Prosecutors of two eras. Andrey Vyshinsky and Roman Rudenko Zvyagintsev Alexander Grigorievich

Chapter Three Stalin's Prosecutor

Chapter Three

Stalin's prosecutor

Ivan Alekseevich Akulov served as prosecutor of the USSR until March 1935. He enjoyed the unchanging sympathy of his subordinates. Here is what a former employee of the Prosecutor's Office of the Union N. A. Orlov wrote about him: “Akulov was in the full sense of the word a charming man, a man of a broad Russian soul. He loved life and nature. Going on vacation, he loved to travel, learn and show others new, beautiful places, was a connoisseur of art, loved and understood music. At home, this was the ideal of a family man, an unusually loving father. He highly valued friendship, knew how to make friends and was a faithful, reliable friend.

Apparently, Stalin did not like these qualities of his. And although Akulov, like other persons who stood at the pinnacle of power, blindly fulfilled all the requirements of the leader (even contrary to the law), he understood that not such a person was needed as the prosecutor of the USSR. The intelligent and gentle Akulov was clearly not suitable for the role of the organizer of mass repressions.

By the Decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of March 3, 1935 (signed by M. Kalinin and I. Unshlikht), I. A. Akulov was approved as Secretary of the Central Executive Committee with release from his previous duties.

A.Ya. Vyshinsky was appointed the new prosecutor of the Union, who managed to obligingly and meekly fulfill the role of the "chief inquisitor" of the leader. His Menshevik past was consigned to oblivion. During the four years that Vyshinsky served as Prosecutor of the USSR, he was able to fully master all the key positions of legal science and practice. The former Prosecutor of the RSFSR A. A. Volin, in an interview with the authors, said that at that time “the voice of only one person was heard everywhere - Vyshinsky.”

The orders and instructions of the new Procurator of the USSR, which had previously not been distinguished by softness, now sounded more firmly and harshly, especially when it came to the implementation of all kinds of decisions of the party and government. Vyshinsky demanded that his subordinates initiate criminal proceedings and bring officials and citizens to trial for a wide variety of offenses: authorized procurement committees for failing to hand over grain delivery obligations to collective farms and individual farms; heads of collective farms and state farms - for handing over “healthy pregnant cattle” for slaughter, as well as for concealing livestock from accounting, for failure to fulfill plans for meat and milk supplies, for castration of breeding cattle; other business executives - for violation of the smooth operation of irrigation facilities, for the unsanitary state of bakeries, for overtime work. At the same time, it was often proposed to initiate cases immediately upon receipt of certain reports, especially from party and Soviet bodies, and to complete the investigation in 2-5, maximum 10 days. Prosecutors aimed at carrying out "timely, well-aimed, socially organized and harsh repression" (a phrase from one order).

Having become the prosecutor of the Union, Vyshinsky began to reorganize the organs of the prosecutor's office. He created, under his chairmanship, the Central Methodological Commission, which included the heads of the apparatus of the USSR Prosecutor's Office and scientists, in particular Aleksandrov, Golunsky, Viktorov, Roginsky, Strogovich, Umansky, Sheinin. He organized a civil department, headed by his assistant B. L. Borisov. The statistics service was resolutely reorganized. By order of February 28, 1935, an information and statistical unit (as a sector) was organized in the USSR Prosecutor's Office, subordinated directly to the Prosecutor of the Union. It was headed by A. A. Gertsenzon.

From the very first days of taking up his new position, Vyshinsky developed exceptional activity: trips, meetings, meetings with activists, speeches with reports followed one after another. In March 1935, he visited Kyiv, where he personally got acquainted with the work of the prosecutor's office. In April, he heard a report from the Prosecutor of the RSFSR V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko on the work of the prosecutor's office in combating the production of low-quality products. In August, he delivered a long report at a meeting of the Presidium of the Communist Academy, the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law, and the Institute of Criminal Policy in connection with the third anniversary of the law of August 7, 1932 (on the protection of socialist property).

On May 11, 1935, Vyshinsky issued an order, approved by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, "On strengthening supervision over revolutionary legality", which, of course, had a huge positive impact on the situation with the implementation of laws in the people's commissariats, local Soviets, enterprises, institutions and collective farms.

On June 10, 1935, under the chairmanship of Vyshinsky, an expanded operational and production meeting was held in the USSR Prosecutor's Office. Two reports were submitted for discussion by its participants: on measures for general supervision and on social workers (Roginsky spoke) and on work with personnel (reported by Vavilov). In Roginsky's report on general oversight, the main idea was the need for a decisive restructuring of work, starting from the USSR Prosecutor's Office and ending with the district level. It was proposed, in particular, to establish a close relationship between the prosecutor's office and the legal departments and legal advisers of people's commissariats, enterprises and institutions, to visit organizations regularly, to participate in the work of executive committees, etc.

Summing up the discussion of Roginsky's report, Vyshinsky warned prosecutors against two dangers: "going to extremes" and watching "all sorts of trifles", which would only distract prosecutors from their most important work; and "taking on the role of consultants" for business and organizational leaders.

In Vavilov's report, the key point was the issue of staffing the prosecutor's offices, since at that time more than 2 thousand people were missing with exceptionally high turnover, which in some republics reached 30 percent. When discussing this issue, Vyshinsky proposed to deeply study the peripheral personnel, especially in the operational sectors, so that "the leadership of their movement was of a very operational nature and was based not on any official moments, not on purely paper data, but on a systematic, in-depth familiarization with living human cadres and with their real work on specific cases.

In August 1935, Vyshinsky participated in the trial in Baku in the case of the sinking of the tanker "Soviet Azerbaijan".

At the beginning of September of the same year, he delivered a long speech in Tiflis "On socialist legality and on the immediate tasks of the court and the prosecutor's office" at a meeting of senior officials of the court and prosecutor's office of the Transcaucasian republics. Messages on it were made by people's commissars of justice and prosecutors of the republics of Armenia - Ketykyan, Azerbaijan - Yagubov and Georgian - Ramishvili.

In 1935, when Vyshinsky was already the prosecutor of the Union, the authorities began to somewhat limit the scope of repressions against workers, mainly peasants. They also “condemned” the practice of “unauthorized arrests” and demanded that the officials coordinate the arrests with the prosecutors. A secret resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of June 17, 1935 "On the procedure for coordinating arrests" was adopted. It should be noted that in practice this provision was not always respected, especially in “counter-revolutionary cases”, to which the prosecutors simply “turned a blind eye”. Moreover, there were even cases when they gave signed blank forms for arrest to the NKVD bodies, in which it was required only to put down the last name, first name and patronymic of the arrested person, and also gave sanctions “backdating”. During mass campaigns, prosecutors were often on duty at night so that NKVD workers could obtain an arrest warrant immediately.

Simultaneously with the strengthening of "control over arrests", the process of reviewing some cases against collective farmers and representatives of rural authorities, who were convicted in the early 1930s, began. Vyshinsky grasped this situation very correctly and in December 1935 turned to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks with a proposal on the need to review the sentences under the law of August 7, 1932, passed before January 1, 1935. The Politburo agreed with him, and in January 1936 a corresponding decree was adopted. Tens of thousands of those convicted of theft were released.

Vyshinsky's work was quite intense in subsequent years as well. For example, on February 13, 1936, he met at the Prosecutor's Office of the Union with employees and activists of the Prosecutor's Office of the Kalinin Region. The conversation went on for about four hours. The prosecutor of the region Nazarov was the first to ask for the floor. According to him, in the last year alone, the number of activists has doubled and exceeded seven thousand people. They signaled violations of the law, embezzlement and abuse that they noticed, helped to consider complaints and newspaper articles, acted as prosecutors in court, helped to study criminal cases subject to appeal, and the most legally trained of them even independently investigated criminal cases. From among the activists, some social workers of prosecutors and investigators were selected and then nominated for permanent work in the prosecutor's office.

After Nazarov, employees of the regional prosecutor's office and members of the prosecutor's office assistance group who were present at the meeting spoke. Here is a small snippet from that conversation.

Psheora(assistant prosecutor of the city of Kalinin). I am a former worker at the Vagzhanov factory. Prior to joining the prosecutor's office, she worked in the asset. In 1934, she was promoted to the post of assistant prosecutor. From that time on, I had to lead the work with the city's activists ... Special teams were created from the asset: for alimony cases, which monitors the timely payment of alimony for the maintenance of children; on cooperation, which is actively fighting against waste and theft in retail outlets, and others.

Vyshinsky. Isn't it difficult for you, comrade Psheorskaya, to work?

Psheora. I cope with the work entrusted to me, although I still have no special legal training. Now this issue has been resolved, and a special teacher is attached by the regional prosecutor's office to improve my literacy. Comrade Nazarov has already released the money for this.

Vyshinsky. Comrade Psheorskaya, are you being helped in your practical work?

Psheora. Of course, they help, because without this help I, an ordinary worker, would not be able to cope with such a big job. In particular, Comrade Nazarov helps me very well. I often turn to my city prosecutor, comrade Ragozin, for help. I promise to improve my political and legal literacy and achieve even better results in my work.

Then the collective farmer A. A. Valova, who worked in the assistance group for more than a year, spoke. To Vyshinsky’s question, how does she manage to work on a collective farm, raise four children and actively help the prosecutor’s office, she replied: “When I need to do social work, I leave my husband with the kids.”

Vyshinsky. Is he an activist too?

Valova. Yes, an activist, when he drinks wine, but in a sober state he is a completely backward person. I often have to argue and prove to him that you need to work more and drink less. These difficulties will not stop me, I will continue to work in the Stakhanov way on the collective farm and in the asset of the prosecutor's office.

Activists of the prosecutor's office, worker Belozerov, tractor driver Chumakov, teacher Galakhova and others also spoke at this meeting.

In conclusion, Vyshinsky noted the great successes achieved by the prosecutor's office of the Kalinin region in organizing and developing ties with assistance groups, especially highlighting the activities of the regional prosecutor Nazarov, his assistant Sadovnikov, the prosecutors of the city of Kalinin Ragozin, the Sebezhsky district of Pirogov and the Vyshnevolotsky district of Evgrafov. “The work of the Kalinin residents,” he stressed, “shows that groups assisting the prosecutor's office have taken deep roots in our land. This is good and very important. Here one of the most important principles of socialist construction is implemented - the direct participation of the working masses in the administration of the state. Vyshinsky thanked the activists for their work and said that the Union Prosecutor's Office would learn a serious lesson from this conversation. He promised to assist the activists in organizing correspondence courses and supplying them with relevant literature.

In the spring of 1936, Vyshinsky made a report at the Institute of Criminal Policy on the topic "Problems of evaluating evidence in the Soviet criminal process." In it, he criticized the attitudes voiced in the reports of professors M. M. Grodzinsky and V. S. Strogovich, who, in his opinion, underestimated the “subjective principles” in judicial work. The first considered it necessary to remove from the Code of Criminal Procedure the mention of “inner conviction”, the second one “diminished the creative and active role” of the judge’s inner conviction. Vyshinsky said that the rejection of inner conviction as a criterion, as a way of evaluating evidence, leads to a narrowing of the creative activity of a judge, and this must inevitably entail the introduction of a formal order into such an important and complex area of ​​judicial work, which binds the will and activity of the judge. "This provision is in direct contradiction with the requirements of our era," he stressed. In conclusion, Vyshinsky said that the work of a judge is creative, active, political, and that "objectification of evidence" should not be imposed on him. "The court should be as free as possible in assessing the evidence."

In March 1936, Vyshinsky spoke at the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR on issues of judicial policy and judicial work (reports were made by Chairman of the Supreme Court Vinokurov and director of the Institute of Criminal Policy Shlyapochnikov). The Prosecutor of the Union subjected Vinokurov’s report to crushing criticism, calling it a “statistical and accounting” rather than a political report, since, in his opinion, it did not “identify the key issues of judicial policy”, there is no “leading thread”, there is no “main core ". Hence the debate went "scattered, chaotically", capturing certain topics "superficially, carelessly, without clear guidelines." Vyshinsky called Antonov-Saratovsky's speech "strange", and the content of his speech - "hard to catch". He also did not like Shlyapochnikov's report, which "gave nothing", and Krylenko's speech.

On May 29 of the same year, Vyshinsky held a meeting at the USSR Prosecutor's Office with people's investigators from the prosecutor's offices of the Moscow and Kalinin regions. The first to speak was the prosecutor of the Kalinin region, Nazarov. He gave a depressing picture of the state of the investigative apparatus. Of the 69 investigators, more than 65 percent had a lower education, and 29 percent had a secondary education. Only three investigators had higher education; two investigators graduated from a one-year law school, and 16 - from six-month courses. And yet, each of the investigators managed to complete up to 7 cases per month. Scientific and technical means were practically not used. In addition, 13 investigators still temporarily acted as district prosecutors.

After his speech, Vyshinsky was forced to admit: “Our investigative apparatus has degraded. It has degraded in terms of its class stratum, it has degraded in terms of general training, it has degraded in terms of legal and legal training ... The investigative apparatus is the backyard of our apparatus as a whole; Unfortunately, this is so. They sent to the investigators those who had nowhere else to send ... They distributed those who graduated from universities in such a way that candidates for district prosecutors were selected first of all, worse - they were sent to court, and very bad ones - to investigators. He further said that it was necessary “to strive to ensure that justice workers are legionnaires of our Soviet law ... Investigators and prosecutors should be people without human weaknesses ... these should be people for whom the issue of law and law is a matter of life and death, not a question of their service. Vyshinsky admitted that "we, unfortunately, are very far from this task."

On July 13-16, 1936, the second All-Union Conference of Prosecutors took place in Moscow. It was attended by the prosecutors of the union and autonomous republics, territories, regions, large cities, water basins, railways. The meeting participants sent letters of welcome to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks I. V. Stalin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR V. M. Molotov and Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR M. I. Kalinin. Greetings were sent to the former prosecutor of the Union, I. A. Akulov, who, after an illness, assumed the duties of secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, as well as to the prosecutor of the Kharkov region, M. I. Bron, who could not attend the meeting because of the assassination attempt (he was injured).

The meeting heard the reports of the prosecutor of the Union Vyshinsky "Stalin's Constitution and the tasks of the organs of justice" and his deputy Roginsky "Organizational issues of the restructuring of the prosecutor's office in the light of the draft Stalin Constitution." Vyshinsky began his report with praises of the draft of the new Constitution, which even then everyone began to call Stalin's. Then he cited Stalin's words that the Soviet Union lagged behind other developed countries by 50-100 years: “We must “run” this distance of 10 years. Either we do it, or we will be crushed.” Thanks to the advantages of the Soviet system and socialist democracy, this task turned out to be quite feasible, Vyshinsky remarked optimistically. Speaking about the section of the draft Constitution on the bodies of the prosecutor's office, he criticized the point of view put forward by Antonov-Saratovsky in an article published in Pravda that the USSR Prosecutor's Office should be included in the People's Commissariat of Justice, as well as the ideas of Krylenko, who tried in the constitutional commission to raise the issue of excluding the word “supreme” from the section of the draft Constitution on the Prosecutor’s Office in relation to supervision. "This is a very small proposal, harmless at first glance, but it could lead to extremely serious consequences," Vyshinsky emphasized. Further, he said: "We have every reason to say that the current Prosecutor's Office of the Union is being built as a single independent system of prosecutorial bodies, purely centralized."

Then Vyshinsky proceeded to present the main tasks facing the prosecution authorities, dwelling in more detail on two areas: on issues related to general supervision, and on issues of judicial supervision. He noted that now instead of departments of industry, agriculture, etc., departments of general supervision, investigative, criminal-judicial and others will be created. At the same time, Vyshinsky criticized the point of view of Antonov-Saratovsky and Vinogradov, who believed that the investigative apparatus should be removed from the prosecutor's office and transferred to the justice authorities or the court.

Vyshinsky's ideas on the structure of the prosecutor's office were specified in Roginsky's report.

1936 turned out to be a very eventful year for the Union Prosecutor. Vyshinsky spoke endlessly in numerous audiences on a wide variety of issues: at the Moscow Regional Congress of members of the Collegium of Defenders, at a meeting in the Prosecutor's Office of the Ukrainian SSR, at the Eighth Congress of Soviets.

He also held some non-traditional meetings. On August 31, he hosted the participants and organizers of a large march in rowing boats along the Volga. Seven activists of the prosecutor's office of the Kimrsky district of the Kalinin region S. I. Bolozerov, A. A. Goryachev, M. S. Andreyanova, S. N. Streibo, S. M. Bulanov, E. N. Sokolova and V. V. Zhukov, workers - Stakhanovites of the Savelovsky Mechanical Plant and the Krasnaya Zvezda shoe factory covered the distance from Kimry to Astrakhan in record time - in 25 days. Along the way, they got acquainted with the work of the assistance groups of the prosecutor's offices of the Gorky, Kuibyshev, Saratov, Stalingrad regions, the Republic of the Volga Germans and shared their own experience.

The organizers of the transition, the prosecutors of the Kimrsky district V. S. Shevrygin and the Kalinin region L. Ya. Nazarov, as well as all its participants, were awarded with valuable gifts.

From August 20 to September 1, the first All-Union Training Conference of People's and Senior Investigators was held at the USSR Prosecutor's Office, and from September 1 to 10, the second conference of investigators from military, railway and water transport prosecutor's offices was held. They were attended by 116 of the best investigators in the country, most of whom had more than six years of experience. After the conference, Vyshinsky held a meeting with the investigators. In December of the same year, the third conference of investigators took place.

On November 5, 1936, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR approved the new structure of the Prosecutor's Office of the Union presented by Vyshinsky. Production departments (industrial, trade, cooperation and finance, and others) were liquidated. The new structure consisted of 15 divisions: the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office, the Chief Prosecutor's Office of Railway Transport, the Chief Prosecutor's Office of Water Transport, departments of general supervision, criminal and civil judicial, investigative, special cases, supervision of places of detention and others. Directly attached to the Prosecutor of the USSR were prosecutors for special assignments, investigators for the most important cases, inspectors and consultants. In relation to this structure, the prosecutor's offices of the union and autonomous republics, territories and regions had to build their own apparatus.

By order of October 29, 1936, Vyshinsky, “in order to unite the methodological leadership of the investigation of all prosecution bodies,” transformed the Central Methodological Commission into the Methodological Council under the Prosecutor of the USSR. On November 22, opening its first meeting, Vyshinsky said that, first of all, a number of important issues had to be resolved: about the classification card of an investigator, about organizing training conferences, about social workers for investigators, about an open investigation. After that, the members of the methodological council discussed the draft plan of methodological measures, which was reported by E. E. Leventon. In total, four meetings of the Methodological Council were held in 1936.

On December 25-28, 1936, the first All-Union Conference of employees of the court and the prosecutor's office in civil cases was held in Moscow. It was opened by the People's Commissar of Justice of the USSR N. V. Krylenko and Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR G. M. Leplevsky. Vyshinsky was not present at the opening of the meeting; at that time he was preparing for the trial of the Trotskyist anti-Soviet center, but then he arrived and made a big speech. Reports were made by Deputy Chairman of the Civil Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR Reichel, Chairman of the analogous collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR Lisitsyn and Assistant Prosecutor of the USSR Borisov.

In 1937-1938, Vyshinsky still spoke a lot in various audiences, sometimes making great speeches, in particular at a meeting of prosecutors for water and rail transport, repeatedly at the Law Academy and at the assets of the USSR Prosecutor's Office, at meetings of prosecutors in the Byelorussian SSR and the Leningrad Region , at the 4th session of the CEC of the USSR of the 8th convocation and at the 2nd session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, at the plenums of the Supreme Court of the USSR, at the All-Union Conference on Legal Education, at the party-Soviet-Komsomol activists in Saratov, at the general meeting of students and teachers of the Law Institute, at a meeting of members of the electoral district commissions of Moscow and the Moscow region. He held several night meetings with the prosecutors of the republics, territories and regions by radio, for example, on April 10, 1937, at such a meeting, the work of the prosecutor's office was discussed and complaints and statements were considered.

On July 20, 1937, the "merits" of A. Ya. Vyshinsky in strengthening "revolutionary legality" were awarded a high award - the Order of Lenin. As was customary at that time, numerous telegrams and letters of congratulations were addressed to him from prosecutors, representatives of the justice authorities, courts, legal institutions, and even from “specialists and employees of the Irkutsk enterprises of Glavryba” and “employees of the Kursk Penkotrest”.

On August 29, 1937, in connection with the 15th anniversary of the prosecutor's office, a group of prosecutors was awarded orders. The Order of Lenin was awarded to the Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR G. K. Roginsky, the Order of the Red Star was awarded to the Chief Military Prosecutor N. S. Rozovsky, his assistant A. S. Grodko and the Military Prosecutor S. Ya. cases of the Prosecutor's Office of the Union L. R. Sheinin and M. Yu. Raginsky, the prosecutor of the West Siberian Territory I. I. Barkov, the prosecutor of the department for special cases A. M. Gluzman and the deputy prosecutor of the Union G. M. Leplevsky. The vast majority of those awarded were in one way or another connected with the preparation and conduct of political trials.

In 1936-1937, the USSR Prosecutor's Office organized a number of large-scale trials on the facts of gross and massive violations of the law on the ground revealed by inspections. These were the so-called Lepel, Shiryaev and Chechelnitsk trials. The process against the leaders of the Shiryaevsky district of the Odessa region was especially loud. The accused under it were the chairmen of the district executive committee and village councils, the secretary of the district party committee, heads of departments of the executive committee, and even the district prosecutor.

According to the indictment, violations of laws in the region were massive and expressed in direct mockery of people. Rough administration, mutual responsibility, nepotism were noted. Complaining to anyone in the area about these violations was useless. Chairman of the Viktorovsky village council Pugach cynically declared to the collective farmers: "You can complain to the light bulb." And those who tried to fight violations or appealed to higher authorities got even more. In retaliation for complaints to the central authorities, collective farmers were generally deprived of their property (for example, local authorities took everything from Vlasenko, even removed the collar from the dog). The chairmen of the village councils could organize with impunity the so-called "night shock brigades" to collect mandatory payments, during which the collective farmers, even those who lived several kilometers from the regional center, were summoned 5-10 times in one night for "talks" to the headquarters of the brigade, and for failure to appear were fined and their property described. People did not find support in the prosecutor's office either. At the trial, they said: "Our prosecutor is a small man." About the secretary of the district party committee, they said this: "A hat with a party card."

The visiting session of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR sentenced all the perpetrators in this case to imprisonment for a term of 3 to 10 years, including the district prosecutor.

A. Ya. Vyshinsky was one of the few Soviet prosecutors who not only did not shy away from the judicial platform, but spoke with pleasure in trials and felt confident and at ease. In this respect, only another born tribune, N. V. Krylenko, could compete with him. All prosecutors before Vyshinsky and after him (with the possible exception of R. A. Rudenko) did not “favor” the judicial tribune.

Vyshinsky not only spoke a lot himself, and at the most high-profile trials, but also demanded the same from his subordinates. On August 27, 1938, A. Ya. Vyshinsky recalled to the active workers of the USSR Prosecutor's Office: “I have repeatedly said that a prosecutor who does not appear in the courts of first instance is not a prosecutor.”

At a meeting of prosecutors in the Leningrad region in the same 1938, Vyshinsky again raised this issue. “Now our prosecutors shy away from appearing in court,” he said, “because they don't feel well prepared for the trial, partly because they don't have a taste for the case. These prosecutors forget that the court is the main arena of prosecutorial activity. I, as the prosecutor of the Union, must categorically declare that I will continue to vigorously fight against such a fundamentally wrong attitude of some prosecutors towards this duty of theirs.

The prosecutor is a public figure, the prosecutor is a judicial tribune, the public prosecutor is a representative of the interests of the state in court. When the prosecutor supports the accusation that he initiated, and when he refuses to support the accusation, he equally remains a representative of state interests, an envoy of the state, a spokesman for state truth.

We talked about some of the trials in which Vyshinsky supported the prosecution, being the prosecutor of the RSFSR and the deputy prosecutor of the USSR. But even in the rank of Prosecutor of the USSR, he spent many days behind the judicial platform.

One of the most famous cases (not related to the number of political ones), in which Vyshinsky participated already as the Prosecutor of the USSR, is the case on the charge of the former head of wintering on Wrangel Island K. D. Semenchuk and the musher S. P. Startsev in the murder of Dr. N. L. Wolfson. It was initiated at the end of 1935, and the investigation was carried out by the investigator for the most important cases, L. R. Sheinin. At one time, this case was presented as a kind of "sample" of the use of circumstantial evidence in criminal proceedings. So let's stop there.

The case was heard by the Supreme Court of the RSFSR from May 17 to May 23, 1936. The defendants were sentenced to capital punishment and shot.

The plot of the case was as follows. On December 26, 1934, Dr. Vulfson, on the orders of the head of the winter quarter, Semenchuk, accompanied by a musher Startsev, set out on two sleds from Cape Rogers to the sick Eskimos in Predatelskaya Bay and Cape Blasson. On December 31, Startsev returned alone and reported that Dr. Wulfson had been lost on the way. On the first day of the search, the doctor's sled was found firmly locked. Of the eight harnessed dogs, seven survived. A few days later, two kilometers from this place, the corpse of Wolfson was discovered. The doctor's face was covered in blood and disfigured. Five meters from him lay a broken hard drive with one spent cartridge case. The doctor's corpse was transported to Cape Rogers and buried there without an autopsy. The wife of the deceased, Dr. Feldman, who was also on Wrangel Island, suspecting the violent death of her husband, demanded that the head of the wintering quarter Semenchuk send a message about the incident to Moscow with a request to send an investigator. However, Semenchuk opposed this. Only almost a year later, a criminal case was initiated on this fact. Dr. Krasheninnikov, who arrived at the cape, exhumed Wolfson's corpse and found that his death was violent.

The conducted investigation established that Semenchuk actually “failed” all scientific and fishing work, treated the local population and hunters cruelly. Among the Eskimos, who did not receive any food aid from the head of the winter quarters, diseases began, and some of the local residents even died of starvation. Disorder, decay and drunkenness reigned at the station, which Dr. Wolfson tried to fight, but to no avail. After the death of Wulfson, the biologist Vakulenko committed suicide and, under unclear circumstances, the Eskimo musher Tagyu died. In November 1935, Semenchuk was removed from his post as head of the winter quarters. In the order of the head of the Main Northern Sea Route, O. Yu. Schmidt, it was noted that as a result of criminal carelessness, administrative arbitrariness and a callous attitude towards people, Semenchuk brought the wintering to a complete economic collapse.

Vyshinsky spoke about all this in his accusatory speech. But what evidence did the prosecutor have to accuse Startsev of the murder of Vulfson, and Semenchuk as an accomplice in instigating and organizing the murder?

Vyshinsky built his speech on circumstantial evidence. And I must admit that he did it brilliantly. He used the techniques that were developed by W. Wills in the book "Experience in the theory of circumstantial evidence, explained by examples." Vyshinsky quite convincingly proved that Startsev, who had gone with Dr. Vulfson, could not "lose" him, since there was no snowstorm, to which the defendant referred. In addition, Startsev stated that he was driving ahead of the doctor, and when he had a breakdown, Vulfson allegedly overtook him and, without stopping, drove ahead, after which he disappeared. This version was refuted by experienced polar explorers, arguing that the dogs in the harness were trained in such a way that they never overtake the stopped sledges, but stop and lie down on the snow. The doctor's corpse was found two kilometers from the "stopped" sleds, while even experienced polar explorers in good weather do not move further than a kilometer from them, not to mention bad weather, when they usually stay near the sledges, since only in this may be their salvation. As established, Wulfson was not an experienced polar explorer and did not know how to "stop" the sled, which required considerable skill.

Vyshinsky set out in detail other circumstantial evidence "exposing" Startsev. He analyzed all the possible situations of the doctor's death - murder by a local shaman, another person, for example Vakulenko, who was hostile to Wulfson, an accident - and rejected them all as unfounded. The prosecutor managed to convince the judges of his involvement in the murder of the head of the winter quarter, Semenchuk. Among the evidence against him in the case was also a note left by Dr. Wolfson on the eve of the fateful trip: “I ask only Konstantin Dmitrievich Semenchuk to blame for my death,” he wrote.

Vyshinsky asked that Semenchuk and Startsev be found guilty of the murder of Dr. Vulfson and sentenced to capital punishment. The court agreed with him. However, during the “perestroika” period, this sentence was overturned by the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, and the case was dismissed due to lack of corpus delicti.

Accusatory speeches, such as the one delivered by Vyshinsky in the case of Semenchuk and Startsev, made him fairly widely known. However, all over the world Vyshinsky was known only as the "prosecutor of the Moscow trials." In 1936-1938 he spoke on a number of major political cases. Carefully preparing for them, he spoke emotionally, passionately and it made an impression. Among them is the case of the "Joint Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center", which was heard by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR from August 19 to 24, 1936. According to him, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Evdokimov and Bakaev (from the Zinovievites), Smirnov, Ter-Vaganyan and Mrachkovsky (from the Trotskyists), as well as Dreitzer, Pikel and others were brought to justice. All of them were charged under articles 58-8 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The military collegium sentenced them to capital punishment, which was carried out on August 25, 1936.

From January 23 to 30, 1937, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, with the participation of the state prosecutor Vyshinsky, heard the case of the "Moscow Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center." 17 people walked along it, including Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov, Serebryakov, Muralov. The court sentenced 13 people to death, and the rest to long terms of imprisonment. The convicts were shot immediately after the verdict.

From March 2 to March 13, 1938, Vyshinsky took part in the trial in the case of the Anti-Soviet Right-Trotsky Bloc. Among the defendants - Krestinsky, Rykov, Bukharin, Rakovsky, Yagoda, doctors Levin and Pletnev, 21 people in total. All the defendants, with the exception of Pletnev, Rakovsky and Bessonov, were sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on March 15, 1938.

About these cases, the methods of conducting the “investigation”, about “knocking out” confessions from the accused, and then from the defendants, monstrous falsifications and forgeries, as well as about the role of the “chief Stalinist inquisitor” Vyshinsky, the press once wrote in sufficient detail. All these cases have now been reviewed, the sentences have been canceled, and the persons involved in them have been rehabilitated (with the exception of Yagoda).

Vyshinsky's speeches on political cases, which we mentioned above, have nothing in common with the court speeches of state prosecutors, where a scrupulous analysis of evidence incriminating the guilty persons is required. In them, he did not bother himself with a deep study of the guilt of the defendants, but only gave a journalistic character and a political coloring pleasing to the authorities. And in this he succeeded. As for the presentation of evidence to the court, this was not required at all, since the verdicts were in fact already a foregone conclusion, and not even by Vyshinsky. In these processes, he was only the mouthpiece of Stalin and his entourage. Vyshinsky's speeches on political affairs do not stand up to any criticism, either from a legal or a moral point of view. They not only did not contain a strong evidence base, but were also filled with rude, offensive language, which is completely unacceptable for prosecutors. He called the defendants "a gang of despicable terrorists", "enraged dogs" who "should be shot to one and all", "toadies and boors of capitalism", "rabid counter-revolutionary elements", "monsters", "a cursed cross between a fox and a pig" (about Bukharin ), "damned reptile".

As already mentioned, in his speeches Vyshinsky did not focus on evidence, especially since the verdict was already a foregone conclusion, but on rhetoric and pathos. And not because the “chief inquisitor” was a bad lawyer - it was necessary to use a red phrase and labeling not so much to justify the process that had already taken place, but to pave the way for future ones.

Here are some of his “beautiful” phrases: “In the gloomy underground, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev issue a vile call: remove, kill! An underground machine begins to work, knives are sharpened, revolvers are loaded, bombs are equipped, false documents are written and fabricated, secret ties are established with the German political police, posts are set up, shooting is trained, and finally, they shoot and kill. Zinoviev terrorist center").

Or: “These people, these lackeys and boors of capitalism, tried to trample the great and holy feeling of our national, our Soviet patriotic pride into the dirt, they wanted to mock our freedom, the sacrifices made by our people for their freedom, they betrayed our people, crossed over on the side of the enemy, on the side of the aggressors and agents of capitalism. The wrath of our people will destroy, incinerate the traitors and wipe them off the face of the earth...” (From a speech on the case of the “Moscow Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center”).

And one more example. “The contemptible, treacherous, bandit activities of the Bukharins, Yagods, Krestinskys, Rykovs and other right-wing Trotskyists are now being exposed before the whole world. They sold our homeland, traded in the military secrets of its defense, they were spies, saboteurs, pests, murderers, thieves - and all in order to help the fascist governments overthrow the Soviet government, overthrow the power of the workers and peasants, restore the power of the capitalists and landowners, dismember the country of the Soviet people, tear away the national republics and turn them into imperialist colonies” (from a speech on the case of the “Anti-Soviet Right-Trotsky Bloc”).

Analyzing these processes from the point of view of a lawyer, the former prosecutor of the RSFSR and Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR A. A. Volin, who knew Vyshinsky firsthand, told the authors: in their political content, they are generally of a preventive nature, that “evidence of guilt” of those accused of treason, committing terrorist acts and other crimes of this kind is obtained either by cruel or insidious methods. By the nature of his work, Vyshinsky knew this as well as Stalin himself. They acted out lawsuits in the same way that actors act out plays. And in this sense, Vyshinsky cannot but share with Stalin the responsibility for the grossest violations of the law, for which there is no forgiveness.

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Biography Andrei Yanuarievich Vyshinsky developed in such a way that he, it would seem, had no chance to avoid the millstones of the "Great Terror" of 1937-1938. However, exactly the opposite happened - prosecutor Vyshinsky diligently sent the heroes of the revolution into these millstones, becoming one of the main figures in the era of political repression.

Andrei Yanuarievich Vyshinsky was born on December 10, 1883 in Odessa. His father was a successful pharmacist, his mother was a music teacher. Shortly after the birth of their son, the family moved to Baku, where the father opened his own pharmacy. The income of the Vyshinsky family made it possible to give their son a good education, and in 1900 Andrei graduated from one of the best men's gymnasiums in Baku. He graduated, I must say, with honors.

17-year-old Vyshinsky chose for himself the profession of a lawyer, to comprehend the basics of which he went to Kyiv. Having successfully entered the law faculty of Kyiv University, Vyshinsky became interested in revolutionary activities popular among the youth of that time.

Vyshinsky's activity was "noted" by the authorities, and already in 1902 he was expelled from the university without the right to be reinstated. The young revolutionary returned to Baku, where he joined the RSDLP. But not to the Bolsheviks, but to the Mensheviks, whose views turned out to be closer to him.

Very soon Vyshinsky became known in the revolutionary circles of Baku as a talented orator. During the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, Vyshinsky formed the fighting squad of the Menshevik Party and was a member of the strike committee.

Unreliable talent

When the revolution was over, the authorities remembered Vyshinsky's activities - in the spring of 1908 he was convicted by the Tiflis Court of Justice for uttering or reading publicly a speech or essay inciting the overthrow of the existing system. Vyshinsky received only a year in prison for this.

As it turned out, it was this term, which Vyshinsky was serving in the Bailov prison, that most decisively influenced the future life of Andrei Yanuaryevich. The fact is that Vyshinsky's good acquaintance in prison became a revolutionary named Koba, better known as Joseph Stalin.

Upon his release, Vyshinsky decided to shelve the revolution. He was already married, he had a daughter - he needed to feed his family, which is far from easy for a former student convicted of "politics".

Vyshinsky decided to still get a law degree and went to Kyiv. The university authorities were "against", but the former student showed excellent knowledge and nevertheless achieved his goal.

Andrei Vyshinsky. Photo: RIA Novosti

Vyshinsky's knowledge was so brilliant that after graduating from the university, the 30-year-old rebel was going to be left at the Faculty of Law to prepare for a professorship in the Department of Criminal Law and Procedure. If this had happened, Vyshinsky's whole life would have gone differently. However, there were those in the university leadership who felt that an unreliable graduate could not become a law professor.

As a result, Vyshinsky had to return to Baku, holding a grudge against the authorities. There he worked odd jobs, and in 1915 he decided to try his luck in Moscow. He managed to get a job as an assistant to a well-known lawyer, but his career did not develop much.

Hunt for Ilyich

The February Revolution of 1917 broke out just in time. Vyshinsky, who served time "for politics", became the chairman of the Yakimansk district council and the police commissar. It was in this position that he showed monstrous short-sightedness, on the basis of the decision of the Provisional Government, issuing an order to search for and arrest "a German agent Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin».

Lenin was not in Moscow, but the streets of the center of the capital were plastered with advertisements about his search signed by Vyshinsky.

In October 1917, Andrei Yanuarievich became really scared. The story of the "hunt for Lenin" could become a reason for reprisals against Vyshinsky at any moment.

Therefore, the revolutionary diligently avoids loud political statements, occupying various economic positions in the first years of the revolution. At the same time, Vyshinsky broke with the Mensheviks and joined the CPSU (b).

Vyshinsky was accepted into the Bolsheviks thanks to the intervention of an old acquaintance, Joseph Stalin. The politician, who was gaining strength, began, so to speak, to form a team, and he needed a strong lawyer.

In the early 1920s, Vyshinsky was engaged in teaching activities, since 1923 he tried himself in trials as a public prosecutor.

He really was an excellent orator and lecturer, which was especially pronounced in 1925-1928, when Andrei Vyshinsky became the rector of Moscow State University. By this time, he was already the prosecutor of the criminal-judicial board of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR.

The students of the Moscow University at Vyshinsky did not cherish the soul - his lectures were fascinating, intelligent. Andrei Yanuarievich was indeed a talented lawyer who did a lot for the development of Soviet jurisprudence.

But Vyshinsky's talent turned out to be in demand primarily not in criminal, but in political trials.

Helmsman of the Great Terror

In 1928 and 1930, Andrey Yanuarievich was a representative of the special presence of the Supreme Court in the so-called "Shakhty case" and the "case of the Industrial Party."

The trials ended with the result that suited the authorities, and Vyshinsky's career began to grow by leaps and bounds. In 1931 he became the prosecutor of the RSFSR, in June 1933 - the deputy prosecutor of the USSR, and in 1935 - the prosecutor of the USSR.

At all the Moscow trials of 1936-1938 Andrei Vyshinsky was the public prosecutor. His speeches in court were furious and flamboyant, impressing not only the prepared domestic audience, but also foreigners.

In 1937-1938, the USSR Prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky ensured formal legality in the implementation by the head of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov campaign of mass repression, which went down in history as the "Great Terror".

If the Moscow trials, which became the pinnacle of Vyshinsky's legal activity, were framed as a fair trial, then the Great Terror turned into a real assembly line of executions. Vyshinsky did not need a creative impulse, it was enough to simply approve the lists of those executed.

His contemporaries spoke extremely negatively about Vyshinsky's personality: they said that this person was obsequious to the top leaders, but was rude and sometimes cruel in relations with his subordinates. At the same time, Vyshinsky was an exemplary family man, having been married to his wife for half a century.

In 1939, the fates of the two main characters of the era of the Great Terror diverged dramatically - Nikolai Yezhov went to the scaffold, and Andrei Vyshinsky, branding the "excesses" of the NKVD, took the post of deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, who oversaw science, culture, education and law enforcement agencies.

Minister for the Cold War

Having fulfilled his role as chief prosecutor, Vyshinsky was transferred to the path of diplomacy. During the Great Patriotic War, Andrei Yanuarievich was the first deputy people's commissar for foreign affairs. He participated in major wartime international conferences, including Yalta and Potsdam. The system of the post-war world order was, among other things, the fruit of Andrei Vyshinsky's activity.

His talent as a lawyer will be needed during the Nuremberg trials, where he will be the de facto leader of the Soviet delegation.

In 1949 Andrei Vyshinsky replaced Vyacheslav Molotov as head of the USSR Foreign Ministry. Later, Allen Dulles will say that Vyshinsky was the most powerful orator of the prosecutor's persuasion that he had ever heard.

It was such a head of the Foreign Ministry that was in demand at the beginning of the Cold War. Vyshinsky's style of speech was extremely harsh - he castigated the imperialists with the same zeal with which he denounced the "enemies of the people" in the late 1930s. Foreign diplomats were amazed at how different Vyshinsky could be: a calm and reasonable person, brilliantly educated, who knew several languages, politely and almost friendly conversations with foreign colleagues face to face, after which he went up to the UN podium and turned into a furious accuser, a real volcano hate.

USSR Foreign Minister Andrei Vyshinsky signs an agreement on friendship, alliance and mutual understanding between the USSR and the PRC. Photo: RIA Novosti

A happy ending

In 1953, Andrei Vyshinsky turned 70, and in the same year his career came to an end. Immediately after Stalin's death, the post of head of the Foreign Ministry returned to Vyacheslav Molotov, and Vyshinsky was appointed to a much lower position as the permanent representative of the USSR to the UN.

Vyshinsky understood perfectly well that it was all over for him. In the struggle for power that had begun, the winners intended to attribute all the excesses of the outgoing era to Stalin and his executors. He, Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky, was bound to become a scapegoat.

Did he deserve such a fate? Fearing that the "mistakes of youth" would ruin his career in the Land of Soviets, Vyshinsky himself began to ruthlessly destroy other people's lives, helping his patron in the political struggle.

What did the "chameleon" Vyshinsky really want? Just survive in a harsh era? Make a career at any cost, regardless of the victims? At the cost of participating in political massacres, to earn the right to create a truly fair and effective Soviet justice system?

Was he really a power-hungry nonentity or a man who lived his whole life under the sword of Damocles of retribution for past sins?

Everyone has the right to give this statesman his own assessment, in accordance with personal ideas about good and evil.

And fate ... Fate was favorable to Andrei Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky. He escaped the dock and died suddenly of a heart attack at his post in New York on November 22, 1954, and was buried with state honors in the Kremlin wall.

VYSHINSKY ANDREY YANUAROVICH — Prosecutor of the USSR

Born December 10, 1883, Odessa, Russian Empire - November 22, 1954, New York, USA) - Soviet statesman, lawyer, diplomat. Prosecutor of the USSR (1935-1939), Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR (1949-1953), Permanent Representative of the USSR to the UN (1953-1954). He also held a number of other positions.

Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (since 1939), candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1952-1953). Member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of the 7th convocation, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 1-2, 4th convocations.

Doctor of Law (1936), professor, and in 1925-1928 rector of Moscow State University. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939) . Organizer of mass repressions.

Biography

Father, a native of an old Polish gentry family Januariy Feliksovich Vyshinsky, was a pharmacist; mother is a music teacher. Soon after the birth of their son, the family moved to Baku, where Andrei graduated from the first male classical gymnasium (1900).

In 1901, he entered the law faculty of Kyiv University, but graduated from it only in 1913 (since he was expelled for participating in student unrest), was left at the department to prepare for a professorship, but was dismissed by the administration as politically unreliable. In March 1902, he was expelled from the university without the right to re-enroll, and fell under police supervision. He returned to Baku, where in 1903 he joined the Menshevik organization of the RSDLP.

In 1906-1907, Vyshinsky was arrested twice, but was soon released due to insufficient evidence. In early 1908, he was convicted by the Tiflis Judicial Chamber for "pronouncing a publicly anti-government speech."

He served a year of imprisonment in the Bayil prison, where he became closely acquainted with Stalin; there are allegations that for some time they were in the same cell.

After graduating from the university (1913), he taught Russian literature, geography and Latin in a private gymnasium in Baku, and practiced law. In 1915-1917, he was assistant to P. N. Malyantovich, attorney at law of the Moscow Court of Justice.

After the February Revolution of 1917, he was appointed police commissar of the Yakimansky district, at the same time he signed "an order on the strict implementation on the territory entrusted to him of the order of the Provisional Government to search, arrest and bring to trial, as a German spy, Lenin" (see. Sealed wagon)

In 1920, Vyshinsky left the Menshevik Party and joined the RCP(b).

In 1920-1921 he was a lecturer at Moscow University and dean of the economics department of the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy.

A. Ya. Vyshinsky (bottom center) at the session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, October 31, 1922. Top (left to right): L. B. Kamenev, V. I. Lenin, G. E. Zinoviev

In 1923-1925. - Prosecutor of the Criminal Investigation Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He acted as a public prosecutor at many trials: the case of "Gukon" (1923); the case of the Leningrad judicial workers (1924); case of the Conservtrust (1924).

In 1923-1925, he was a prosecutor of the Criminal Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR and at the same time a professor at the I Moscow State University in the Department of Criminal Procedure.

In 1925-1928 he was the rector of the Moscow State University (then - the 1st Moscow State University). “Lectures on general legal disciplines in the junior years were given by Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky, who was the rector of the university. Naturally, then no one could have thought that this most intelligent teacher and brilliant lecturer would turn into a formidable prosecutor of the USSR, ”recalled MS Smirtyukov, then a student at Moscow State University.

He acted as a public prosecutor at political trials. He was the chairman of the special presence of the Supreme Court in the Shakhty case (1928), in the case of the Industrial Party (1930). On July 6, 1928, 49 specialists from the Donbass were sentenced to various penalties by the Supreme Court of the USSR chaired by Vyshinsky.

In 1928-1930 he headed the Main Department of Vocational Education (Glavprofobr). In 1928-1931. Member of the Board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. He was in charge of the educational and methodological sector of the People's Commissariat of Education and replaced the chairman of the State Academic Council.

1931-1935

From May 11, 1931 - the Prosecutor of the RSFSR, from May 21 of the same year also the Deputy People's Commissar of Justice of the RSFSR.

From June 1933 - Deputy Prosecutor, and from March 1935 to May 1939 - Prosecutor of the USSR.

1936-1938

He acted as a public prosecutor at all three Moscow trials of 1936-1938.

Some researchers believe that, apparently, A. Ya. Vyshinsky, who always supported the political decisions of the leadership of the USSR, including the repressions of the 1930s (the February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937 ideologically substantiated the deployment of repressions throughout society ), criticized the actions of G. Yagoda in connection with the imminent exclusion of him from the CPSU (b) and his arrest in April 1937.

Our entire country, from small to old, is waiting and demanding one thing: traitors and spies who sold our Motherland to the enemy, to be shot like filthy dogs! ... Time will pass. The graves of the hated traitors will be overgrown with weeds and thistles, covered with the eternal contempt of honest Soviet people, of the entire Soviet people. And above us, above our happy country, our sun will still shine brightly and joyfully with its bright rays. We, our people, will continue to walk along the road cleansed of the last evil spirits and abominations of the past, led by our beloved leader and teacher - the great Stalin - forward and forward to communism!

During the “Great Terror” of 1937-1938, Vyshinsky and People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs N. Yezhov were members of the Commission of the NKVD of the USSR and the Prosecutor of the USSR, which considered cases of espionage as part of the national operations of the NKVD out of court. In practice, the central apparatus of the NKVD of the USSR received so-called albums (certificates on cases), the consideration of which was entrusted to several heads of departments (who did not see the investigative cases themselves). During the evening, each of them made decisions on 200-300 cases. The list of those sentenced to death and imprisonment in the ITL was then reprinted in plain text and submitted to Yezhov for signature, after which it was sent by courier to Vyshinsky for signature. So, on December 29, 1937, Yezhov and Vyshinsky, having considered lists of 1000 persons of Latvian nationality, sentenced 992 people to death.

Translator V. M. Berezhkov wrote in his book:

Vyshinsky was known for his rudeness with subordinates, the ability to instill fear in others. But in front of the higher authorities he behaved subserviently, obsequiously. He even entered the reception room of the people's commissar as the embodiment of modesty. Apparently, because of his Menshevik past, Vyshinsky was especially afraid of Beria and Dekanozov, the latter, even in public, called him only “this Menshevik” ... Vyshinsky felt all the more fear in the presence of Stalin and Molotov. When they summoned him, he would enter them crouching, somehow sideways, with an ingratiating grin that bulged his reddish mustache.

A. Ya. Vyshinsky (in the center) during the trial of Radek, Pyatakov and others

In the "Tukhachevsky case" of 1937, together with the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov, Vyshinsky was the author of the indictment against M. N. Tukhachevsky. After making corrections and changes, the indictment of Vyshinsky-Yezhov was approved by Stalin. On the night of June 12, 1937, Tukhachevsky was shot. In 1956, the Main Military Prosecutor's Office and the State Security Committee checked the criminal case of Tukhachevsky and other convicted persons with him and found that the charges against them were falsified.

In 1937-1941 he was director of the Institute of Law of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, executive editor of the journal "Soviet State and Law".

In 1935-1939. He was a member of the secret commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for judicial cases. The commission approved all death sentences in the USSR.

Legal activity since 1939

On May 31, 1939, at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Vyshinsky was approved as Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. In this post, he oversaw culture, science, education and repressive bodies. Not a single order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, the People's Commissar of Justice of the USSR, the Prosecutor of the USSR, not a single resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR could be approved without his order. Resolved conflicts within repressive departments. He acted as one of the main organizers of major criminal law campaigns in 1940-1944. The structural divisions of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR were subordinate to him: the sector of administrative and judicial institutions and the NKVD (1939-1940), the legal department. As Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, he led a complex intrigue to remove V. V. Ulrikh and L. P. Beria from their posts. After the unsuccessful start of the campaign on labor crimes (Decree of the PVS of the USSR of 06/26/1940), Vyshinsky's powers as the curator of the repressive bodies were gradually reduced. In August 1944, he left the post of Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

From June 22, 1941 to January 19, 1949, he was the chairman of the newly formed Legal Commission under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (he was replaced by K. P. Gorshenin). Partially restored its influence during the war years.

During the Nuremberg Trials, he actually led the Soviet delegation. Daily reported on the progress of the process to the Politburo. On November 10, 1945, he headed the Standing Commission for conducting open trials in the most important cases of former servicemen of the German army and German punitive bodies exposed in atrocities against Soviet citizens in the temporarily occupied territory of the Soviet Union. In 1947, he left the post of chairman of the commission for conducting open trials.

On February 15, 1950, he was relieved of his post as editor-in-chief of the journal Soviet State and Law.

Diplomatic activity since 1940

In June - August 1940, authorized by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for Latvia.

From September 6, 1940 to March 1946 first Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR. During the evacuation of the NKID to Kuibyshev, he headed its work.

On July 12, 1941, Vyshinsky was present at the first act that led to the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition - the signing of an agreement between the USSR and Great Britain on joint actions in the war against Germany.

Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Soviet Union (06/14/1943).

He took part in the conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain, held in October 1943 in Moscow. At the suggestion of the Soviet government, the conference considered the issues of reducing the duration of the war against Nazi Germany and its allies in Europe, opening a second front, dealing with Germany and other enemy countries in Europe, creating an international organization to ensure general security, etc. In particular, it was decided to create European Advisory Commission and Advisory Council for Italy.

V. D. Sokolovsky (right) and A. Ya. Vyshinsky (left) are present at the adoption by G. K. Zhukov of the act of surrender of Germany

V. D. Sokolovsky (right) and A. Ya. Vyshinsky (left) are present at the adoption by G. K. Zhukov of the act of surrender of Germany

In 1944-1945 he took an active part in negotiations with Romania, and then with Bulgaria. In February 1945, as a member of the Soviet delegation at the Yalta Conference of the leaders of the three allied powers - the USSR, the USA and Great Britain, he participated in the work of one of its commissions. In April of the same year, he was present at the signing of treaties of friendship and mutual assistance with Poland, Yugoslavia and other states.

At the same time, from May 30 to August 6, 1945, he served as political adviser to the Chief of the SVAG G. K. Zhukov.

Vyshinsky brought to Berlin the text of the Act of Unconditional Surrender of Germany, which marked the victory in the Great Patriotic War on May 8, 1945 (provided legal support to Marshal G.K. Zhukov).

Member of the Potsdam Conference as part of the Soviet delegation. In January 1946, he headed the USSR delegation at the first session of the UN General Assembly. In the summer and autumn of 1946, he spoke at the plenary sessions of the Paris Peace Conference, in the commission on political and territorial issues for Romania, similar commissions for Hungary and Italy, in the Commission on economic issues for Italy, on the competence of the governor in Trieste, in the Commission on economic issues for Balkans and Finland, on a peace treaty with Bulgaria.

Since March 1946, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR for General Affairs. In 1949-1953, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. This was the time of the Korean War.

In March - June 1949 he headed the Information Committee under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. In 1952-1953 he was a member of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs under the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

After Stalin's death, V. M. Molotov again became Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Vyshinsky was appointed USSR representative to the UN.

He died suddenly on November 22, 1954 from a heart attack in New York, was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.

It's a pity he didn't live to see the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

Sample signature of VYSHINSKY A.Ya.

Six orders of Lenin (1937, 1943, 1945, 1947, 1954);

Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1933);
Medal "For the Defense of Moscow" (1944);

Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" (1945);
"In memory of the 800th anniversary of Moscow" (1947);
Stalin Prize 1st degree for the monograph "The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law" (1947).

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS:

AND I. Vyshinsky to all prosecutors of the republics, territories, regions, military districts and railways of the USSR in connection with the order of the NKVD No. 00447

Familiarize yourself with the NKVD by the operational order of Comrade Yezhov on July 30, 1937, number 00447. In accordance with paragraph two of section five, I oblige prosecutors to attend meetings of the Troikas, where there are no prosecutors in the Troikas. Compliance with procedural rules and prior authorization for arrest is not required. The decisions of the triplets are final, inform me about exceptional circumstances related to the consideration of cases. Cases about the contingents indicated in the first section, which have not yet been considered by the court, shall be transferred to the Troikas.

Personally secretly inform only Special Prosecutors and District Attorneys. I demand active assistance in the successful conduct of the operation. I personally entrust to you the maintenance of secrecy in the apparatus of the prosecutor's office about the ongoing operation. Report the progress of the operation to me personally in cipher every five days.

EVIDENCE OF GUILTIVITY IN THE DESTRUCTION OF LATGALS IN 1937-1938 IN THE TAIGA DISTRICT ZSK.

COPY OF PROTOCOL No. 156 dated 10/20/37 with seized data from the FSB in the Omsk region. In total, 166 people were convicted under Protocol No. 156, almost all of them to death.

COPY OF PROTOCOL No. 126 dated 12/31/37 of the Federal Security Service for the Novosibirsk Region. In total, according to the protocol, 180 people were sentenced, 178 of them to death. Sequential numbering is violated (see Protocol No. 156 of 10/20/37)

PHOTO OF A CERTIFIED COPY OF PROTOCOL No. 41 DATED 01/13/38 WITH WITHDRAWAL DATA FSB for the Omsk Region fund 6 case 7469 sheets 140, 145,147. Deputy Head of the Department E.N. ROMANKO. In total, according to Protocol No. 41, 75 people were convicted, most of them to death.

A COPY OF THE PROTOCOL OF THE COMMISSION OF THE NKVD OF THE USSR AND THE PROSECUTOR OF THE USSR No. 49 DATED 14.01.38, UFSB for the Omsk Region. In total, according to Protocol No. 49, 234 people were sentenced, 232 of them to death.

COPY OF PROTOCOL No. 54 with seized data from the FSB in the Omsk region. In total, 405 people were convicted under Protocol No. 54, almost all of them to death.

) (1883-12-10 )
Odessa, Russian Empire

Death: November 22 ( 1954-11-22 ) (70 years old)
New York, USA Buried: Necropolis near the Kremlin wall Spouse: Kapitolina Isidorovna Children: daughter Zinaida The consignment: Menshevik since 1903, member of the RCP(b) since 1920 Education: Kyiv University (1913) Profession: lawyer Awards:

Andrei Yanuarievich Vyshinsky(Polish Andrzej Wyszynski; December 10, 1883, Odessa - November 22, 1954, New York) - Soviet statesman and party leader. Diplomat, lawyer, one of the organizers of the Stalinist repressions.

Biography

Father, a native of an old Polish gentry family Januariy Feliksovich Vyshinsky, was a pharmacist; mother is a music teacher. Shortly after the birth of their son, the family moved to Baku, where Andrei graduated from the first male classical gymnasium (1900).

In 1906-1907, Vyshinsky was arrested twice, but was soon released due to insufficient evidence. In early 1908, he was convicted by the Tiflis Judicial Chamber for "pronouncing a publicly anti-government speech."

He served a year of imprisonment in the Bayil prison, where he became intimately acquainted with Stalin; there are allegations that for some time they were in the same cell.

After graduating from the university (1913), he taught Russian literature, geography and Latin in a private gymnasium in Baku, and practiced as a lawyer. In 1915-1917 he was an assistant to P. N. Malyantovich, attorney at law for the Moscow District.

In 1920, Vyshinsky left the Menshevik Party and joined the RCP(b).

In 1920-1921 he was a lecturer at Moscow University and dean of the economics department of the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy.

In 1923-1925. - Prosecutor of the Criminal Investigation Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He acted as a public prosecutor at many trials: the case of "Gukon" (1923); The Case of the Leningrad Judicial Workers (1924); Case of the Conserv Trust (1924).

He acted as a public prosecutor at political trials. He was a representative of the special presence of the Supreme Court in the Shakhty case (1928), in the case of the Industrial Party (1930). On July 6, 1928, 49 specialists from the Donbass were sentenced to various penalties by the Supreme Court of the USSR chaired by Vyshinsky.

The widespread legend, according to which Vyshinsky claimed that the confession of the accused is the best evidence, does not correspond to reality. In his main work, he declared the opposite principle:

On the other hand, it would be erroneous to give the accused or defendant, or rather, their explanations, more importance than they deserve as ordinary participants in the process. In rather distant times, in the era of domination in the process of the theory of so-called legal (formal) evidence, the overestimation of the significance of the confessions of the defendant or the accused reached such an extent that the confession of the accused himself as guilty was considered an immutable, unquestionable truth, even if this confession was torn from him by torture, which in those days was almost the only procedural evidence, in any case, considered the most serious evidence, the “queen of evidence” (regina probationum). Liberal professors of bourgeois law introduced a significant limitation to this fundamentally erroneous principle of medieval procedural law: the defendant's own confession becomes the "queen of evidence" when it is received correctly, voluntarily and is completely consistent with other circumstances established in the case. But if other circumstances established in the case prove the guilt of the person brought to justice, then the consciousness of this person loses the significance of evidence and in this respect becomes redundant. Its significance in this case can only be reduced to being a basis for assessing certain moral qualities of the defendant, for lowering or strengthening the punishment determined by the court.

Therefore, the accused in the criminal process should not be considered as the only and most reliable source of this truth. Therefore, it is impossible to recognize as correct such an organization and such a direction of the investigation, which see the main task in obtaining necessarily “confessional” explanations from the accused. Such an organization of the investigation, in which the testimony of the accused turns out to be the main and - even worse - the only foundations of the entire investigation, is capable of jeopardizing the whole case if the accused changes his testimony or refrains from it. Undoubtedly, the investigation can only win if it manages to reduce the accused's explanations to the level of ordinary, ordinary evidence, the removal of which from the case is incapable of exerting any decisive influence on the position and stability of the main facts and circumstances established by the investigation. This provision, it seems to us, is one of the most important methodological rules, the strict application of which greatly facilitates the tasks of the investigation, accelerates the development of investigative actions and guarantees the investigation a much greater success than it can be if this rule is abandoned.

However, as an official prosecutor at the Stalinist political trials of the 1930s, Vyshinsky considered the principle of "reducing the accused's explanations to the level of ordinary, ordinary evidence" inapplicable to those accused of participation in conspiracies and participation in counter-revolutionary organizations for the following reasons:

However, this rule should not be understood abstractly, abstracting from the specific features of this or that criminal case, especially one in which several accused are involved, who are also connected with each other as accomplices. In such cases, the question of the attitude to the explanations of the accused, in particular, to such explanations by which they expose their accomplices, accomplices in a common crime, must be decided taking into account all the peculiarities of such cases - cases of conspiracies, criminal associations, in particular, cases of anti-Soviet , counter-revolutionary organizations and groups. In such trials, the most thorough verification of all the circumstances of the case is also obligatory, a verification that controls the very explanations of the accused. But the explanations of the accused in such cases inevitably acquire the character and significance of basic evidence, the most important, decisive evidence. This is explained by the very features of these circumstances, the peculiarities of their legal nature. What requirements in cases of conspiracies should be presented to evidence in general, to the explanations of the accused as evidence in particular? In the case of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center, the prosecutor said: “We cannot demand that in cases of a conspiracy, a coup d'état, we should approach from the point of view of giving us protocols, resolutions, give membership books, give us the numbers of your membership cards; conspirators cannot be required to conspire to have their criminal activities certified by a notary public. No sane person can raise the question in such a way in cases of state conspiracy. Yes, we have a number of documents in this regard. But if there were none, we would still consider ourselves entitled to bring charges on the basis of the testimony and explanations of the accused and witnesses and, if you like, circumstantial evidence ... ". And further: “We have in mind further the testimonies of the accused, which in themselves are of the greatest evidentiary value. In the process, when one of the evidence was the testimony of the accused themselves, we did not limit ourselves to the fact that the court listened only to the explanations of the accused; By all possible means available to us, we have verified this explanation. I must say that we did this here with all objective conscientiousness and with all possible thoroughness. Thus, in cases of conspiracies and other similar cases, the question of the attitude towards the testimony of the accused must be raised with extreme caution, both in the sense of admitting them as evidence, and in the sense of denying this quality behind them. With all the caution in posing this question, one cannot fail to recognize in such cases the independent significance of this type of evidence.

A. Ya. Vyshinsky ... On February 4, 1936, he sent a personal letter to the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. M. Molotov, in which he drew attention to the illegality and inappropriateness of the actions of the Special Meeting, a year later, speaking at the February-March Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he sharply criticized the actions of the NKVD, headed by G. Yagoda, to investigate political cases. Vyshinsky noted the illegal methods of coercing the confessions of the accused and the impossibility of bringing the materials of such an investigation to the courts. Vyshinsky considered the main shortcoming in the work of the NKVD investigative bodies and the prosecutor's office "the tendency to build an investigation on the accused's own confession. Our investigators care very little about objective evidence, material evidence, not to mention expert examination. Meanwhile, the center of gravity of the investigation should lie precisely in these After all, only under this condition can one count on the success of the trial, on the fact that the investigation has established the truth.

True, neither A. Ya. Vyshinsky's letter to V. M. Molotov, nor his speech at the Plenum, judging by the remarks from the audience, supported by members of the Plenum of the Central Committee, had no practical result.

1936-1938

He acted as a public prosecutor at all three Moscow trials -1938.

Some researchers believe that, apparently, A. Ya. Vyshinsky, who always supports the political decisions of the leadership of the USSR, including the repressions of the 1930s (the February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of 1937, ideologically substantiated the deployment of repressions throughout society ), criticized the actions of G. Yagoda in connection with the imminent exclusion of him from the CPSU (b) and his arrest in April 1937.

At the political trials of the 1930s, Vyshinsky's accusatory speeches were distinguished by particular rudeness, were filled with harsh statements insulting the honor and dignity of the defendants - in particular, in the case of the Trotskyist-Zinoviev terrorist center, the case of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center, the case of the anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites". Almost all the defendants in these cases were subsequently posthumously rehabilitated due to the absence of corpus delicti in their actions (Sokolnikov G. Ya., Pyatakov G. L., Radek K. B., Rykov A. I., Zinoviev G. E., Bukharin N . I. and others). It was established that the investigation in these cases relied on falsified evidence - self-incriminations of the accused, obtained under psychological and physical pressure (torture).

Our entire country, from small to old, is waiting and demanding one thing: traitors and spies who sold our Motherland to the enemy, to be shot like filthy dogs! ... Time will pass. The graves of the hated traitors will be overgrown with weeds and thistles, covered with the eternal contempt of honest Soviet people, of the entire Soviet people. And above us, above our happy country, our sun will still shine brightly and joyfully with its bright rays. We, our people, will continue to walk along the road cleansed of the last evil spirits and abominations of the past, led by our beloved leader and teacher - the great Stalin - forward and forward to communism!

Since 1940

In June-August 1940, he was authorized by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for Latvia.

From September 6, 1940 to 1946 - First Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR. During the evacuation of the NKID to Kuibyshev, he headed its work.

On July 12, 1941, Vyshinsky was present at the first act leading to the creation of an anti-Hitler coalition - the signing of an agreement between the USSR and Great Britain on joint actions in the war against Germany. He took part in the conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain, held in October 1943 in Moscow. At the suggestion of the Soviet government, the conference considered the issues of reducing the duration of the war against Nazi Germany and its allies in Europe, opening a second front, dealing with Germany and other enemy countries in Europe, creating an international organization to ensure general security, etc. In particular, it was decided to create European Advisory Commission and Advisory Council for Italy.

In 1944-1945 he took an active part in negotiations with Romania, and then with Bulgaria. In February 1945, as a member of the Soviet delegation at the Yalta Conference of the leaders of the three allied powers - the USSR, the USA and Great Britain, he participated in the work of one of its commissions. In April of the same year, he was present at the signing of treaties of friendship and mutual assistance with Poland, Yugoslavia and other states.

Vyshinsky brought to Berlin the text of the Act of Unconditional Surrender of Germany, which marked the victory in the Great Patriotic War on May 9, 1945 (provided legal support to Marshal G.K. Zhukov).

Member of the Potsdam Conference as part of the Soviet delegation. In January 1946, he headed the USSR delegation at the first session of the UN General Assembly. In the summer and autumn of 1946, he spoke at the plenary sessions of the Paris Peace Conference, in the commission on political and territorial issues for Romania, similar commissions for Hungary and Italy, in the Commission on economic issues for Italy, on the competence of the governor in Trieste, in the Commission on economic issues for Balkans and Finland, on a peace treaty with Bulgaria.

From March 1946 Deputy Minister for General Affairs. In -1953, at the height of the initial stage of the Cold War and during the Korean War, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR.

In 1949, in his speeches and articles, he denounced the "zealous warmonger", "rude falsifier", "vile slanderer" in the person of this or that representative of "international imperialism".

He died suddenly of a heart attack in New York, was cremated, the ashes were placed in an urn in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.

Andrei Yanuarievich devoted all his strength, great knowledge and talent to the cause of strengthening the Soviet state, tirelessly defended the interests of the Soviet Union in the international arena, fighting with Bolshevik passion for the cause of communism, for strengthening international peace and general security. He was awarded six orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. One of the most prominent figures of the Soviet state, a talented Soviet diplomat and prominent scientist, has left us. He was a faithful son of the Communist Party, selfless in his work, exceptionally modest and demanding of himself.

External images
Vyshinsky (death note)

An accomplice of Stalinist repressions

It turns out that in that formidable year, in his report, which became famous in special circles, Andrei Yanuarievich (I really want to say Yaguarievich) Vyshinsky in the spirit of the most flexible dialectics (which we do not allow either state subjects, or now electronic machines, because for them yes there is yes , but no there is no), recalled that it is never possible for humanity to establish absolute truth, but only relative .... Hence, the most businesslike conclusion: that it would be a waste of time to search for absolute evidence (the evidence is relative), undoubted witnesses (they may contradict each other).

A family

He was married (since 1903) to Kapitolina Isidorovna Mikhailova (1884-1973), their daughter Zinaida (1909-1991) was born in marriage. Zinaida graduated from Moscow State University with a PhD in Law.

Awards

• He was awarded six Orders of Lenin (1937, 1943, 1945, 1947, 1954), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1933), medals "For the Defense of Moscow" (1944), "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." (1945).
• Laureate of the Stalin Prize of the first degree in 1947 (for the monograph "The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law").

Proceedings

• Essays on the history of communism: A short course of lectures. - M.: Glavpolitprosvet, 1924.
• Revolutionary legality and the tasks of Soviet defense. - M., 1934
• Some methods of sabotage and sabotage work of Trotskyist-fascist intelligence agents. - M.: Partizdat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1937. (Reprinted see: Liquidation of the "fifth column" [Text] / L. Zakovsky, S. Uranov. - M.: Algorithm: Eksmo, 2009. - p. 219- 259)
• State structure of the USSR. 3rd ed., rev. and additional - M.: Yur. Publishing House of the NKJU of the USSR, 1938.
• Judicial speeches. - M.: Legal publishing house of the NKJU USSR, 1938.
• Constitutional principles of the Soviet state: Report read at the general meeting of the Department of Economics and Law of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR on November 3, 1939 - M .: OGIZ, 1940.
• The theory of judicial evidence in Soviet law. - M.: Yur. publishing house of the NKJ RSFSR, 1941.
• Lenin and Stalin are the great organizers of the Soviet state. - M.: OGIZ, 1945.
• The Law of the Soviet state / Andrei Y. Vyshinsky, gen. ed.; Transl. from the Russ. by Hugh W. Babb; Introd. by John N. Hazard. - New York: Macmillan, 1948.
• Questions of international law and international politics. - M.: Gosjurizdat, 1949.
• On some questions of the theory of state and law. 2nd ed. - M.: Gosjurizdat, 1949.
• Electoral law of the USSR (in questions and answers). 2nd ed. - M.: Gospolitizdat, 1950.
• Three visits of A. Ya. Vyshinsky to Bucharest (1944-1946). Documents of Russian archives. - M.: ROSSPEN, 1998.

Notes

Key ambassadors(currently in office)
Kislyak Mammadov Yakovenko Grinin Orlov

Andrei Yanuarievich Vyshinsky was born on November 28 (December 10), 1883 in Odessa, died suddenly of a heart attack on November 22, 1954 in New York, USA. Buried in Red Square in Moscow.

The son of a pharmacist, Russian. Since 1913, after graduating from the Faculty of Law of Kyiv University, he engaged in literary and pedagogical activities.

In Social Democracy since 1903 (Menshevik), in 1905 secretary of the Baku Soviet, member of the RCP(b) since 1920, member of the Central Committee since 1939, candidate member of the Presidium of the Central Committee 16.10.52-06.03.53.

In 1908, while in the Baku prison, he became close friends with I.V., who was in the same cell. Stalin, but before and during the revolution he was on the side of the Mensheviks. Since the spring of 1917 he worked in the People's Commissariat of Labor and the Prosecutor's Office

During his studies at the university (1901-13) he was expelled in 1902, and in 1909-10 he was imprisoned in a fortress for revolutionary activities. In 1913 he was left at the university to prepare for a professorship, but was soon fired for political unreliability. Since 1913 teacher of history, Russian and Latin languages ​​at the Baku gymnasium. In 1915-17 pom. sworn attorney in Moscow. Moved after the February Revolution of 1917 and took the post before. 1st Yakimansk district council and early. Militia of the Zamoskvoretsky district. In this post, Vyshinsky, ex officio, signed an order for the district on the arrest of V.I. Lenin and G.E. Zinoviev and published it.

After the victory of the Soviet system, he became one of the main ideologists of socialist legality, since 1920 a Bolshevik (the only one to whom Stalin gave a recommendation to the CP). The creator of the innovative provision on the "presumption of guilt" (the decisive importance of the accused's confession of his guilt during interrogations by the investigator).

In 1917-18 he was an employee of the Moscow City Food Committee. In 1919-23 head. accounting department and Distribution Department of the People's Commissariat of Food of the RSFSR. At the same time, in 1921-22, he was dean of the Faculty of Economics at the K. Marx Moscow Institute of National Economy and professor at Moscow State University. In 1923-25 ​​he was a prosecutor of the Criminal Investigation Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. In 1925-28 he was the rector of Moscow State University. In 1928-31 he was a member of the Board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. In May 1931 - June 1933, deputy. People's Commissar of Justice of the RSFSR and Prosecutor of the RSFSR Since June 1933, Deputy. prosecutor, and in March 1935 - May 1939 prosecutor of the USSR. Was before. special presence of the Supreme Court in the Shakhty case (1928) and in the case of the Industrial Party (1930).

In 1939-44 Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, in 1940-46 First Deputy. People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, since 1949 Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, at the same time in 1937-41 Director of the Institute of Law of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, since March 1953 Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR.

In 1953-54, the permanent representative of the USSR to the UN. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st-4th convocations. Vyshinsky was repeatedly awarded "for successful work to strengthen revolutionary legality" and "for outstanding work in exposing wrecking and counter-revolutionary organizations." Awarded 7 orders and medals. Laureate of the Stalin Prize (1947) for the work "The Theory of Judicial Evidence".

Author of a large number of works on the theory of criminal procedure. In them, Vyshinsky legally substantiated the position on the intensification of the class struggle as we move towards communism and, as a result, the intensification of the persecution of anti-Soviet elements. Developed a theory about the recognition of the accused, suspected of state crimes, as a decisive proof of guilt. In fact, all of Vyshinsky's works were aimed at justifying the activities of the Soviet justice and state security agencies in the period up to 1953.

Vyshinsky is the author of works on issues of state and law: "The Course of the Criminal Procedure" (1927, in collaboration with V. Underderevich), "The Judicial System in the USSR" (1939), "The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law" (1941), "Issues of Theory State and Law" (1949) and others. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Department of Social Sciences (Law) since January 28, 1939.

He was married (since 1903) to Kapitolina Isidorovna Mikhailova (1884-1973). He has been married for over fifty years. In 1909, a daughter, Zinaida, was born (d. 1991).

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