Punch Champion, Virus Champion, Solitaire Champion, Worm Race Champion, Rope Walker Champion, Penguin Pass Champion, Skate Park Champion, Watch Out Champion, Lawn Pac Champion, Weapons Of Mass Destruction Champion, Skate Boarder Champion, Lane Bowling Champion, Bugz Champion, Makai Grand Prix 2 Champion, White Van Man Champion, Parachute Panic Champion, BlackJack Champion, Stans Ski Jumping Champion, Smaugs Treasure Champion, Sofa Longjump Champion Seamus Fermanagh's Avatar
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    Default Re: Soviet voices for acquittal after WWII?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pannonian View Post
    I'm reading a history of 1918, and there is a comparison made between what one soldier advocated for Germany's leaders post-Great War, and what happened post-WWII. It occurred to me that, while I've read of Allied arguments for the acquittal of Axis defendants, I've not read of any similar from Soviet prosecutors/witnesses. Did the Soviets speak up for any defendants, if only for form's sake?
    Not a big reading area for me. What little I have read suggests that the Soviets used many of the same personnel that had prosecuted on behalf of the party and state during Stalin's show trials in 1936-1938. They went in viewing the Nuremburg process as a form of show trial, but the Western Allies successfully -- in part by providing an orthodox defense of the Nazis on trial -- kept the process more or less in line with Western jurisprudence and did not allow their Soviet colleagues to use it for show and/or as a way to undercut the centrality of property rights in Western Law. I would assume that Soviet efforts to "defend" would have been only in service of legal process and their larger international struggle to advance Marxism. They would NOT have taken as a starting point the idea that each individual was entitled to the best practicable defense that could be made. That was not the purpose of the Soviet justice system.
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