Vladimir Voinovichs Tribunal A Courtly Comedy in Three Acts is a wildly satiric sendup of the 1960s1970s Soviet showtrials by one of the most famous Soviet dissidents who was also sometimes called 20th Century Russias greatest living satirist. Based upon his reaction to the SinyavskiDaniel trial in 1966 which caused him to begin to write scathingly critical letters to Premier Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet Writers Union and finally resulted in his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1981 Voinov