How Sayers & Kahn set the stakes

The book claims the USSR faced a long, layered campaign of encirclement and subversion from 1917 onward—foreign intelligence services, émigré financiers, and internal factions allegedly converged into a “fifth column.” The Table of Contents telegraphs that arc: Revolution → foreign “cordon sanitaire” → internal fifth column → wartime/UN settlement. the_great_conspiracy the_great_conspiracy

Below, I’ll map the targets (who was prosecuted) to the rationale the book gives, plus key episodes and quotations you can point to.

1) The “Industrial Party” (Ramzin et al.) — economic wrecking as war prep

Who: Professor Leonid Ramzin (Thermo-Technical Institute), Victor Larichev (Fuel Section, Gosplan), and other senior engineers/technocrats. the_great_conspiracy

Why they were targeted (per Sayers & Kahn):

They allegedly led a clandestine network of ~2,000 technical officials inside industry—financed and directed by the émigré cartel Torgprom—that used “scientific” sabotage to slow or distort Five-Year Plan industrialization (“method of minimum standards,” deliberate disproportions across sectors, etc.). the_great_conspiracy the_great_conspiracy
The book says this network doubled as a liaison to foreign militaries (a “plan of attack” on the USSR discussed with French staff in 1928) and big-capital patrons like Sir Henri Deterding. The authors anchor this in the published trial record Wreckers on Trial (Nov–Dec 1930). the_great_conspiracy

The crackdown:

Arrests: Oct 28, 1930; simultaneous OGPU raids netted Industrial Party cadres plus underground SRs/Mensheviks and foreign agents. the_great_conspiracy
Charges: Espionage, sabotage, plotting to overthrow the government. Defendants confessed; testimony (the book says) implicated Deterding, Joinville, Urquhart, Poincaré, etc. the_great_conspiracy the_great_conspiracy
Sentences/after: Five death sentences initially; later commuted for key leaders (including Ramzin) on the grounds they’d been “tools” of conspirators abroad. Ramzin reenters industry, and—crucially for a debate—Sayers & Kahn note he later received the Order of Lenin and a Stalin Prize (1943) for a turbine invention, a datapoint they use to argue the prosecutions aimed to convert, not just punish. the_great_conspiracy the_great_conspiracy

How to argue it (inside the book’s logic): The USSR cracked down not on “opinion,” but on a funded, foreign-connected technocratic network sabotaging production at the precise moment the state was racing to industrialize against looming war. The book leans on the trial transcripts to argue mens rea (intent) and foreign patronage. the_great_conspiracy

2) The “Menshevik Trial” (1931) — infiltration of planning organs (Gosplan) to undercut the Five-Year Plan

Who: Former Menshevik leaders placed in “vital Soviet administrative and technical agencies,” including economist Groman at Gosplan. the_great_conspiracy the_great_conspiracy

Why they were targeted (per the book):

Sayers & Kahn depict a secret Menshevik apparatus that had publicly “renounced” opposition while covertly infiltrating key planning posts to skew targets and sabotage Plan implementation. They cite lowered output norms and misestimation as deliberate wrecking acts. the_great_conspiracy