In Moscow City Court, the Rokotov–Faibishenko show trial begins, despite the Khrushchev Thaw to reverse Stalinist elements in Soviet society.

The Moscow City Court is the highest judicial body of the city of Moscow on civil, criminal, administrative and other cases.

The Rokotov–Faibishenko case was a criminal trial against financial speculators, that took place in the Soviet Union in 1961. It also marked the start of a three-year campaign against large-scale economic crimes, accompanied by show trials.

A show trial is a public trial in which the guilt or innocence of the defendant has already been determined. The purpose of holding a show trial is to present both accusation and verdict to the public, serving as an example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.

The Khrushchev thaw is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with other nations. The term was coined after Ilya Ehrenburg's 1954 novel The Thaw ("Оттепель"), sensational for its time.

De-Stalinization comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to power, and his 1956 secret speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", which denounced Stalin's cult of personality and the Stalinist political system.