The Leningrad Affair, or Leningrad case ("Ленинградское дело" in Russian, or "Leningradskoye delo"), was a series of criminal cases fabricated in the late 1940s–early 1950s in order to accuse a number of prominent members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of treason and intention to create an anti-Soviet organization out of the Leningrad Party cell.[1]
Researchers argue that the motivation behind the cases was Stalin's fear of competition from the younger and popular Leningrad leaders - who had been fêted as heroes following the city's siege. Stalin's desire to keep power was combined with his deep distrust of anyone from St. Petersburg/Leningrad from the time of Stalin's involvement in the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, execution of Zinoviev and the Right Opposition.[2][3]
In January 1949 Pyotr Popkov, Aleksei Kuznetsov and Nikolai Voznesensky organized a Leningrad Trade Fair to boost the post-war economy and support the survivors of the Siege of Leningrad with goods and services from all over the Soviet Union. The Fair was attacked by official Soviet propaganda,[4] and was falsely portrayed as a scheme to use the federal budget from Moscow for business development in Leningrad, although the budget and economics of such a trade fair were normal and legitimate and approved by State Planning Commission and the government of the USSR.[5] A number of other accusations were added.
As a result of the first prosecution, on September 30, 1950, Nikolai Voznesensky (chairman of Gosplan), Mikhail Rodionov (Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers), Aleksei Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin[6] were sentenced to death on false accusations of embezzlement of the Soviet State budget for "unapproved business in Leningrad", which was labeled as anti-Soviet treason. The verdict was announced after midnight and the six main defendants were executed by shooting on October 1, for which Stalin's government reinstated the death penalty in the Soviet Union. The rest of the alleged accomplices were sentenced to different prison terms.
About 2,000 of Leningrad's public figures were removed from their positions and over 200 of them were repressed, together with their relatives. Respected intellectuals, scientists, writers and educators, many of whom were pillars of the city's community, were exiled or imprisoned in the Gulag prison camps. Intellectuals were harshly persecuted for the slightest signs of dissent, such as Nikolai Punin, who expressed his dislike of Soviet propaganda and thousands of Lenin's portraits.[7]
Simultaneously, the Soviet authorities replaced all communist party and administrative leadership in Leningrad by communists loyal to Stalin.
All of the accused were later rehabilitated during the Khrushchev Thaw, many of them posthumously.[8]
Alexei Kosygin, the future Chairman of the Council of Ministers, survived but his political career was hampered for some time.