Dear Editor,
On reading Andrew Roth’s report that “Fears grow of Russian show trials as pretext for invasion” (28.05.22), I remembered how the lead American prosecutor at the earlier Nuremberg trials, Robert H. Jackson, believed that Russian participation in those trials nearly undermined their overall credibility. After all, the Soviet Union had been responsible for as many, if not more, mass murders than Nazi Germany, albeit over a much longer period. It did not help that the Soviet judge and chief prosecutor had played critical roles in Stalin’s infamous show trials of the 1930s. In particular, one remembers the cynical attempt by the Soviet prosecutor to introduce the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in Katyn as a German crime. Ultimately, because of the participation of Western jurists in dissecting the well documented and appalling Nazi German crimes, particularly those committed in Russia and Poland, the Nuremberg trial verdicts were justified and vindicated by history.
The threatened reactivation of a “Nuremberg 2.0”, however, run solely by Russian judges, would be seen as a mockery of justice, even if some genuine excesses by Ukrainian soldiers were to be revealed. I believe that it is up to the United Nations General Assembly to authorize an international tribunal on crimes committed in Ukraine when the war is over, and both Russian and Ukrainian prosecutors could then be given the chance to bring their evidence of real and alleged war crimes to the court, even if most of the accused would be tried “in absentia”. In the meantime, the courageous Mariupol survivors should be exchanged with Russian prisoners held by the Ukrainians, and not tried as criminals in a tendentious show trial.
Yours faithfully,
Wiktor Moszczynski
Letter sent to The Guardian 28.05.2022
