During the early Cold War, domestic justice was politicized in the service of the larger international conflict. Targeting the “enemy within” happened in both East and West. The persecution and prosecution of real and perceived adversaries was a hallmark of this new form of conflict, one that required both internal purges as much as external state strategy and military posturing. Political trials were a prominent feature in the early, hot phase of the Cold War—from the heightened tensions exposed during the Berlin airlift in 1948 through to the Korean War from 1950–1953. Such trials helped both the United States and the Soviet Union to “construct” the Cold War—each side in opposition to its ideological and political other. Such trials became yet one more weapon in the arsenals of the superpowers, and both regimes employed trial meta-narratives suggesting that “our” trials were about the prosecution of real conspirators, whereas “their” trials were about trumped-up charges, non-existent plots, or the prosecution of dissent. Barbara J. Falk’s research compares and analyzes four trials: the 1949 Rajk trial in Hungary and the 1952 Slánský trial in Czechoslovakia, as well as the 1949 Dennis trial and the 1951 Rosenberg-Sobell trial in the United States.
Barbara J. Falk is a professor in the Department of Defence Studies at the Canadian Forces College/Royal Military College of Canada and Senior Associate at the Munk School for European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on trials and the domestic politicization of justice during international conflict, comparative dissent, and national security law and policy. She is the author of The Dilemmas of Dissidence: Citizen Intellectuals and Philosopher Kings and Making Sense of Political Trials: Causes and Categories (CEU Press, 2003), as well as numerous book chapters and articles on the philosophy of Václav Havel, comparative dissent, national security, hybrid warfare and political trials.
Ivan Vejvoda, IWM Permanent Fellow, moderated the discussion.
