Andrey Vyshinsky

• 1. Early Life And Revolutionary Roots

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  Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky was born in Odessa into a Polish Catholic family. His father, Yanuary Vyshinsky, worked as an experienced inspector for the government. The family later moved to Baku where Andrei grew up. He attended Kiev University starting in 1901 but faced expulsion the following year. Authorities removed him from school because he participated in revolutionary activities. This early political engagement set the stage for his future career. He returned to Baku and joined the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. He took an active part in the 1905 Russian Revolution which led to his imprisonment in 1908. While serving time in a prison camp near Baku, he first met Joseph Stalin. They were fellow inmates who engaged in ideological disputes during their confinement. After his release, he returned home to Baku for the birth of his daughter Zinaida in 1909. He soon went back to Kiev University and graduated in 1913. Despite his academic success, his political past prevented him from securing a professorship. He was forced to return to Baku to practice law instead.

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• 2. Architect Of The Show Trials

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  Vyshinsky presided over the Shakhty Trial against 53 alleged counter-revolutionary wreckers in 1928. Nikolai Krylenko acted as prosecutor while Vyshinsky served as judge. The outcome was never in doubt according to historian Arkady Vaksberg. All court attention focused on securing confessions rather than analyzing evidence. In November and December 1930, he presided over the Industrial Party Trial with eight defendants. Every single defendant confessed their guilt during this proceeding. This result earned him a promotion within the Soviet hierarchy. By April 1933, he prosecuted the Metro-Vickers trial involving eighteen British engineers. Eight out of eighteen defendants received relatively light sentences despite the charges. He carried out administrative preparations for a systematic drive against harvest-wreckers and grain-thieves. His legal theory prioritized confession above all other forms of proof. He laid a theoretical base for the Soviet judicial system in his work Theory of Judicial Proofs in Soviet Justice. This text won him the Stalin Prize in 1947. He used speeches from the Moscow Trials as examples of how defendants' statements could serve as primary evidence. He is cited for the principle that confession of the accused is the queen of evidence.

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• 3. The Great Purge Legal Machine

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  Vyshinsky replaced Ivan Akulov as Procurator General in June 1935 after Akulov questioned linking Zinoviev to Kirov's murder. From that point forward, he became the legal mastermind behind Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. Although he acted as judge, he encouraged investigators to procure confessions from the accused. In some cases, he prepared indictments before investigations were even concluded. Konstantin Semenchuk headed the Glavsevmorput station on Wrangel Island when accused of oppressing local Yupik people. The case came to trial before the Supreme Court of the RSFSR in May 1936. Both defendants were found guilty and shot by Vyshinsky who attacked them as human waste. He achieved international infamy as prosecutor at the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial in 1936. This was the first of the Moscow Trials during the Great Purge. He lashed defenseless victims with vituperative rhetoric throughout these proceedings. Phrases like dogs of the fascist bourgeoisie and mad dogs of Trotskyism punctuated his speeches. He dehumanized targets so thoroughly that no evidence seemed necessary for conviction. In April 1937, he denounced Yevgeny Pashukanis as a wrecker. Pashukanis was the Soviet Union's foremost legal scholar and former Deputy People's Commissar for Justice. This marked the start of a purge of the prosecutor's apparatus carried out by Vyshinsky. Ninety percent of provincial prosecutors were removed or arrested during this campaign. Pashukanis himself was executed later that same year.

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• 4. Wartime Diplomacy And Expansion

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  Vyshinsky entered another phase in his career devoted primarily to foreign affairs after March 1938. He had a low opinion of diplomats because they often complained about the effect of trials on Western opinions. The Great Purge inflicted tremendous losses on the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. Maxim Litvinov was one of the few diplomats who survived until dismissed in 1939. In June 1940, Vyshinsky traveled to Latvia to supervise establishment of a pro-Soviet government. He set out to purge the Latvian Communist Party of Trotskyists and Bukharinites. A Latvian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in July 1940 and granted admission to the USSR. On the 6th of September 1940, he was named First Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs. His main responsibility covered Eastern Europe though he dealt with British Ambassador Stafford Cripps. Cripps passed Winston Churchill's warning that Germany might be intending to invade the USSR. Vyshinsky refused to discuss this intelligence with anyone. During the Tehran Conference in 1943, he remained in the Soviet Union to keep shop while most leadership went abroad. Stalin appointed him to the Allied Control Council on Italian affairs where he organized repatriation of Soviet POWs. He began liaising with the Italian Communist Party in Naples during this period.

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• 5. Foreign Minister And United Nations

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  Vyshinsky accompanied Stalin, Molotov, and Beria to the Yalta Conference in February 1945. After returning to Moscow, he was dispatched to Romania to arrange for a communist regime to assume control. He then again accompanied Soviet leadership to the Potsdam Conference. On the 26th of February 1946, he rushed to Bucharest to force King Michael of Romania to dismiss anti-communist head of government General Nicolae Rădescu. He appointed pro-communist Petru Groza instead after surrounding the palace with Soviet tanks. British diplomat Sir Frank Roberts described him as follows during his tenure from 1945 to 1947. Vyshinsky was responsible for Soviet preparations for trial of major German war criminals by International Military Tribunal. He served as permanent representative of Soviet Union to United Nations throughout much of this era. His positions included vice-premier from 1939 to 1944 and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1940 to 1949. He held the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1949 until 1953. In 1953, he was among chief figures accused by U.S. Congress Kersten Committee regarding Soviet occupation of Baltic states.

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• 6. Legacy In Law And Culture

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  Vyshinsky died on the 22nd of November 1954 in New York City. His body returned to Moscow by special flight and ashes buried at Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Until de-Stalinization period, Institute of State and Law remained named in his honor. During his tenure as director, he oversaw publication of several important monographs on general theory of state and law. The Pet Shop Boys song This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave contains sample recording from his speech at Zinoviev-Kamenev trial of 1936. Vyshinsky appears at beginning of 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles as prosecutor before Emergency Committee of People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Gregor Martov's alternative history novel His New Majesty depicts him joining winners after White forces defeat Bolsheviks in 1921. He acts as royal prosecutor sentencing Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Bukharin to death as Subversives Traitors Blasphemers and Regicides. He gets rewarded with ennoblement but assassinated by anarchist girl with whom he had secret affair. Saying give me man there will be paragraph for him popular in Poland refers to miscarriage justice under communist regimes.

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