The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has granted the cassation appeal of Muscovite Georgy Shakhet and ordered the MVD to provide him with access to the criminal case file of his grandfather, Pavel Zabotin, who was executed by firing squad in 1933 under the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of August 7, 1932, “On the Protection of the Property of State Enterprises, Kolkhozes, and Cooperatives and the Strengthening of Socialist Property”—the notorious “Law of Three Spikelets.” This was reported by the Memorial Human Rights Center.
Georgy Shakhet (photo: Vlad Dokshin, “Novaya Gazeta”)
In court, a representative of the MVD admitted that the agency had misapplied the law. He asked for the case to be sent back to the court of first instance for a new hearing, but the Supreme Court refused, siding with Shakhet.
Pavel Zabotin, head of the construction sector of the cafeteria management of the Lenin People’s Commissariat for Food, was arrested on December 28, 1932. He was accused of embezzling state property—20,000 bricks and 22 crates of glass. Twenty-two other people were implicated in this case. The decision to execute Zabotin by firing squad was made two weeks after his arrest.
Shakhet’s grandfather was tried by a “troika”—an administrative repressive body attached to the republican, krai, and oblast directorates of the NKVD. Since Zabotin was convicted under a common criminal article, he was not rehabilitated, and the case was closed.
Pavel Zabotin
For two years, Shakhet tried to gain access to his grandfather’s criminal case file. However, the MVD, citing a joint order of the Ministry of Culture, the MVD, and the FSB, refused. This order does not regulate the issue of access to the case files of non-rehabilitated citizens. Shakhet lost several court cases—the Golovinsky District Court of Moscow, the Moscow City Court, and its Presidium consistently sided with the MVD. The Supreme Court also initially refused to hear Shakhet’s appeal, but at the end of March, it requested the case materials, and in May, it transferred them to the panel for consideration.
Read more about this case:
• “Enemy of the People,” Executed on the Basis of a Secret Instruction
• An Immovable Object Meets a Cassation Appeal