Nikolai Krylenko
Encyclopedia
Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko was a Russian Bolshevik
revolutionary
and a Soviet politician
. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Soviet legal system
, rising to become People's Commissar for Justice
and Prosecutor General of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.
Krylenko was an exponent of socialist legality and the theory that political considerations, rather than criminal guilt or innocence, should guide the application of punishment. Although a participant in the Show Trial
s and political repression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Krylenko was ultimately arrested himself during the Great Purge
. Following interrogation and torture by the NKVD
, Krylenko confessed to extensive involvement in wrecking
and anti-Soviet agitation. He was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court, in a trial lasting 20 minutes, and executed immediately afterwards.
, the son of a populist
revolutionary.
He joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1904 while studying history and literature at St. Petersburg University where he was known to fellow students as Comrade Abram. He was a member of the short lived St. Petersburg Soviet
during the Russian Revolution of 1905
and a member of the Bolshevik St. Petersburg Committee. He had to flee Russia in June 1906, but returned later that year. Arrested by the Tsar
's secret police in 1907, he was released for lack of evidence, but soon exiled to Lublin
without trial.
Krylenko returned to St. Petersburg in 1909, finishing his degree. He briefly left the RSDLP in 1911, but soon rejoined it. He was drafted in 1912 and made Second Lieutenant
before being discharged in 1913. After working as an assistant editor of Pravda
and a liaison to the Bolshevik faction in the Duma
for a few months, Krylenko was again arrested in 1913 and exiled to Kharkiv
, where he received a law degree. In early 1914, Krylenko learned that he might be re-arrested and fled to Austria
. At the outbreak of World War I
in August 1914, he had to move to Switzerland
as a Russian national. In the summer of 1915 Vladimir Lenin
sent Krylenko back to Russia to help rebuild the Bolshevik underground organization. In November 1915 Krylenko was arrested in Moscow as a draft dodger
and, after a few months in prison, sent to the South West Front in April 1916.
of 1917 and the introduction of elected committees in the Russian armed forces, Krylenko was elected chairman of his regiment's and then division's committee. On April 15 he was elected chairman of the 11th Army's committee. After Lenin's return to Russia in April 1917, Krylenko adopted the new Bolshevik policy of irreconcilable opposition to the Provisional Government
. He consequently had to resign his post on May 26 1917 for lack of support from non-Bolshevik members of the Army committee.
In June 1917 Krylenko was made a member of the Bolshevik Military Organization and was elected to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets. At the Congress, he was elected to the permanent All-Russian Central Executive Committee
from the Bolshevik faction. Krylenko left Petrograd for the High Command HQ in Mogilev
on July 2, but was arrested there by the Provisional government
after the Bolsheviks staged an abortive uprising on July 4. He was kept in prison in Petrograd, but was released in mid-September after the Kornilov Affair
.
Krylenko took an active part in the preparation of the October Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd as newly elected chairman of the Congress of Northern Region Soviets and a leading member of the Military Revolutionary Committee
. On October 16, ten days before the uprising, he reported to the Bolshevik Central Committee that the Petrograd military would support the Bolsheviks in case of an uprising. During the Bolshevik takeover on October 24 and 25, Krylenko was one of the uprising's leaders along with Leon Trotsky
, Adolph Joffe
, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko
and others.
and Nikolai Podvoisky
) responsible for military affairs. In early November (Old Style
) 1917, immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power, Krylenko helped Trotsky suppress an attempt by Provisional Government loyalists led by Alexander Kerensky
and General Peter Krasnov to retake Petrograd.
After the Provisional Commander in Chief (and Chief of General Staff
), General Nikolai Dukhonin, refused to open peace negotiations with the Germans, Krylenko was appointed Commander in Chief on November 9. He started negotiations with the German army on November 12-13. Krylenko arrived at the High Command HQ in Mogilev on November 20 and arrested General Dukhonin, who was bayoneted and trampled to death by Red Guards
answering to Krylenko. After the formation of the Red Army
on January 15, 1918, Krylenko was also a member of the All-Russian Collegium that oversaw its buildup. He proved to be an excellent public speaker, able to win over hostile mobs with words alone . His organizational talents, however, lagged far behind his oratorical ones.
Krylenko was an active supporter of the policy of democratization of the Russian military, including abolishing subordination, election of officers by enlisted men, and using propaganda to win over enemy units. Although the Red Army had some successes in early 1918 against small and poorly armed anti-Bolshevik
detachments, the policy proved unsuccessful when Soviet forces were roundly defeated by the German Army in late February 1918 after the breakdown of the Brest-Litovsk
negotiations.
In the wake of the defeats, Trotsky pushed for the formation of a military council of former Russian generals that would function as a Red Army advisory body. Lenin and the Bolshevik Central Committee agreed to create a Supreme Military Council, with former chief of the imperial General Staff Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich
at its head, on March 4. At that point the entire Bolshevik leadership of the Red Army, including People's Commissar (defense minister) Nikolai Podvoisky and Krylenko, protested vigorously and eventually resigned. The office of the "Commander in Chief" was formally abolished by the Soviet government on March 13 and Krylenko was reassigned to the Collegium of the Commissariat for Justice
.
of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
. He simultaneously served as a member of the Collegium of Prosecutors of the Revolutionary Tribunal. On June 23, 1918, he famously explained that there had been no discrepancy between the execution of Admiral Shchastny and the prior abolition of the death penalty by the Bolshevik government in October 1917 since the admiral had not been condemned "to death" but "to be shot". He was an enthusiastic exponent of the Red Terror, whatever his differences with the Cheka, exclaiming, "We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more." See Richard Pipes
, The Russian Revolution.
In early 1919, Krylenko was involved in a dispute with the Cheka
(the Soviet secret police) and was instrumental in taking away its right to execute people without a trial . In 1922 Krylenko became Deputy Commissar of Justice and assistant Prosecutor
General of the RSFSR.
Jan Cieplak
, Monsignor
Konstanty Budkiewicz and Blessed
Leonid Feodorov
.
According to Father Christopher Lawrence Zugger,
According to New York Herald
correspondent Francis MacCullagh:
Archbishop Cieplak and Mosignor Budkiewicz were both sentenced to death. The other fifteen defendants were sentenced to long terms in Solovki prison camp. The sentences touched off a massive uproar throughout the Western world.
According to Father Zugger,
and Prosecutor General of the RSFSR, in which capacity he served as the chief prosecutor at the Moscow show trial
s of the 1920s and the early 1930s and was widely seen as the public face of the Soviet justice system. Krylenko stepped down as Prosecutor General in 1932 and was replaced by Andrei Vyshinsky. In 1933, he was awarded the Order of Lenin
. In January 1933, waxed indignant about the leniency of some Soviet officials who objected to the infamous "five ears law":
From 1927 to 1934, Krylenko was a member of the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party.
, checkers and mountain climbing associations. He was one of the pioneers of the Pamirs mountain climbing, leading the Soviet half of a joint Soviet-German expedition in 1928 as well as expeditions to the Eastern Pamirs in 1931 and to the Lenin Peak
in 1934 . Krylenko used his positions to carry out the Stalinist line of total control and politicization of all areas of public life:
Mikhail Yakubovich, a defendant in one of the show trials, described meeting with Krylenko after weeks of torture by the OGPU to discuss his upcoming trial:
Krylenko promoted his views on socialist legality during the work on two drafts of the Soviet Penal Code, one in 1930 and one in 1934. Krylenko's views were opposed by some Soviet theoreticians, including the Soviet Prosecutor General Andrey Vyshinsky
, who argued that Krylenko's imprecise definition of crimes and his refusal to define terms of punishment introduced legal instability and arbitrariness and were, therefore, against the interests of the Soviet state. The debate continued throughout 1935 and was inconclusive.
With the start of the Great Purge
after Sergei Kirov's assassination on December 1, 1934, Krylenko's star began to fade and he was gradually eclipsed by Vyshinsky. Notably, it was Vyshinsky and not Krylenko who prosecuted the first two high profile Moscow show trials of Old Bolsheviks in August 1936 and January 1937. Krylenko's ally, the Marxist theoretician Eugen Pashukanis, was subjected to severe criticism
in late 1936 and arrested in January 1937 (he was shot in September). Soon after Eugen Pashukanis' arrest, Krylenko had to "admit his mistakes" and publicly concede that Vyshinsky and his other critics had been right all along.
In 1936 Krylenko justified the inclusion of a law against male homosexuality
in the 1934 Soviet penal code as a measure directed against subversive activities:
:
The attack had been clearly coordinated (Molotov
endorsed it) and Krylenko was removed from his post on January 19, 1938. After turning the Commissariat over to his replacement, N. M. Rychkov, Krylenko traveled to his dacha
outside Moscow
with his family. On the evening of January 31, 1938, Krylenko received a phone call from Joseph Stalin
in which Stalin reassured him, saying: "Don't get upset. We trust you. Keep doing the work you were assigned to on the new legal code." This phone call calmed Krylenko; however, later that evening his home was surrounded by an NKVD
squad and Krylenko and many members of his family were arrested.
After three days in an NKVD
prison, Krylenko "confessed" that he had been a wrecker
since 1930. On April 3 he made an additional "confession" explaining that he had been an enemy of Lenin's even before the 1917 revolution. At his last questioning on June 28, 1938, he "confessed" that he had recruited thirty Commissariat of Justice employees to his anti-Soviet organization.
Krylenko was tried by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court on July 29, 1938. The trial lasted twenty minutes, just enough for Krylenko to retract his "confessions". He was found guilty and immediately shot.
.
Krylenko's ex-wife and fellow Old Bolshevik Elena Rozmirovich survived the purges by keeping a low profile and working in the Party archives. His sister Elena Krylenko married American writer Max Eastman
and moved to America
, thus escaping the purges.
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
and a Soviet politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Soviet legal system
Soviet law
The Law of the Soviet Union—also known as Socialist Law—was the law developed in the Soviet Union following the October Revolution of 1917...
, rising to become People's Commissar for Justice
Ministry of Justice (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of Justice of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , formed on 15 March 1946, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was formerly known as the People's Commissariat for Justice...
and Prosecutor General of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.
Krylenko was an exponent of socialist legality and the theory that political considerations, rather than criminal guilt or innocence, should guide the application of punishment. Although a participant in the 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...
s and political repression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Krylenko was ultimately arrested himself 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...
. Following interrogation and torture by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
, Krylenko confessed to extensive involvement in wrecking
Wrecking (Soviet crime)
Wrecking , was a crime specified in the criminal code of the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. It is often translated as "sabotage"; however "wrecking" and "diversionist acts" and "counter-revolutionary sabotage" were distinct sub-articles of Article 58 , and the meaning of "wrecking" is closer to...
and anti-Soviet agitation. He was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court, in a trial lasting 20 minutes, and executed immediately afterwards.
Before the Revolution
Krylenko was born in Bekhteevo, in the Sychovka uyezd of Smolensk GovernorateSmolensk Governorate
Smolensk Governorate , or Government of Smolensk, was an administrative division of the Russian Empire, which existed, with interruptions, between 1708 and 1929....
, the son of a populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
revolutionary.
He joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1904 while studying history and literature at St. Petersburg University where he was known to fellow students as Comrade Abram. He was a member of the short lived St. Petersburg Soviet
St. Petersburg Soviet
St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Delegates was a workers' council, or soviet in St. Petersburg in 1905.-Origins:The idea of a Soviet as an organ to coordinate workers' strike activities arose during the January–February 1905 meetings of workers at the apartment of Voline during the abortive...
during the Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
and a member of the Bolshevik St. Petersburg Committee. He had to flee Russia in June 1906, but returned later that year. Arrested by the Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
's secret police in 1907, he was released for lack of evidence, but soon exiled to Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
without trial.
Krylenko returned to St. Petersburg in 1909, finishing his degree. He briefly left the RSDLP in 1911, but soon rejoined it. He was drafted in 1912 and made Second Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
before being discharged in 1913. After working as an assistant editor of Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
and a liaison to the Bolshevik faction in the Duma
Duma
A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...
for a few months, Krylenko was again arrested in 1913 and exiled to Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
, where he received a law degree. In early 1914, Krylenko learned that he might be re-arrested and fled to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. At the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in August 1914, he had to move to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
as a Russian national. In the summer of 1915 Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
sent Krylenko back to Russia to help rebuild the Bolshevik underground organization. In November 1915 Krylenko was arrested in Moscow as a draft dodger
Draft dodger
Draft evasion is a term that refers to an intentional failure to comply with the military conscription policies of the nation to which he or she is subject...
and, after a few months in prison, sent to the South West Front in April 1916.
1917
After the February RevolutionFebruary Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
of 1917 and the introduction of elected committees in the Russian armed forces, Krylenko was elected chairman of his regiment's and then division's committee. On April 15 he was elected chairman of the 11th Army's committee. After Lenin's return to Russia in April 1917, Krylenko adopted the new Bolshevik policy of irreconcilable opposition to the Provisional Government
Provisional government
A provisional government is an emergency or interim government set up when a political void has been created by the collapse of a very large government. The early provisional governments were created to prepare for the return of royal rule...
. He consequently had to resign his post on May 26 1917 for lack of support from non-Bolshevik members of the Army committee.
In June 1917 Krylenko was made a member of the Bolshevik Military Organization and was elected to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets. At the Congress, he was elected to the permanent All-Russian Central Executive Committee
Supreme Soviet
The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was the Supreme Soviet in the Soviet Union and the only one with the power to pass constitutional amendments...
from the Bolshevik faction. Krylenko left Petrograd for the High Command HQ in Mogilev
Mogilev
Mogilev is a city in eastern Belarus, about 76 km from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105 km from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast. It has more than 367,788 inhabitants...
on July 2, but was arrested there by the Provisional government
Provisional government
A provisional government is an emergency or interim government set up when a political void has been created by the collapse of a very large government. The early provisional governments were created to prepare for the return of royal rule...
after the Bolsheviks staged an abortive uprising on July 4. He was kept in prison in Petrograd, but was released in mid-September after the Kornilov Affair
Kornilov Affair
The Kornilov Affair, or the Kornilov Putsch as it is sometimes referred to, was an attempted coup d'état by the then Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General Lavr Kornilov, in August 1917 against the Russian Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky.-Background:Following the...
.
Krylenko took an active part in the preparation of the October Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd as newly elected chairman of the Congress of Northern Region Soviets and a leading member of the Military Revolutionary Committee
Military Revolutionary Committee
The Military Revolutionary Committee also known as the Milrevcom was the name for military organs under the soviets during the period of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War. The most notable ones were those of the Petrograd Soviet, the Moscow Soviet, and at Stavka.These committees were...
. On October 16, ten days before the uprising, he reported to the Bolshevik Central Committee that the Petrograd military would support the Bolsheviks in case of an uprising. During the Bolshevik takeover on October 24 and 25, Krylenko was one of the uprising's leaders along with Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, Adolph Joffe
Adolph Joffe
Adolph Abramovich Joffe was a Communist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and a Soviet diplomat of Karaim descent.-Revolutionary career:...
, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko
Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko
Vladimir Alexandrovich Antonov-Ovseyenko , real surname Ovseyenko, party aliases the 'Bayonet' and 'Nikita' , a literary pseudonym A. Gal , was a prominent Soviet Bolshevik leader and diplomat. He was born in Chernigov into an officer's family.In 1903, Antonov-Ovseyenko joined the Menshevik party...
and others.
Head of the Russian Army
At the Second All Russian Congress of Soviets on October 25, Krylenko was made a People's Commissar (minister) and member of the triumvirate (with Pavel DybenkoPavel Dybenko
Pavel Efimovich Dybenko was a Russian revolutionary and a leading Soviet officer.- Until the military service :...
and Nikolai Podvoisky
Nikolai Podvoisky
Nikolai Ilyich Podvoisky was a Russian revolutionary. He played a large role in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and wrote many articles for the Soviet newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta...
) responsible for military affairs. In early November (Old Style
Old Style and New Style dates
Old Style and New Style are used in English language historical studies either to indicate that the start of the Julian year has been adjusted to start on 1 January even though documents written at the time use a different start of year ; or to indicate that a date conforms to the Julian...
) 1917, immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power, Krylenko helped Trotsky suppress an attempt by Provisional Government loyalists led by Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was a major political leader before and during the Russian Revolutions of 1917.Kerensky served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the October Revolution...
and General Peter Krasnov to retake Petrograd.
After the Provisional Commander in Chief (and Chief of General Staff
General Staff
A military staff, often referred to as General Staff, Army Staff, Navy Staff or Air Staff within the individual services, is a group of officers and enlisted personnel that provides a bi-directional flow of information between a commanding officer and subordinate military units...
), General Nikolai Dukhonin, refused to open peace negotiations with the Germans, Krylenko was appointed Commander in Chief on November 9. He started negotiations with the German army on November 12-13. Krylenko arrived at the High Command HQ in Mogilev on November 20 and arrested General Dukhonin, who was bayoneted and trampled to death by Red Guards
Red Guards (Russia)
In the context of the history of Russia and Soviet Union, Red Guards were paramilitary formations consisting of workers and partially of soldiers and sailors formed in the time frame of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
answering to Krylenko. After the formation of the 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...
on January 15, 1918, Krylenko was also a member of the All-Russian Collegium that oversaw its buildup. He proved to be an excellent public speaker, able to win over hostile mobs with words alone . His organizational talents, however, lagged far behind his oratorical ones.
Krylenko was an active supporter of the policy of democratization of the Russian military, including abolishing subordination, election of officers by enlisted men, and using propaganda to win over enemy units. Although the Red Army had some successes in early 1918 against small and poorly armed anti-Bolshevik
Anti-bolshevism
Anti-bolshevism has two principal forms:* Anti-bolshevik Anti-communism* Anti-Bolshevik Communism...
detachments, the policy proved unsuccessful when Soviet forces were roundly defeated by the German Army in late February 1918 after the breakdown of the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, mediated by South African Andrik Fuller, at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers, headed by Germany, marking Russia's exit from World War I.While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year,...
negotiations.
In the wake of the defeats, Trotsky pushed for the formation of a military council of former Russian generals that would function as a Red Army advisory body. Lenin and the Bolshevik Central Committee agreed to create a Supreme Military Council, with former chief of the imperial General Staff Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich
Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich
Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich was an Imperial Russian and Soviet military commander, Lieutenant General .From 1892-1895, Bonch-Bruyevich served as an officer with the Lithuanian Guards Regiment, posted at Warsaw.-First World War:...
at its head, on March 4. At that point the entire Bolshevik leadership of the Red Army, including People's Commissar (defense minister) Nikolai Podvoisky and Krylenko, protested vigorously and eventually resigned. The office of the "Commander in Chief" was formally abolished by the Soviet government on March 13 and Krylenko was reassigned to the Collegium of the Commissariat for Justice
Ministry of Justice (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of Justice of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , formed on 15 March 1946, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was formerly known as the People's Commissariat for Justice...
.
Legal career (1918-1934)
From May 1918 and until 1922 Krylenko was Chairman of the Revolutionary TribunalRevolutionary tribunal (Russia)
Revolutionary tribunals in Soviet Russia were established soon after the October Revolution by the Soviet "Decree of the Soviet of Peoples' Commissars Concerning the Courts No. 1" of November 22 , 1917...
of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
All-Russian Central Executive Committee
All-Russian Central Executive Committee , was the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Although the All-Russian Congress of Soviets had supreme authority, in periods between its sessions its powers were passed to VTsIK...
. He simultaneously served as a member of the Collegium of Prosecutors of the Revolutionary Tribunal. On June 23, 1918, he famously explained that there had been no discrepancy between the execution of Admiral Shchastny and the prior abolition of the death penalty by the Bolshevik government in October 1917 since the admiral had not been condemned "to death" but "to be shot". He was an enthusiastic exponent of the Red Terror, whatever his differences with the Cheka, exclaiming, "We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more." See Richard Pipes
Richard Pipes
Richard Edgar Pipes is an American academic who specializes in Russian history, particularly with respect to the Soviet Union...
, The Russian Revolution.
In early 1919, Krylenko was involved in a dispute with the Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
(the Soviet secret police) and was instrumental in taking away its right to execute people without a trial . In 1922 Krylenko became Deputy Commissar of Justice and assistant Prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
General of the RSFSR.
The Cieplak Trial
In the spring of 1923, Krylenko acted as public prosecutor in the Moscow show trial of the Soviet Union's Roman Catholic hierarchy. The defendants included ArchbishopArchbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
Jan Cieplak
Jan Cieplak
Servant of God Archbishop Jan Cieplak was a Polish Roman Catholic priest and bishop.-Early life:...
, Monsignor
Monsignor
Monsignor, pl. monsignori, is the form of address for those members of the clergy of the Catholic Church holding certain ecclesiastical honorific titles. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian monsignore, from the French mon seigneur, meaning "my lord"...
Konstanty Budkiewicz and Blessed
Beatification
Beatification is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a dead person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his or her name . Beatification is the third of the four steps in the canonization process...
Leonid Feodorov
Leonid Feodorov
Blessed Leonid Ivanovich Feodorov was Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church, in addition to being a survivor of the GULAG. After painstaking investigation, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 27, 2001.-Early life:...
.
According to Father Christopher Lawrence Zugger,
"The Bolsheviks had already orchestrated several 'show trials.' The Cheka had staged the 'Trial of the St. Petersburg Combat Organization'; its successor, the new GPU, the 'Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries.' In these and other such farces, defendants were inevitably sentenced to death or to long prison terms in the north. The Cieplak show trial is a prime example of Bolshevik revolutionary justice at this time. Normal judicial procedures did not restrict revolutionary tribunals at all; in fact, the prosecutorProsecutorThe prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
N.V. Krylenko, stated that the courts could trample upon the rights of classes other than the proletariatProletariatThe proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
. Appeals from the courts went not to a higher court, but to political committees. Western observers found the setting -- the grand ballroom of a former Noblemen's Club, with painted cherubsCHERUBSCHERUBS is a Non-Profit Organization. It was founded in February, 1995 for families of children born with Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia, a severe and often lethal birth defect. It was founded and currently led by Dawn M...
on the ceiling -- singularly inapropriate for such a solemn event. Neither judges nor prosecutors were required to have a legal background, only a proper 'revolutionary' one. That the prominent 'No Smoking' signs were ignored by the judges themselves did not bode well for legalities."
According to New York Herald
New York Herald
The New York Herald was a large distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between May 6, 1835, and 1924.-History:The first issue of the paper was published by James Gordon Bennett, Sr., on May 6, 1835. By 1845 it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the UnitedStates...
correspondent Francis MacCullagh:
Archbishop Cieplak and Mosignor Budkiewicz were both sentenced to death. The other fifteen defendants were sentenced to long terms in Solovki prison camp. The sentences touched off a massive uproar throughout the Western world.
According to Father Zugger,
"The VaticanHoly SeeThe Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
, Germany, Poland, Great BritainGreat BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, and the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
undertook frantic efforts to save the Archbishop and his chancellor. In Moscow, the ministers from the Polish, British, Czechoslovak, and Italian missions appealed 'on the grounds of humanity,' and Poland offered to exchange any prisoner to save the archbishop and the monsignor. Finally, on March 29, the Archbishop's sentence was commuted to ten years in prison, ... but the Monsignor was not to be spared. Again, there were appeals from foreign powers, from Western Socialists and Church leaders alike. These appeals were for naught: PravdaPravdaPravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
editorialized on March 30 that the tribunal was defending the rights of the workers, who had been oppressed by the bourgeouis system for centuries with the aid of priests. Pro-Communist foreigners who intervened for the two men were also condemned as 'compromisers with the priestly servants of the bourgeoisieBourgeoisieIn sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
.' ...Father Rutkowski recorded later that Budkiewicz surrendered himself over to the will of God without reservation. On Easter Sunday, the world was told that the Monsignor was still alive, and PopePopeThe Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
Pius XI publicly prayed at St. Peter's that the Soviets would spare his life. Moscow officials told foreign ministers and reporters that the Monsignor's sentence was just, and that the Soviet Union was a sovereign nation that would accept no interferance. In reply to an appeal from the rabbiRabbiIn Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
s of New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to spare Budkiewicz's life, Pravda wrote a blistering editorial against 'Jewish bankers who rule the world' and bluntly warned that the Soviets would kill Jewish opponents of the Revolution as well. Only on April 4 did the truth finally emerge: the Monsignor had already been in the grave for three days. When the news came to Rome, Pope Pius fell to his knees and wept as he prayed for the priest's soul. To make matters worse, Cardinal Gasparri had just finished reading a note from the Soviets saying that 'everything was proceeding satisfactorily' when he was handed the telegram announcing the execution. On March 31, 1923, Holy SaturdayHoly SaturdayHoly Saturday , sometimes known as Easter Eve or Black Saturday, is the day after Good Friday. It is the day before Easter and the last day of Holy Week in which Christians prepare for Easter...
, at 11:30 PM, after a week of fervent prayers and a firm declaration that he was ready to be sacrificed for his sins, Monsignor Constantine Budkiewicz had been taken from his cell and, sometime before the dawn of Easter Sunday, shot in the back of the head on the steps of the LubyankaLubyanka (KGB)The Lubyanka is the popular name for the headquarters of the KGB and affiliated prison on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. It is a large building with a facade of yellow brick, designed by Alexander V...
prison.
People's Commissar of Justice
In 1931 he became Commissar of JusticeMinistry of Justice (Soviet Union)
The Ministry of Justice of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , formed on 15 March 1946, was one of the most important government offices in the Soviet Union. It was formerly known as the People's Commissariat for Justice...
and Prosecutor General of the RSFSR, in which capacity he served as the chief prosecutor at the Moscow 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...
s of the 1920s and the early 1930s and was widely seen as the public face of the Soviet justice system. Krylenko stepped down as Prosecutor General in 1932 and was replaced by Andrei Vyshinsky. In 1933, he was awarded the Order of Lenin
Order of Lenin
The Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...
. In January 1933, waxed indignant about the leniency of some Soviet officials who objected to the infamous "five ears law":
From 1927 to 1934, Krylenko was a member of the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party.
Sport positions
In the 1930s Krylenko headed the Soviet chessChess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
, checkers and mountain climbing associations. He was one of the pioneers of the Pamirs mountain climbing, leading the Soviet half of a joint Soviet-German expedition in 1928 as well as expeditions to the Eastern Pamirs in 1931 and to the Lenin Peak
Lenin Peak
Lenin Peak , rises to in Gorno-Badakhshan on the border of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and is the second-highest point of both countries. It is considered one of the easiest 7,000 m peaks in the world to climb and it has by far the most ascents of any 7,000 m or higher peak on earth, with every...
in 1934 . Krylenko used his positions to carry out the Stalinist line of total control and politicization of all areas of public life:
Theorist of the Soviet Justice System
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Krylenko wrote dozens of books and articles in support of the theory that, under the system of "socialist legality", political considerations and not criminal ones should play the decisive role in deciding questions of guilt, innocence and punishment. He theorized that confession was the ultimate proof of the defendant's guilt and that material evidence, precise definitions of crime, and exact sentences (the so-called "dosage" system) were not needed under socialism.Mikhail Yakubovich, a defendant in one of the show trials, described meeting with Krylenko after weeks of torture by the OGPU to discuss his upcoming trial:
Krylenko promoted his views on socialist legality during the work on two drafts of the Soviet Penal Code, one in 1930 and one in 1934. Krylenko's views were opposed by some Soviet theoreticians, including the Soviet Prosecutor General Andrey Vyshinsky
Andrey Vyshinsky
Andrey Januaryevich Vyshinsky – 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...
, who argued that Krylenko's imprecise definition of crimes and his refusal to define terms of punishment introduced legal instability and arbitrariness and were, therefore, against the interests of the Soviet state. The debate continued throughout 1935 and was inconclusive.
With the start of 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...
after Sergei Kirov's assassination on December 1, 1934, Krylenko's star began to fade and he was gradually eclipsed by Vyshinsky. Notably, it was Vyshinsky and not Krylenko who prosecuted the first two high profile Moscow show trials of Old Bolsheviks in August 1936 and January 1937. Krylenko's ally, the Marxist theoretician Eugen Pashukanis, was subjected to severe criticism
Criticism
Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...
in late 1936 and arrested in January 1937 (he was shot in September). Soon after Eugen Pashukanis' arrest, Krylenko had to "admit his mistakes" and publicly concede that Vyshinsky and his other critics had been right all along.
In 1936 Krylenko justified the inclusion of a law against male homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
in the 1934 Soviet penal code as a measure directed against subversive activities:
Fall from power and execution
Krylenko was promoted to Commissar of Justice of the USSR on July 20, 1936 and was not directly affected by the first waves of the Great Purges in 1935 to 1937. However, at the first session of the newly reorganized Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in January 1938 he was attacked by an up and coming Stalinist, M. D. BagirovMir Jafar Baghirov
Mir Jafar Baghirov Abbas oglu was the communist leader of Azerbaijan SSR from 1932 till 1953, under the Soviet leadership of Joseph Stalin.-Early life:Born in Quba of Baku Governorate in 1896, Baghirov studied pedagogy in Petrovsk....
:
The attack had been clearly coordinated (Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
endorsed it) and Krylenko was removed from his post on January 19, 1938. After turning the Commissariat over to his replacement, N. M. Rychkov, Krylenko traveled to his dacha
Dacha
Dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...
outside Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
with his family. On the evening of January 31, 1938, Krylenko received a phone call from 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...
in which Stalin reassured him, saying: "Don't get upset. We trust you. Keep doing the work you were assigned to on the new legal code." This phone call calmed Krylenko; however, later that evening his home was surrounded by an NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
squad and Krylenko and many members of his family were arrested.
After three days in an NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
prison, Krylenko "confessed" that he had been a wrecker
Wrecking (Soviet crime)
Wrecking , was a crime specified in the criminal code of the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. It is often translated as "sabotage"; however "wrecking" and "diversionist acts" and "counter-revolutionary sabotage" were distinct sub-articles of Article 58 , and the meaning of "wrecking" is closer to...
since 1930. On April 3 he made an additional "confession" explaining that he had been an enemy of Lenin's even before the 1917 revolution. At his last questioning on June 28, 1938, he "confessed" that he had recruited thirty Commissariat of Justice employees to his anti-Soviet organization.
Krylenko was tried by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court on July 29, 1938. The trial lasted twenty minutes, just enough for Krylenko to retract his "confessions". He was found guilty and immediately shot.
Legacy
The NKVD officer who had taken Krylenko's testimony, one Kogan, was, in turn, shot in 1939 for "anti-Soviet activity". Krylenko's conviction was one of the first annulled by the Soviet State in 1955, during the Khrushchev thawKhrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...
.
Krylenko's ex-wife and fellow Old Bolshevik Elena Rozmirovich survived the purges by keeping a low profile and working in the Party archives. His sister Elena Krylenko married American writer Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
and moved to America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, thus escaping the purges.
Works (in English)
- N. V. Krylenko. A blow at Intervention. Final indictment in the case of the counter-revolutionary Organisation of the Union of Engineers’ Organisations (the Industrial Party) whereby Ramzin, Kalinnikof, Larichef, Charnowsky, Fedotof, Kupriyánof, Ochkin and Sitnin, the accused, are charged in accordance with article 58, paragraphs 3, 4, and 6 of the Criminal code of the RSFSR. Pref. by Karl Radek. Moscow, State Publishers, 1931.
- N. V. Krylenko. Red and white terror, London, Communist Party of Great Britain, 1928.
- N. V. Krylenko. Revolutionary law. Moscow, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1933.