6. Instruire, juger et négocier le passé de guerre dans la Lituanie soviétique (Pabradė, 1944-1957)

Abstract

This paper proposes to provide a quantitative and qualitative overview of the judicial cleansing of people accused of participating in Nazi crimes in Lithuania, from the first prosecutions after the arrival of the Red Army in 1944 to the major public trials held in Vilnius and Kaunas in 1962.After evoking the role of the purges in connection with the wartime past in the violent Sovietization of the Baltic republics and tracing their quantitative evolution from their peak in the 1940s until the crisis, and then the reinvention of the Stalinist model in the middle of the following decade, the author examines the procedures and judicial frameworks used to punish these crimes (Special Conference, Military Tribunal, and the Supreme Court). In doing so, this paper seeks to go beyond the “in-camera trial/ media trial” opposition to analyze the various degrees of publicity involved in the use of these judicial tools.