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“Vyshinsky”. Soviet lawyer,
diplomat, academician A. Ya. Vyshinsky (1883-1954).
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In
office
4 March 1949 – 5 March 1953 |
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Premier
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Joseph Stalin
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Preceded by
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Vyacheslav Molotov
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Succeeded by
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In
office
3 March 1935 – 31 May 1939 |
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Premier
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Preceded by
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Succeeded by
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In office
11 May 1931 – 25 May 1934 |
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Premier
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Preceded by
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Succeeded by
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In
office
16 October 1952 – 6 March 1953 |
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Personal
details
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Born
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Andrey Yanuarevich Vyshinsky
10 December 1883 Odessa, Russian Empire |
Died
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22 November 1954 (aged 70)
New York City, New York, United States |
Nationality
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Political party
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Profession
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Andrey Yanuarevich Vyshinsky (Russian: Андре́й Януа́рьевич
Выши́нский, Andrej Yanuar'evič Vyšinskij; Polish: Andrzej Wyszyński) (10 December [O.S. 28 November] 1883 – 22
November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat.
He
is known as a state prosecutor of Joseph
Stalin's Moscow trials and in the Nuremberg
trials. He was the Soviet Foreign Minister from 1949 to 1953, after having
served as Deputy Foreign Minister under Vyacheslav Molotov since 1940. He also
headed the Institute of State and Law in the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Biography
Early
life
Vyshinsky
was born in Odessa into a Polish Catholic family, who later moved to Baku. His
father, Yanuarii Vyshinsky (January Wyszyński), was a pharmaceutical chemist. A
talented student, he married Kapa Mikhailova, and became interested in
revolutionary ideas. He began attending the Kiev University but was expelled
for participating in revolutionary activities.
Vyshinsky
returned to Baku, became a Menshevik in 1903 and took an active part in the
1905 Russian Revolution. As a result, in 1908 he was sentenced to prison and a
few days later was sent to Bailov prison to serve his sentence. Here he first
met Stalin: a fellow inmate with whom he engaged in ideological disputes. After
his release, he returned home to Baku for the birth of his daughter Zinaida in
1909. Soon thereafter, he returned to Kiev University and did quite well. He
was even considered for a professorship, but his political past caught up with
him, and he was forced to return to Baku. Determined to practice law, he tried
Moscow, where he became a successful lawyer, remained an active Menshevik, gave
many passionate and incendiary speeches, and became involved in city
government.
Russian
Civil War
In
1917, as a minor official, he undersigned an order to arrest Vladimir Lenin,
according to the decision of the Russian Provisional Government, but the
October Revolution quickly intervened, and the offices which had ordered the
arrest were dissolved. In 1917, he became reacquainted with Stalin, who had
become an important Bolshevik leader. Consequently, he joined the staff of the
People's Commissariat of Food, which was responsible for Moscow's food
supplies, and with the help of Stalin, Alexei Rykov, and Lev Kamenev, he began
to rise in influence and prestige. In 1920, after the defeat of the Whites
under Denikin, and the end of the Russian Civil War, he joined the Bolsheviks.
Bolsheviks
in Power
Becoming
a member of the nomenklatura he became a prosecutor in the new Soviet legal
system, began a rivalry with a fellow lawyer, Nikolai Krylenko, and in 1925 was
elected rector of Moscow University, which he began to clear of
"unsuitable" students and professors.
In
1928, he presided over the "Shakhty Trial" against 53 alleged
counter-revolutionary "wreckers." Krylenko acted as prosecutor, and
the outcome was never in doubt. As historian Arkady Vaksberg explains,
"all the court's attention was concentrated not on analysing the evidence,
which simply did not exist, but on securing from the accused confirmation of
their confessions of guilt that were contained in the records of the
preliminary investigation."
In
1930, he acted a co-prosecutor with Krylenko at another show trial, which was
accompanied by a storm of propaganda. In this case, all eight defendants
confessed their guilt. As a result, he was promoted.
He
carried out administrative preparations for a "systematic" drive
"against harvest-wreckers and grain-thieves."
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Political leaders of the Romanina left in a
visit to the Soviet legation in Bucharest at the time of the return of Nothern
Transylvania to Romania, (March 11th 1945). Among others, left to right:
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (second), Petru Groza (fifth), Gh. Tătărescu (fourth)
and Andrey Vyshinsky (eighth, in glasses).
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Prosecutor
General
In
1935 he became Prosecutor
General of the USSR, the legal mastermind of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. Although he acted as a judge,
he encouraged investigators to procure confessions from the accused. In some
cases, he prepared the indictments before the "investigation" was
concluded. He is widely cited for the principle that "confession of the
accused is the queen of evidence" despite his monograph Theory of
Judicial Proofs in Soviet Justice (which was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1947) stating directly the
opposite, nor did he coin the phrase, which originated in Ancient Rome. Stalin personally gave
direction on the use of confessions and the use of the death penalty.
Furthermore, he edited some of Vyshinsky's speeches.
He
first became a nationally known public figure as a result of the Semenchuk case
of 1936. Konstantin Semenchuk was the head of the Glavsevmorput station on Wrangel Island. He was accused of oppressing
and starving the local Yupik and of
ordering his subordinate, the sled driver Stepan Startsev, to murder Dr.
Nikolai Vulfson, who had attempted to stand up to Semenchuk, on 27 December
1934 (though there were also rumors that Startsev had fallen in love with
Vulfson's wife, Dr. Gita Feldman, and killed him out of jealousy). The case
came to trial before the Supreme Court of the RSFSR in May 1936; both
defendants, attacked by Vyshinsky as "human waste," were found guilty
and shot, and "the most publicized result of the trial was the joy of the
liberated Eskimos."
In
1936, Vyshinsky achieved international infamy as the prosecutor at the
Zinoviev-Kamenev trial (this trial had 9 other defendants), the first of the
Moscow Trials during the Great Purge,
lashing its defenseless victims with vituperative rhetoric:
Shoot these rabid dogs. Death to this gang who hide their ferocious teeth, their eagle claws, from the people! Down with that vulture Trotsky, from whose mouth a bloody venom drips, putrefying the great ideals of Marxism!... Down with these abject animals! Let's put an end once and for all to these miserable hybrids of foxes and pigs, these stinking corpses! Let's exterminate the mad dogs of capitalism, who want to tear to pieces the flower of our new Soviet nation! Let's push the bestial hatred they bear our leaders back down their own throats!
He
often punctuated speeches with phrases like "Dogs of the Fascist
bourgeoisie," "mad dogs of Trotskyism," "dregs of
society," "decayed people," "terrorist thugs and
degenerates," and "accursed vermin." This dehumanization aided
in what historian Arkady Vaksberg calls "a hiterto unknown type of trial
where there was not the slightest need for evidence: what evidence did you need
when you were dealing with 'stinking carrion' and 'mad dogs'?"
During
the trials, Vyshinsky misappropriated the house and money of Leonid Serebryakov
(one of the defendants of the infamous Moscow Trials) who was later executed.
Wartime
Diplomat
The
Great
Purge inflicted tremendous losses on the People's Commissariat of Foreign
Affairs. Maxim Litvinov was one of the few influential
diplomats who survived and he was dismissed. Vyshinsky had a low opinion of
diplomats because they often complained about the impact of trials on opinions
in the West.
In
1939, Vyshinsky entered another phase of his career when he introduced a motion
to bring the Western Ukraine into the USSR to the Supreme Soviet. Afterwards,
as Deputy Chairman of the People's Commissariat, which oversaw culture and
education, as this area and others were incorporated more fully into the USSR,
he directed efforts to convert the written alphabets of conquered peoples to
the Cyrillic alphabet.
In
June 1940 Vyshinsky was sent to the Republic of Latvia, to supervise the
establishment of a pro-Soviet government and incorporation of that country into the USSR.
He was generally well received, and he set out to purge the Latvian Communist
Party of Trotskyists, Bukharinites, and possible foreign agents. In July 1940,
a Latvian Soviet Republic was proclaimed. It was, unsurprisingly, granted
admission to the USSR. As a result of this success, he was named Deputy
People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, and taken into greater confidence by
Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, and Vyacheslav Molotov.
After
the German invasion of the Soviet Union Vyshinsky was transferred to the shadow
capital at Kuibyshev. He remained here for much of the war, but he continued to
act as a loyal functionary, and attempted to ingratiate himself to Archibald Clark Kerr and visiting Republican
presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. During the Tehran Conference in
1943, he remained in the Soviet Union to "keep shop" while most of
the leadership was abroad. Stalin appointed him to the Allied Control Council
on Italian affairs where he began organizing the repatriation of Soviet POWs
(including those who did not want to return to the Soviet Union). He also began
to liaise with the Italian Communist Party in Naples.
In
February, 1945, he accompanied Stalin, Molotov, and Beria to the Yalta
Conference. After returning to Moscow he was dispatched to Romania, where he
arranged for a Communist regime to assume control in 1945. He then once again
accompanied the Soviet leadership to the Potsdam Conference.
British
diplomat Sir Frank Roberts, who served as British Chargé d'Affaires in Moscow
from February 1945 to October 1947, described him as follows:
He spoke good French, was quick, clever and efficient, and always knew his dossier well, but whereas I had a certain unwilling respect for Molotov, I had none at all for Vyshinsky. All Soviet officials at that time had no choice but to carry out Stalin's policies without asking too many questions, but Vyshinsky above all gave me the impression of a cringing toadie only too anxious to obey His Master's Voice even before it had expressed his wishes. ... I always had the feeling with Vyshinsky that his past as a Menshevik together with his Polish and bourgeois background made him particularly servile and obsequious in his dealings with Stalin and to a lesser extent with Molotov.
Post-Second
World War
He
was responsible for the Soviet preparations for the trial of the major German
war criminals by the International Military Tribunal.
In
1953 he was among the chief figures accused by the U.S. Congress Kersten
Committee, during its investigation of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic
states.
The
positions he held included those of vice-premier (1939–1944), Deputy Minister
of Foreign Affairs (1940–1949), Minister for Foreign Affairs (1949–1953),
Academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences from 1939, and permanent
representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations.
He
died in 1954 while in New York and was buried near Red Square.
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The unconditional
surrender of the German Wehrmacht is signed on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst,
Berlin. Representing the Red Army High Command, Marshall of the Soviet Union G.
K. Zhukov, to his left the Soviet deputy foreign minister A. J. Vyshinsky and
to his right General of the Army V. D. Sokolovsky are signing.
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Scholarship
Vyshinsky
was the director of the Soviet Academy of Sciences' Institute of State and Law.
Until the period of destalinization, the Institute of State and Law was
named in his honor.
During
his tenure as director of the ISL, Vyshinsky oversaw the publication of several
important monographs on the general theory of state and law.
Family
Vyshinsky
married Kara Mikhailova and had a daughter named Zinaida Andreyevna Vyshinskaya
(born 1909).
Cultural
references
Pet
Shop Boys' song "This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave" from
album "Behaviour" (1990) contains the sample of recording of
Vyshinsky's speech from the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial (1936).
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