Leader
Nikolai Krylenko
Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko · 1885–1938
Underwood & Underwood. Wikimedia Commons.
Krylenko built the revolutionary courts that were meant to look like law and function like weapons.
Origin and religion
Russian, from a family in Smolensk province that produced several radicals. A lawyer by training, which he used to argue that law should follow class, not the other way around.
Russian family. Atheist. Prosecutor of the show trials' early form.
Responsibilities
- Briefly supreme commander after October
- Chairman of the Revolutionary Tribunal
- People’s commissar for justice
He prosecuted in early showpiece trials, defended the Cheka against socialist critics, and as justice commissar folded the idea of an independent bench into the commissariat. The tribunals and the Cheka overlapped: one sentenced in a room, the other often did not bother with the room.
The record
A line attributed to him — that executing the innocent impresses the masses even more — is quoted by Richard Pipes and other historians from contemporary reportage. This archive files it as a reported remark, not as a decree you can hold. He was arrested in 1938 and shot. The courts he shaped did not save him.
What they said
We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.
Others filed as Russian
- Nikolai Bukharin — Editor of Pravda
- Nikolai Yezhov — People’s commissar of internal affairs, 1936–1938
- Vyacheslav Molotov — Chairman of Sovnarkom, 1930–1941
Evidence marks such as Opened archive are explained in How to read.