engineering-technical intelligentsia, of major specialists and professors, who held privileged positions during the capitalist regime". According to the prosecution, all of the organization's members had been raised in the bourgeois environment and hence were alien to the Soviet system, which served to reinforce an important point of contemporary Soviet propaganda. It was also alleged that Indparty wreckers had deviously moved beyond direct, crude, easily recognizable sabotage to wrecking in the areas of planning and resource distribution. Virtually any conceivable course of action could be construed as wrecking: for example the engineers' decision to invest in a particular area could be construed as wrecking by withholding resources from other vital areas, while by the same token their decision to not invest could also be construed as wrecking: the opportunity cost of any decision could be used to indicate guilt. In other words, the engineers were made scapegoats for well known economic problems in various areas of Soviet industry. The trial was a refinement of the Shakhty Trial in 1928 and an important precursor to the Moscow Trials of the late 1930s. In one of those minor glitches that would plague later trials, Ramzin was accused of having plotted with Russian emigre industrialist Pavel Ryabushinsky in 1928, even though Ryabushinsky had died in 1924. Verdict and follow-up On December 7, five defendants were given the death sentence, which was commuted to long prison terms, while other defendants were sentenced to different terms in prison. During his imprisonment, Ramzin was allowed to continue working. He was amnestied in 1932 and eventually showered with Soviet awards (the 1943 Stalin Prize, the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour ) for his scientific work, especially the Ramzin straight-flow boiler. In February 1936 some other defendants were also pardoned. Two years later, in January 1938, the prosecutor, Nikolai Krylenko, was arrested and shot during the Great Purge. See also Alexander Bogdanov Industrial Party (China) Metro-Vickers Affair Pandora's Box (British TV series) Shakhty Trial Technocratic movement Tectology References Andrew Rothstein (Ed.). Wreckers on Trial. London, 1931. N. V. Krylenko. A blow at Intervention. Final indictment in the case of the counter-revolutionary Organisation of the Union of Engineers’ Organisations (the Industrial Party) whereby Ramzin, Kalinnikof, Larichef, Charnowsky, Fedotof, Kupriyánof, Ochkin and Sitnin, the accused, are charged in accordance with article 58, paragraphs 3, 4, and 6 of the Criminal code of the RSFSR.