According to the Museum of Soviet Occupation, this proceeding became a sort of political slogan to persecute Ukraine's older and foremost academic intelligentsia, as well as representatives of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC-Lypkivsky).

The total number is not known, but tens of thousands[2] of people are estimated to have been arrested, exiled, and/or executed during and after the trial including 30,000[3] intellectuals, writers, teachers, and scientists.

According to Soviet sources, the SVU was an underground organization which supposedly existed in Ukraine from June 1926 to July 1929, when it was exposed by the State Political Directorate.

The SVU allegedly existed in the Ukrainian diaspora (it should not be confused with the Union of Liberation of Ukraine, which operated during World War II abroad).

Among others in the dock were: The Chairman of the Ukrainian Supreme Court who heard the case was Anton Prykhodko, the chief prosecutor M. Mykhailyk (Attorney-General of the Republic and Deputy Narkom).

According to the indictment act, 33 of the accused belonged to the Kyiv group of SVU, three represented Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa, two - Poltava and Mykolaiv, and a single representation was from Chernihiv and Vinnytsia.

In modern Ukrainian opinion, the dominant thought is that SVU and SUM did not exist as organizations, and were provocations of the GPU (V. Holubnychyy, V. Hryshko, M. Kowalewsky, G. Kostyuk, Yu.

The hypothesis that SVU - SUM was a fictitious organization of the GPU is supported by the existence of other show trials (Shakhty process in 1928 or the so-called Prompartia (Industrial Party) in December 1930), which were purely political.