Гуманитарные и юридические исследования (Sep 2021)
BREST PROCESS OVER OPPOSITION ACTIVISTS IN 1931-1932 IN POLAND
Abstract
The article is devoted to the litigation in Poland, which became known as Brest litigation, that did not ind special reflection in Russian historiography. It took place at the turn of 1931-1932 in Warsaw. A part of the figures who were imprisoned for two months during the pre-election campaign of 1930 in a military prison in Brest, representing the left and centrist parties of the Centrolew bloc, were brought to trial. The process has become a manifestation of the tendency for a decisive offence against the opposition after the election. The study relies on published process materials, press testimonies, memoirs of participants and contemporaries. The article traces the preparation, course, results and consequences of the trial. The indictment charged with preparing a coup and revolution. Separate stages of the trial itself are presented: the speeches of the accused, the speeches of prosecutors and lawyers, as well as the verdict and the struggle for its change. Attention is drawn to the importance of this process for the authorities and their intentions: to justify the illegal character of the arrest of Brest prisoners and mockery of them in prison. When considering the course of the trial, the political nature of the prosecu- tion and the tactics of the prosecutors who by any means tried to prove the anti-state nature of the activities of the defendants are shown. The tactics of the defense and the defendants' speeches were based not so much on a complete refusal to admit their guilt, but on counterclaims by the authorities and personally J. Pitsudski of usurpation as a result of a power coup and the establishment of personal dictatorship, numerous violations of the law during the period of the reorganization regime. The weak position of the prosecution influenced the verdict of the court: the heaviest sentence was excluded from it, the terms of imprisonment were set below the minimum, the verdict was not unanimously adopted by the panel of judges. The socio-political resonance of the process in the country and in the world has seriously worsened the image of the Polish state and is one of the highest manifestations of the violation of the law and independence of the court in interwar Poland.
