VYSHINSKY, ANDREI YANUARIEVICH

(1883–1955), prosecutor, scholar, diplomat; best known for conduct of show trials during the Great Terror.

Andrei Yanuarevich Vyshinsky distinguished himself as a prosecutor (prosecutor-general of Russia, 1931–1933; deputy prosecutor general of the USSR, 1933–1935; prosecutor general of the USSR, 1935–1939); as a scholar (author of authoritative legal texts, including The Theory of Evidence in Soviet Law, published in three editions); and as a diplomat (deputy foreign minister, 1940-1949, 1953–1955; foreign minister and Soviet representative to the United Nations, 1949–1953). In all of these roles he displayed unfailing loyalty to his master and sometime confidant, Josef V. Stalin.

Erudite and a brilliant orator, as skilled in sarcasm as in logic, the dapper Vyshinsky was trained as a jurist. He belonged to the Menshevik party before becoming a Bolshevik in 1920. While working in educational administration during the 1920s, Vyshinsky proved his political mettle in performances as judge in early show trials (such as Shakhty). Later, as prosecutor-general, Vyshinsky continued to develop the political show trial, serving as prosecutor at the major show trials of 1936 through 1938, at which leading politicians from the past (e.g., Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Grigory Pyatakov, Nikolai Bukharin, and Alexei Rykov) were humiliated and forced to confess to extraordinary acts of betrayal. Archival sources reveal that Vyshinsky worked closely with Stalin in manufacturing the charges and writing the scripts. Vyshinsky was also a member of the Special Board of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) that during the years 1936 through 1938 processed most of the contrived cases of alleged saboteurs and counterrevolutionaries.

As Stalin's prosecutor, Vyshinsky also helped to restore the authority of law in the post-collectivization era, eliminate the influence of antilaw Marxists such as Yevgeny Pashukanis, and develop a jurisprudence that supported the use of terror against political enemies. Long after leaving the administration of justice, Vyshinsky remained the top authority in legal theory, and he is remembered for reviving the pre-1845 doctrine of "confession as the queen of evidence" in political cases. During Khrushchev's de-Stalinization, Vyshinsky's theory of law was condemned, and his position as a legal authority undermined.

See also: purges, the great; show trials

bibliography

Sharlet, Robert, and Beirne, Piers. (1990). "In Search of Vyshinsky: The Paradox of Law and Terror." In Revolution in Law: Contributions to the Development of Soviet Legal Theory, 1917–1938, ed. Piers Beirne. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Vaksberg, Arkady. (1991). Stalin's Prosecutor: The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

Peter H. Solomon Jr.