The process of V. A. Kravchenko. Report from the courtroom.

The process of V. A. Kravchenko. Report from the courtroom.
Paris. Russian Thought, 1949. - 148 p., fig. Cardboard owner's binding with the preservation of the publisher's cover [pasted on the top cover of the binding], the usual format (14 x 23 cm). The cover is worn and dirty, has tears, creases, including on the spine; a loose leaf of the flyleaf has fallen out and is embedded; the paper around the perimeter is very yellow; the block was not cut when binding.

[The Kravchenko Case — the 1949 Paris libel trial of Viktor Kravchenko (1905-1966) against the French newspaper Les Lettres françaises.

Viktor Kravchenko is a non-returnee to the USSR, a former official of the Soviet procurement commission in the United States, who asked for asylum in the West. After remaining in America, in 1946, with the help of journalist Eugene Lyons and Stanislavsky's translator Elizabeth Hapgood, he wrote the book I Chose Freedom, which described the horrors of collectivization, Stalinist camps, and famine in the USSR. The book, which was a huge success and translated into two dozen languages, dealt a serious blow to the image of the USSR abroad. In France, it was published in 500,000 copies and provoked a backlash: the French communists called Kravchenko a "fifth column", a "puppet" and a "traitor" bought by American intelligence, claiming that he could not write his own book. After the French pro-communist newspaper Les Lettres françaises, edited by Louis Aragon, accused Kravchenko of lying, he filed a libel lawsuit.

The trial, which took place in early 1949 in Paris, was supposed to last nine days, but it lasted two months. Because of its scale, it has been called the "Process of the Century". There is an opinion that the process itself caused much more damage to Soviet propaganda than the actual book by Kravchenko.

Hundreds of witnesses testified in court: On the part of Kravchenko were refugees from the USSR, and on the part of the communists-supporters of the French Communist Party from among the deputies, writers, journalists, members of the Resistance movement, as well as party members who had visited the USSR. Among others, celebrities known for their Marxist views, such as the "Red Dean", the rector of Canterbury Cathedral, Hewlett Johnson, the physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie and the writer Jean-Paul Sartre, spoke in defense of the USSR. The Soviet authorities brought Kravchenko's wife and former colleagues to France to testify against him.

Kravchenko won the trial thanks to the testimony of numerous refugees from the USSR, representing different segments of the population. Among others, Marguerite Buber-Neumann, the widow of the repressed German communist Heinz Neumann, who was extradited by the Soviet side to the Gestapo in 1940, appeared in court. Former citizens of the USSR who found themselves after the war in Canada, France, Germany and other non-socialist countries, confirmed in court the facts described in the book — mass repression, "purges", the destruction of peasants during collectivization, the use of slave labor of prisoners, torture during interrogations, fabricated trials. "Collectivization in the Soviet Union was a second revolution, more bloody, more brutal and barbaric than the October revolution, and I and my witnesses will prove it, " Kravchenko said.

Speaking in court, Kravchenko, who was a member of the Soviet procurement commission in Washington during the Second World War, for patriotic reasons refused to discuss issues related to the military actions of the USSR, or to disclose any details concerning its economy, especially everything related to the implementation of lend-lease supplies.

On April 4, 1949, Kravchenko won the trial. The court awarded him compensation in the amount of 150,000 francs.

Viktor Kravchenko also wrote a book devoted mainly to this trial - "I choose justice" - but it did not receive a share of the popularity that went to the first one that caused the trial.]