The Sevastopol war crimes trial of 1947: symbolic practices of power

The article examines the Nazi war crime trial which was held in Sevastopol in 1947. The authors argue that the open trial was aimed to construct the enemy’s image and to contrast the latter to the positive image of power by applying symbolic practices, such as “language game” and “ritual” actions. This trial almost coincided in time with other similar trials in Bobruisk, Poltava, Vitebsk, Novgorod, Kishinev and Gomel. In fact, this was the second wave of regional trials of war criminals in the USSR triggered by external and internal factors. The external factors were caused by growing contradictions among the former war allies as well as a series of events leading to the Cold War. In this context the Soviet leadership aimed to show the unfair policy of the western countries in relation to war criminals and to create new enemy image embodied by “the western capitalist world”. The internal factors were the acute social problems inside the USSR. The authorities sought to divert the people’s attention from those problems by drawing it to the matters of retaliation and vengeance upon the defeated enemy. At the same time, the justice and retaliation agenda was supposed to enhance the credibility and positive image of the leadership that launched the retaliation process. The open trials on war crimes were normally conducted in Sevastopol and other cities of the USSR in one and the same manner being accompanied by similar symbolic practices.