as a former capital of Russia, thus competing with the Moscow-centered communist government. The initial accuser was Georgy Malenkov, Stalin's first deputy. Then formal accusations were formulated by the Communist Party and signed by Malenkov, Khrushchev and Lavrentiy Beria. Over two thousand people from the Leningrad city government and regional authorities were arrested. Also arrested were many industrial managers, scientists and university professors. The city and regional authorities in Leningrad were swiftly occupied by pro-Stalin communists transplanted from Moscow. Several important politicians were arrested in Moscow and other cities across the Soviet Union. As a result of the first prosecution, on 30 September 1950, Nikolai Voznesensky (chairman of Gosplan), Mikhail Rodionov (Chairman of the RSFSR Council of Ministers), Alexey Kuznetsov, Pyotr Popkov, Ya. F. Kapustin and P. G. Lazutin 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. Executions The verdict was announced behind closed doors after midnight and the six main defendants, including the mayor of the city, were executed by shooting on 1 October 1950. Stalin's government had reinstated the death penalty in the Soviet Union on 12 January 1950; it had previously been repealed in 1947. It was applied to the accused retroactively. Over 200 Leningrad officials were sentenced to prison terms from 10 to 25 years. Their families were stripped of rights to live and work in any major city, thus limiting their lives to Siberia and other remote regions of the country. About 2,000 of Leningrad's public figures were removed from their positions and exiled from their city, thus losing their homes and other property. All 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 was killed in a prison camp for expressing his dislike of Soviet propaganda and "tasteless" Lenin portraits. The Leningrad affair was organised and supervised by Malenkov and Beria. Executions and purges were done by Viktor Abakumov and the MGB. The graves of the executed leaders of Leningrad were never marked and their exact locations are still unknown. All of the accused were later rehabilitated during the Khrushchev Thaw, many of them posthumously. Alexei Kosygin, the future