Andrei Vyshinsky biography. Stalin prosecutor. Andrei Vyshinsky did not approve of political repressions? The history of one dacha

Andrei Yanuarievich Vyshinsky(Polish Andrzej Wyszyski; December 10, 1883, Odessa - November 22, 1954, New York) - Soviet statesman, lawyer, diplomat.

In 1953-1954. Permanent Representative of the USSR to the UN. In 1949-1953. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. In 1935-1939. Prosecutor of the USSR 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 the 1st, 2nd, 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).

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 economic faculty of the Institute National economy named after Plekhanov.

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, 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 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 Donbas specialists were sentenced to various penalties Supreme Court USSR under the chairmanship of 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.

Born in Odessa in the family of a pharmacist. Pole by nationality, a relative of Cardinal Stefan Vyshinsky (Beladi L., Kraus T. Stalin. M., 1990. P. 249). When he was five years old, the family moved to Baku, where his father began working in the Caucasian Partnership for Pharmaceutical Goods Trade. Vyshinsky graduated from the classical gymnasium in Baku and the law faculty of Kyiv University. Member of the revolutionary movement since 1902. In 1903 he joined the Mensheviks.1) In Baku he was arrested and imprisoned in the Bayil prison, where he was imprisoned together with I. Dzhugashvili (Stalin).

In June 1917, already in Petrograd, Vyshinsky was one of those who signed an order on strict observance of the order of the Provisional Government on the arrest of Lenin. Since 1920 - a member of the RCP (b). In 1925-1928. - Rector of Moscow University. Since 1931 - Prosecutor of the RSFSR. In 1939-1944. - Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. In 1940-1953. in senior positions in the USSR Foreign Ministry, since 1949 - Minister of Foreign Affairs. Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks since 1939. In 1937-1950. - Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. After Stalin's death, he was the representative of the USSR to the UN. Awarded six Orders of Lenin. He died of a heart attack in New York, having learned about the beginning of the rehabilitation of convicts under Stalin.

A. Vaksberg 3) writes: “Vyshinsky was the only educated person in the entire Stalinist leadership. Who in the surviving Stalinist environment knew at least one foreign language? I'm afraid few people even knew Russian properly. And Vyshinsky spoke not only the language of his mother (Russian) and father (Polish), but also very good French, learned in a first-class tsarist gymnasium. He knew less, but also not bad, also English and German. In terms of the knowledge necessary for a serious statesman, he had no equal in the Stalinist leadership of the 40s. Those in the know had nothing to do in this leadership at all: with fatal inevitability, they were pushed out of there to the flayer by the machine of destruction. All - except Vyshinsky. Because Stalin's trust in him - completely tamed, turned into a faithful devoted slave, always under the threat of the ax and always remembering this - Stalin's trust in him was almost limitless. Without understanding this uniqueness of the situation, we will not understand the true place of Vyshinsky at the top of the political pyramid ”(Vaksberg A. The Queen of Evidence: Vyshinsky and His Victims. M., 1992. P. 274).

Vyshinsky - winner of the Stalin Prize in 1947 for the monograph "The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law". The propositions put forward in Vyshinsky's works were aimed at substantiating gross violations of socialist legality and mass repressions. The confession of the accused was given the weight of leading evidence. The concept of "presumption of innocence" did not exist. In the absence of any evidence of guilt, the fate of the arrested person was determined by the "revolutionary conscience of the prosecutor."

Vyshinsky was the official prosecutor at the Stalinist political trials of the 1930s. Moreover, he was not just an executor of the will of the director Stalin. He was a co-author, like Beria or Molotov. Vyshinsky demanded the death penalty for almost all the accused. The prisoners called him "Andrei Yaguarievich".

The transcripts of the trials show that prosecutor Vyshinsky replaced the evidence with swearing. To insult and humiliate - before physically destroying - such was the way he worked. Here is a typical excerpt from Vyshinsky's speech:

“I don’t know of such examples - this is the first example in history of how a spy and murderer wields philosophy like crushed glass to powder his victim’s eyes before crushing her head with a robber’s flail.” This is a complex sentence with three predicates - about the "favorite of the party" Nikolai Bukharin, "the damned cross between a fox and a pig" (playwright M. Shatrov claims that this formula was suggested to Vyshinsky by Stalin).

And here is another characteristic excerpt from the prosecutor’s speech: “Many enemies and spies have penetrated all Soviet institutions and organizations, they disguised themselves as Soviet employees, workers, peasants, they are waging a tough and insidious struggle against the Soviet national economy, against the Soviet state” (Soviet state and law, 1965, no. 3, p. 24).

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It should be noted that, at least formally, Vyshinsky is right. “A spy has become the most massive profession in the USSR. According to the NKVD, in three years - from 1934 to 1937 - the number of those arrested for espionage increased 35 times (in favor of Japan - 13 times, Germany - 20 times, Latvia - 40 times). People who suddenly turned out to be "Trotskyists" were "discovered" in 1937 60 times more than in 1934. But Trotsky was expelled from the country back in 1929. For participation in the so-called "bourgeois-nationalist groups" the number of those arrested in 1937 increased 500 (!) times compared to 1934! (Albats E. Delayed action mine. M., 1992. S. 70-71).

It is natural that all this "stinking heap" of numerous "degenerates" and "degenerates", "mad dogs of capitalism" and "despicable adventurers", "damned reptiles" and "human scum", i.e., all this "Trotskyist-Zinovievist and Bukharin's rump", it is necessary to somehow punish. Here are the final words from another speech by Vyshinsky: “Our entire country, from young to old, is waiting and demanding one thing: to shoot traitors and spies who sold our Motherland to the enemy 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 the 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!

V.M. Berezhkov recalls: “Vyshinsky was known for his rudeness with his subordinates, his ability to instill fear in those around him. 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 “that Menshevik” ... Vyshinsky felt all the more fear in the presence of Stalin and Molotov. When they called him, he went to bending over him, somehow sideways, with an ingratiating grin that bristled his reddish mustache ”(Berezhkov V. How I became Stalin’s translator. M., 1993. P. 226).

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

take, for example, such a case: in the summer of 1917, he, being the prosecutor of Petrograd, issued a warrant for the arrest of two German spies. Then, in the seventeenth, those two managed to escape from justice, having spent the whole summer in a hut near St. Petersburg. But the great prosecutor differs from the small prosecutor primarily in that he always turns out to be right: in 1935, the USSR Prosecutor Vyshinsky again issued a warrant for the arrest of one of those couple (the second had already died by that time), and he - Zinoviev was his last name - had to leave justice failed. Speaking at the trial as a prosecutor, Vyshinsky did not leave Zinoviev a single chance for acquittal, Zinoviev was shot. (*broken link)
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VYSHINSKY

Not knowing the behind-the-scenes side of the Moscow trials, the world community was inclined to consider Prosecutor Vyshinsky one of the main directors of these performances. It was believed that this man had a significant influence on the fate of the defendants. There is nothing surprising in such a view: after all, the real organizers of the trials (Yagoda, Yezhov, Molchanov, Agranov, Zakovsky and others) remained in the shadows all the time, and it was Vyshinsky who was officially instructed to act at "open" trials as the general prosecutor.

The reader will be surprised if I say that Vyshinsky himself racked his brains, trying to guess by what extraordinary means the NKVD managed to crush, paralyze the will of the outstanding Leninists and force them to slander themselves.

One thing was clear to Vyshinsky: the defendants were innocent. As an experienced prosecutor, he saw that their confessions were not supported by any objective evidence of guilt. In addition, the leadership of the NKVD considered it necessary to reveal to Vyshinsky some of their cards and point out to him a number of dangerous places that he had to diligently avoid at court hearings.

That, in fact, was all that Vyshinsky knew. The main secrets of the investigation were not available to him either. None of the leaders of the NKVD had the right to inform him about the instructions received from Stalin, about the methods of investigation and inquisitorial techniques tested on each of the arrested, or about the negotiations that Stalin had with the main accused. Not only did the fate of the defendants not depend on Vyshinsky, he did not even know what sentence was prepared in advance for each of them.

Many abroad were baffled by an article by a world-famous American journalist. This lady wrote about Vyshinsky as about a monster who sent his yesterday's friends to death - Kamenev, Bukharin and many others. But they were never Vyshinsky's friends. In the days of October and the Civil War, they were different parties barricades. Until 1920 Vyshinsky was a Menshevik. It seems to me that many of the old Bolsheviks first heard this name only in the early 1930s, when Vyshinsky was appointed Prosecutor General, and saw him with their own eyes not earlier than 1935, when they were led under escort into the courtroom of a military tribunal to try participation in the murder of Kirov.

The leadership of the NKVD treated Vyshinsky not so much with distrust, but rather with condescension - in the same way that influential Stalinist bureaucrats with a party card in their pocket were accustomed to treating non-party people. Even instructing him how careful he was to touch certain slippery points of the accusation, they were never fully frank with him.

Vyshinsky had reason to hate these arrogant masters of the situation. He understood that he would have to maneuver in every possible way in court, disguising their clumsy work, and with his eloquence to cover up the idiotic exaggerations that are present in the case of each accused. He also understood something else: if these frauds were somehow found out in court, then the inquisitors would make him the scapegoat, sewing on him, at best, an "attempted sabotage."

The leaders of the NKVD, in turn, had reason not to like Vyshinsky. Firstly, they despised him as a former prisoner of the "organs": his old file was still kept in the archives, where he was accused of anti-Soviet activities. Secondly, they were devoured by a feeling of jealousy - the attention of the whole world was riveted to him, following the course of sensational processes, and to them, the true creators of these grandiose performances, as they say "from nothing" concocted a monstrous conspiracy and, at the cost of incredible efforts, managed to break and tame everyone of the accused - are they destined to remain in the shadows?

Having once been in the building on the Lubyanka as a prisoner, Vyshinsky was afraid of this building and the people who worked there. And although he occupied a much higher position in the Soviet hierarchy than, say, the head of the Secret Political Directorate of the NKVD, Molchanov, he, at the first call from Molchanov, came to him with an invariable sycophantic smile on his face. As for Yagoda, he honored Vyshinsky with only one meeting during the whole period of preparation of the first Moscow trial.

The task received from the NKVD, Vyshinsky performed with extreme diligence. Throughout all three trials, he was constantly on his guard, constantly ready to fend off any, even the faintest hint of the defendants of their innocence. Using the support of the defendants, as if competing with each other in self-incrimination, Vyshinsky used all sorts of tricks in order to show the world that the guilt of the accused fully proven and no more doubts are pertinent. At the same time, he did not miss the opportunity to exalt the "great leader and teacher" to the skies, and in his accusatory speech he invariably demanded the death penalty for all the defendants.

He himself really wanted to survive - and this was the main secret of his zeal. He used all his acting abilities, played selflessly, because the rate in his game was high. Knowing that in front of him in the dock were the innocent victims of the Stalinist regime, that in the next few hours they would be shot in the cellars of the NKVD, he seemed to feel sincere pleasure when he trampled on the remnants of their human dignity, blackening everything that seemed to him the most in their biographies. bright and sublime. Going far beyond the scope of the indictment, he allowed himself to declare that the defendants "were wearing masks all their lives", that "under the guise of loud phrases, these provocateurs they served not the cause of the revolution and the proletariat, but the counter-revolution and the bourgeoisie.” This is how the leaders of October were vilified by a man who in the October days and throughout the civil war was an enemy of the revolution and the republic of Soviets!

With sadistic pleasure, insulting those doomed to death, he stigmatized them with shameful nicknames - "spies and traitors", "a stinking heap of human garbage", "animals in human form", "disgusting scoundrels" ...

"Shoot them all like mad dogs!" Vyshinsky demanded. "Crush the damned reptile!" he called to the judges.

No, he did not look like a man doing his duty under duress. He attacked the defenseless Stalinist prisoners with such sincere pleasure, not only because Stalin needed to settle accounts with them, but also because he himself was glad of the opportunity to settle accounts with the old Bolsheviks. He knew that as long as the old guard retained its authority in the party and exercised the right to vote, such as Vyshinsky were destined to remain pariahs.

In saying this, I am basing myself on my own observations: I had to work with Vyshinsky in the Supreme Court in those distant times, when both of us were supervising prosecutors and were members of the same party cell.

I started working at the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal and then at the Supreme Court long before Vyshinsky appeared there. At that time, the members of the Supreme Court were almost exclusively Bolsheviks from the old guard; the most prominent of them was Nikolai Krylenko, an associate of Lenin, the first Soviet commander-in-chief (commander of all armed forces). The composition of the Supreme Court also included the old Latvian revolutionary Otto Karklin, who had served his term in the tsarist penal servitude; former factory worker Nikolai Nemtsov, an active participant in the revolution of 1905, sentenced by the tsarist court to life exile in Siberia; the head of the party control commission, Aron Solts, who headed the legal collegium in the Supreme Court; Alexander Galkin, chairman of the cassation board, and a number of other old Bolsheviks sent here to work in order to strengthen the proletarian influence in Soviet justice.

These people spent a considerable part of their lives in tsarist prisons, in hard labor and in Siberian exile. They did not consider the revolution and Soviet power a source of any benefits for themselves, they did not look for high posts and personal benefits. They dressed poorly, although they could have whatever clothes they wanted, and limited themselves to meager food, while many of them needed a special diet to improve their health, which had been shaken in royal prisons.

In 1923, Vyshinsky appeared in the Supreme Court as a prosecutor of the legal college. In our unsophisticated atmosphere, among the simple and humble people he felt out of place. He was dapper, knew how to "apply himself," was a master of gracious bowing, reminiscent of the manners of a tsarist officer. He didn't look like a revolutionary. Vyshinsky tried very hard to tie friendly relations with his new environment, but did not succeed in this.

I then held the position of assistant prosecutor of the appellate board of the Supreme Court. All of us - prosecutors and judges - once a day went to the "conference room" to drink tea. Interesting conversations often ensued over a cup of tea. But I noticed one remarkable thing: as soon as Vyshinsky entered here, the conversation immediately died down and someone always uttered the standard phrase: "Well, it's time to get to work!"

Vyshinsky noticed this and stopped coming to our tea parties.

I remember well how once, when we were all sitting in this room, the door opened a crack and Vyshinsky looked in. Everyone looked in his direction, but he did not enter, he closed the door slowly.

I can't stand him! - Galkin, chairman of the appeal commission, said with a grimace of hostility.

Why? I asked.

Menshevik, - Nikolai Nemtsov, who was sitting next to him, explained. - Until the twentieth year, he thought about whether to recognize him as Soviet power or not.

The main trouble is not that he is a Menshevik,” Galkin objected. - Many Mensheviks are working with us now, but this one ... he is just a vile careerist!

None of the old Bolsheviks was rude to Vyshinsky, no one openly bullied him. If he asked about something, he was politely answered. But no one spoke to him first. Vyshinsky was smart enough to understand that the old party members looked at him as a stranger, and began to avoid them. He was used to sitting alone in his room all day. At that time, there were very few court hearings, and Vyshinsky in the company of other employees could only be seen at meetings of the party cell and at sessions of the Supreme Court, where legal issues or dealt with the protests made by the prosecutor's office about the court decisions. But I do not remember a single case when Vyshinsky spoke at a party meeting or a plenary session.

The old party members of the Supreme Court were certainly not petty people. They easily reconciled themselves to the fact that Vyshinsky had once been a Menshevik, and were even ready to turn a blind eye to his activity hostile to us in the decisive days of October. It was impossible to forgive him for something else: after the revolution had won, he was still waiting for all three years, while the civil war was going on, and only after making sure that the Soviet government would really survive, he applied to the Bolshevik party.

Once - it happened in 1923 - I made a report to members of the Moscow city court and the board of defenders. The topic of the report was last changes in the criminal code. Vyshinsky was also present, and we left the Moscow City Court building together. He told me that before the revolution he intended to devote himself to jurisprudence and after completing his course he was left at the university, but the tsarist ministry of education intervened and deprived him of the opportunity to make a scientific career. Here Vyshinsky changed the subject and spoke of the 1905 revolution. It turns out that he was then imprisoned for two years for participating in the organization of workers' strikes. I remember that this made an impression on me, and I even thought that perhaps Vyshinsky was not such a bad person after all. Later it turned out that Vyshinsky had told this story to other members of the Supreme Court. He clearly sought to win our favor and break through the isolation in which he found himself.

At the end of the same 1923, a purge of the party was announced in the country. Our party cell was "cleansed" by the Khamovniki district committee, and we went there in full force. The District Committee of Party Control, which was directly involved in the purge, consisted of prominent Bolsheviks, and was headed by a member. Central Commission of Party Control. Each of us wrote his biography and attached to it the guarantees of two other members of the party. Vyshinsky also submitted his autobiography. In it, he indicated that under the tsarist regime he served one a year in prison for participating in a strike.

The Party Control Commission called us one at a time and, after asking a few questions, returned the previously selected party card. For the old Bolsheviks from the Supreme Court, this procedure was not associated with any problems, and they were practically not asked questions. For them, it was just a fleeting meeting with old comrades who sat on the commission. Some of us, the younger ones, having passed the commission, were in no hurry to leave, but remained to wait until the consideration of all cases was completed. It was Vyshinsky's turn. For him, this was a serious test: during the previous purge, in 1921, he was expelled from the party and restored with great difficulty only a year later.

Half an hour passed, another hour, another one, another half an hour - and still Vyshinsky did not appear. Someone got tired of waiting and left. Finally Vyshinsky jumped out, excited and red as a cancer. It turned out that the commission did not return his membership card to him. This meant exclusion from the party. Vyshinsky did not tell us what happened during those three hours. closed door. He went to the far end of the vestibule, and there he paced up and down in agitation.

When, heading for the exit, we caught up with him, Vyshinsky exclaimed excitedly:

This is outrageous bullying! I won't leave it like this. I'll go to the Central Committee and throw my party card in their faces!

It was not very clear how he was going to throw the party card that was taken away from him. We advised him not to take rash actions, but to discuss everything with Krylenko or Solts. Soltz, chairman of the Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court, simultaneously headed the Central Party Control Commission and directed the purge of the party throughout the country.

We had already gone a few blocks when we heard hurried footsteps behind us. Vyshinsky again overtook us. Taking a breath, he fervently asked us not to tell anyone about his words about the Central Committee. We promised.

The next day, an alarmed secretary girl entered the meeting room and said that Vyshinsky was sobbing hysterically in Soltz's office. The frightened old man rushed out of the office to fetch him some water.

Aron Soltz became a revolutionary at the end of the last century. Despite the fact that he was subjected to countless arrests and spent many years in royal prisons and exile, his soul did not harden. He remained a good-natured, sympathetic person.

As a member of the party, Soltz was obliged to unswervingly adhere to the principle of "political expediency" in his activities, with which the Stalinist Politburo justified everything that happened. However, before gray hair Soltz never learned to look calmly at injustice. Only in last years life, under the pressure of all-embracing terror, he had to repeat Stalin's slander about Trotsky. However, in the end, he had the courage to tell Stalin the truth in the eye, which ruined him.

Soltz's friends called him "the conscience of the party," in part because he headed the Central Commission for Party Control (CCC), the country's highest party court. For several years, one of my party assignments was to report to this commission on party members who were under investigation, and I was often delighted with Soltz's human, unofficial approach to these matters.

Precisely Salts; with his kind and sympathetic character, he saved Vyshinsky. He raised the issue for discussion in the Central Committee, after which Vyshinsky's party card was returned. A few days later Soltz came into our "conference room" where we were having tea. Seeing Solts, his old friend Galkin immediately attacked him for such intercession. Solts smiled guiltily: "What do you want from him? A comrade works, tries ... Let him show himself. Bolsheviks are not born, they become Bolsheviks. If he does not justify trust - we can always expel him."

Because of the growing flow of complaints coming from everywhere to the Board of Appeal, I became so busy that I almost stopped attending meetings of the Law Board. Once I looked in there - just at that time Vyshinsky was making a report on the topic "The Accusation in the Political Trial." His speech could not be denied logic, moreover, he was fluent in Russian and skillfully used rhetorical devices. The presiding Soltz nodded in agreement, not hiding his approval.

I did not like at that time Vyshinsky's tendency to overact, his exaggerated pathos. But in general it was already becoming clear that he was one of the most capable and brilliantly trained prosecutors. It began to seem to me that our party members were being unfair to Vyshinsky; I only hoped that over time they would change their attitude towards him.

However, a small but characteristic episode soon occurred, showing that their intuition did not fail them. In the winter of 1923, the prosecutor of the republic, Nikolai Krylenko, summoned several workers, including Vyshinsky and me, and said that the Politburo had instructed him to sort out the materials of a secret investigation into the activities of Soviet embassies abroad. In view of the huge volume of materials, Krylenko, with the consent of the Politburo, enlists us in this work. We will have to study them together with him and report our considerations to the Central Committee. We will work at his house, in the evenings, as he promised not to transfer these documents anywhere.

On that day, we never left the luxurious Krylenkov mansion, which was owned by Prince Gagarin before the revolution. There were thirty or forty folders to be studied, and Krylenko distributed them among us. He explained at the same time that the People's Commissar of State Control Avanesov, who conducted the investigation, discovered scandalous facts of corruption and squandering of secret funds in Soviet missions abroad, and that some employees were suspected of collaborating with foreign intelligence services.

Krylenko asked us to state our findings on large sheets of paper in this order: on the left, under the name of the accused person, we should briefly formulate the essence of the charge and indicate whether there is enough evidence to initiate prosecution. On the right, it was marked where the case should be transferred: to the criminal court, to the Central Control Commission, or to decide it in a disciplinary procedure, and also what the punishment should be.

The documents turned out to be much less interesting than one might expect. They contained mostly unsubstantiated accusations leveled at each other by discordant bureaucrats, fueled by their quarrelsome spouses. Only an insignificant part of the papers testified to the facts of embezzlement, moral licentiousness and other things that could damage the prestige Soviet country. We did not find any cases of state treason at all.

All evenings Krylenko worked with us. From time to time he would come up to one of us and watch how the work was progressing. Looking over Vyshinsky's shoulder, he became interested in the case of a Soviet diplomat who was accused of an excessively luxurious lifestyle, rapprochement with the wife of one of his subordinates, and other sins. Vyshinsky proposed to expel him from the party, put him on trial and sentence him to three years in prison.

How's that for three years? - Krylenko asked in an unhappy tone. - You wrote here that he discredited the Soviet state in the eyes of the West. Such a thing deserves to be shot!

Vyshinsky was embarrassed and blushed.

At first, I also wanted to suggest execution," he muttered in a sycophantic tone, "but...

Here he stumbled, trying to find an explanation. Not finding it and completely at a loss, he mumbled that he admits his mistake. Krylenko stared at him mockingly - it seems that Vyshinsky's confusion gave him pleasure.

Yes, there is no crime at all here - he unexpectedly said and, pointing his finger at Vyshinsky's note about the expulsion of this diplomat from the party and bringing him to trial, he concluded:

Write: close the case!

I did not look at Vyshinsky, not wanting to embarrass him even more. But Vyshinsky suddenly burst into obsequious laughter:

How you played me, Nikolai Vasilyevich! You confused me... When you offered to shoot him, I was completely at a loss. I thought, how did I miss it so much and offered only three years! And now... ha ha ha...

Vyshinsky's laughter sounded false and evoked a feeling of disgust.

I have already said that many considered Vyshinsky a careerist who had slipped into the party, but I never expected that he would turn out to be so unscrupulous and devoid of any morality that he would express his readiness to go to any lengths - to justify a person, to shoot him - as the authorities pleased.

The position of Vyshinsky himself was precarious. As long as the old Bolsheviks enjoyed influence in the country, the Damocles sword of party purges constantly hung over him. That is why the rout of the opposition and the persecution of these people, which accompanied this rout, played into Vyshinsky's hands.

Stalin required that in all Soviet organizations there were people ready to accuse the old Bolsheviks of anti-Leninist policies and help get rid of them. When, as a result of such slander, the Central Committee dismissed them from key posts, the slanderers were appointed in the form of remuneration to the vacant posts.

It is not surprising that in this situation Vyshinsky was able to become the "watchful eye" of the party and was instructed to ensure that the Supreme Court did not deviate from the Leninist path. Now he did not have to tremble before each purge: on the contrary, those who were suspected of sympathizing with Lenin's persecuted comrades-in-arms were expelled from the party. Vyshinsky was not to be suspected of this. He was appointed prosecutor general, and he began to actively plant "loyal members of the party" in the judiciary and the prosecutor's office. Naturally, there was no place for such as Nikolai Krylenko, the creator of Soviet legislation and, in general, the entire Soviet legal system. He was declared politically unreliable, although he did not belong to any opposition. And Vyshinsky, who had been servile to Krylenko for years, was given the task of speaking at a meeting of legal workers and condemning Krylenko's policy in the field of justice as "anti-Leninist and bourgeois."

From his high position as a prosecutor, Vyshinsky watched with pleasure as the old Bolsheviks were removed one by one from the Supreme Court. Krylenko disappeared in early 1938. At the same time he disappeared ex-wife Elena Rozmirovich, who worked before the revolution as secretary of the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee and Lenin's personal secretary.

In July 1936, in the corridor of the NKVD building, I came face to face with Galkin. He was accompanied by a prison convoy. Apparently, Galkin was so shocked by what had happened that he did not recognize me, although we met eyes.

I immediately went into Berman's office and asked him to help Galkin in any way possible. Berman told me that Galkin was arrested on the basis of a denunciation received by the NKVD that he condemned the Central Committee of the party for the dissolution of the Society of Old Bolsheviks. The denunciation came from Vyshinsky.

By appointing Vyshinsky as the state prosecutor at the Moscow trials, Stalin once again showed what meaning he puts into the concept of "the right person in the right place." In the whole state, there would probably not be another person who would be ready to settle scores with the old Bolsheviks with such zeal.

NOTES

Orlov, seeking to oppose the "good" Krylenko to the "bad" Vyshinsky, is silent about the fact that both of them showed themselves to be obedient conductors of Stalin's arbitrariness in the early trials. For example, at the trial of the "Industrial Party" (1930), at the "Shakhtinsky case" (1928), which was considered by the Special Presence of the Supreme Court of the USSR under the chairmanship of Vyshinsky and with the chief prosecutor Krylenko (!).

A. I. Solzhenitsyn devoted several dozen pages to Krylenko in The Gulag Archipelago (see vol. 1, pp. 311-408). From this detailed, and sometimes deservedly mocking presentation of Krylenko's "arts", it becomes clear that "the creator of the entire Soviet legal system in general," according to a rude prisoner's saying, "for what he fought for, he ran into that." (Editor's note)

Vyshinsky Andrei Yanuarievich - lawyer, diplomat, one of the key figures of repression in the USSR.

Alas, our city endowed the world not only with bright geniuses. Andrei (Andrzej) Vyshinsky was born on December 10, 1883 in Odessa into a wealthy noble family. Father - a native of an old Polish gentry family, is connected by direct family ties with Cardinal Stefan Vyshinsky. He was a successful pharmacist. Mother was a pianist and music teacher. Literary and musical evenings were often held in the Vyshinskys' house. Vyshinsky spoke two languages ​​from childhood - Russian and Polish. A little later, he will also speak fluently in French, learned in the first-class royal gymnasium.

In 1888, when Andrey Vyshinsky was five years old, the family moved to a new place of residence in Baku, where his father opened his own pharmacy and began working in the Caucasian Association for the Sale of Pharmaceutical Goods. Here Vyshinsky graduated from the first male classical gymnasium. At the gymnasium ball he met his future wife, Kapitolina Isidorovna Mikhailova, with whom he later lived all his life. After graduating from the gymnasium, he entered the law faculty of Kyiv University, but was expelled for participating in student riots and returned to Baku. In 1903 he joined the Menshevik organization of the RSDLP there. In 1908, he served a year in the Baku Bayil prison for participation in the revolutionary events of 1905. While in it, he met and became close friends with I.V., who was in the same cell. Dzhugashvili (Stalin).

Vyshinsky was able to graduate from Kyiv University only by the age of thirty, in 1913, then he was left at the department to prepare for a professorship, but was dismissed by the administration as politically unreliable. He left for Baku again, taught Russian literature and Latin there in a private gymnasium, practiced as a lawyer, in particular, represented the interests of Baku oil industrialists.

In 1915, the ambitious Vyshinsky moved to Moscow and was soon able to get a job as an assistant to the famous lawyer P.N. Malyantovich. A quarter of a century later, when Malyantovich was sentenced to death and was awaiting his fate in the death chamber, his wife, distraught with grief, wrote desperate letters to “dearest Andrey Yanuaryevich.” But they remained unanswered.

In Vyshinsky's archival files, there is no whole layer of documents related to his youth. And that's because he had something to hide.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Vyshinsky was appointed police commissar in the Yakimansky district of Moscow. In this post, ex officio, he signed an order for the district on the search and arrest of Lenin and Zinoviev, who were hiding.

After the October Revolution, until 1923, Vyshinsky worked in the Moscow Food Administration and the People's Commissariat for Food.

Only then did the convinced Menshevik join the ranks of the Bolsheviks. He taught at Moscow University, the Institute of National Economy. In 1923-1925. was the prosecutor of the Supreme Court, in 1925-1928. - Rector of Moscow State University. In 1931 he was appointed Prosecutor of the RSFSR. In 1935 - the prosecutor of the USSR. Stalin needed a legal justification for his lawlessness, and he found them in the person of Vyshinsky.

The brightest luminary of Soviet legal thought became the famous prosecutor of the “big trials” of the 1930s, the chief inquisitor and executor of Stalin’s bloodiest orders.

Not a single high-profile trial took place without his participation - both scandalous criminal cases and the completely falsified “Shakhtinsk case” (1928), “the case of the Industrial Party” (1930). Vyshinsky showed himself especially brightly as an official prosecutor at the “big” Stalinist political trials of 1936, 1937, and 1938. He served with merciless fury, bringing his former comrades to the firing line.

An ominous, terrible figure, Vyshinsky was an intelligent, educated, erudite man, incredibly efficient and absolutely immoral.

Vyshinsky's terrible credo - "the confession of the accused is the queen of evidence" - made it possible to justify arbitrariness, any methods of investigation, a simplified form of trial, haughty rudeness towards the defendants. Vyshinsky was not just an executor of the will of the director Stalin, he was his co-author. For almost all the accused, the executioner Vyshinsky demanded the death penalty. And at the same time he was a faithful husband and dearly loved his daughter Zinaida. Behind his back they called him “Andrei Yaguarevich”.

In 1939, having received the title of academician, Vyshinsky became deputy chairman of the government of the USSR, in 1940 - deputy people's commissar for foreign affairs. In 1949, at the height of the Cold War, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR.

On the day of Stalin's death, he was relieved of this post and removed from the Presidium of the Central Committee. After Stalin's death, he became the permanent representative of the USSR to the UN. It was an honorary exile, but Vyshinsky, despite his considerable age, worked very actively at the UN. For his deeds, Vyshinsky was awarded six Orders of Lenin.

Having learned about the beginning of the rehabilitation of convicts under Stalin, Vyshinsky died suddenly of a heart attack on November 22, 1954 in the USA. He was buried in Red Square near the Kremlin wall.

Natalya Brzhestovskaya, journalist

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