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Meanwhile, Rendle's balanced account detailing the failures as well as the successes of the tribunals complicates the trend in Soviet historiography of praising their heroic role in the Bolshevik civil war victory. Rendle traces Narkomiust's constant efforts to centralise the tribunal structure, and in so doing, systematise and professionalise legal procedure throughout the Soviet territory. It does this through the prism of the revolutionary tribunal, the court the Soviet government set up shortly after the October Revolution to provide a legal forum for fighting counter-revolutionary activity. [Extracted from the article]