Industrial Party Trial

The Industrial Party Trial (November 25 – December 7, 1930) (Russian: Процесс Промпартии, Trial of the Prompartiya) was a show trial in which several Soviet scientists and economists were accused and convicted of plotting a coup against the government of the Soviet Union.

Nikolai Krylenko, deputy People's Commissar (minister) of Justice, assistant Prosecutor General of the RSFSR and a prominent Bolshevik, prosecuted the case. The presiding judge was Andrey Vyshinsky, later Krylenko's opponent who became famous as the prosecutor at the Moscow Trials in 1936-1938.

The defendants were a group of notable Soviet economists and engineers, including Leonid Ramzin, Osadchy (Осадчий), Charnovsky (Чарновский), Fedotov (Федотов), Larichev (Ларичев), Ochkin (Очкин), Sitnin, Kalinnikov, and Kupryanov. They stood accused of having formed an anti-Soviet "Union of Engineers’ Organisations" or Prompartiya ("Industrial Party") and of having tried to wreck the Soviet industry and transport in 1926-1930.

In a related development, a number of prominent members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (Yevgeny Tarle, Sergei Platonov, Nikolay Likhachov, Sergei Bakhrushin, etc.) were arrested in 1930. They were mentioned during the "Industrial Party" trial as co-conspirators. However, no subsequent trial took place and they were quietly exiled to remote areas of the country for a few years.