Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR

Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR (Военная коллегия Верховного суда СССР) was created in 1924 to the Supreme Court of the USSR

Supreme Court of the USSR

The Supreme Court of the USSR was the supreme court of the Soviet Union during its existence. The Supreme Court of the USSR included the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and other elements which were not typical of Supreme Courts found in other countries, then or now.-See also:*...

as a court for the higher military

Comcor

Comcor was a military rank in the Red Army until the end of the 1930s....

and political personnel

Political commissar

The political commissar is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...

of Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

and Fleet. In addition it was an immediate supervisor of military tribunal

Military tribunal

A military tribunal is a kind of military court designed to try members of enemy forces during wartime, operating outside the scope of conventional criminal and civil proceedings. The judges are military officers and fulfill the role of jurors...

s and the supreme authority of military appeal

Appeal

An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....

s.

During 1926–1948 the Chairman of the Collegium was Vasili Ulrikh

Vasili Ulrikh

Vasiliy Vasilievich Ulrikh was a senior judge of the Soviet Union during most of the regime of Joseph Stalin. In this capacity, Ulrikh served as the presiding judge at many of the major show trials of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union.-Early life:Vasili Ulrikh was born in Riga, Latvia, then a...

.

The role of the Military Collegium drastically changed since June 1934, when it was assigned the duty to consider cases that fell under Article 58, "counter-revolutionary activity".

During the Great Purge

Great Purge

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

of 1937–1938 the Military Collegium tried relatively prominent figures, usually based on the lists approved personally by Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, the majority of Article 58 cases having been processed extrajudicially

Extrajudicial punishment

Extrajudicial punishment is punishment by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code if deemed necessary.-Nature:Extrajudicial...

by NKVD Troika

NKVD troika

NKVD troika or Troika, in Soviet Union history, were commissions of three persons who convicted people without trial. These commissions were employed as an instrument of extrajudicial punishment introduced to circumvent the legal system with a means for quick execution or imprisonment...

s. In particular, the Military Collegium conducted the major Soviet show trial

Show trial

The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...