In the book "A Tribunal for Academicians," the author continues his historical investigation into the tragic fates of people who, in different years and for different reasons, found themselves on the other side of the judicial barrier—that were condemned, arrested, subjected to repression and persecution. This time he tells about the Heroes of Socialist Labor who ended up in the same unfortunate position as the Heroes of the Soviet Union described in the previous books—"A Tribunal for Heroes," "A Tribunal for the “Stalin’s Falcons,”" and others.
Among them are not only world-famous S. P. Korolev, V. P. Glushko, L. D. Landau, D. S. Likhachev, A. N. Tupolev, and others. The names of many of the book’s heroes, unfortunately, mean little to today’s Russians. There are several reasons: the closed nature of the research carried out by scientists in a country sealed off from the rest of the world, as well as the inaccessibility of information to historians—information stored in closed archives for many years. Some of the materials the author publishes for the first time. This not only adds new touches and colors to the biographies of the heroes, but also highlights certain patterns in their “encounters” with Stalin’s judicial system.
The reader will find many unexpected discoveries, even about people well known to them—people whose lives included not only rises to starry pedestals, but also "sitting it out" on prison benches.