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Andrey Vyshinsky

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky
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(born Dec. 10, 1883, Odessa, Russia — died Nov. 22, 1954, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Soviet politician and diplomat. A public prosecutor, he taught at Moscow State University. Appointed chief prosecutor of the Soviet Union (1935), he gained worldwide notoriety for his zeal in prosecuting the purge trials. As deputy commissar of foreign affairs, he supervised the annexation of Latvia (1940) and established a communist regime in Romania (1945). He later served as Soviet foreign minister (1949 – 53) and representative to the UN (1949 – 54), where he frequently launched bitter attacks on the U.S.

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Columbia Encyclopedia: Andrei Yanuarievich Vishinsky
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Vishinsky or Vyshinsky, Andrei Yanuarievich (both: əndrā' yənūär'yĭvĭch vĭshēn'skē), 1883-1954, Soviet diplomat and jurist. He studied law at the Univ. of Kiev, early entered the Social Democratic party, and fought in the Bolshevik ranks during the civil war (1918-20). Professor of law and later rector at Moscow State Univ., he became deputy state prosecutor (1933) and chief prosecutor (1935) of the USSR. Vishinsky served as Stalin's legal aide in the Communist party purges, and he was chief prosecutor at the Moscow treason trials (1936-38). In 1938 he was appointed vice premier. With the outbreak of World War II, Vishinsky became deputy commissar for foreign affairs (1940-49) and represented the Soviet Union on Allied commissions for the Mediterranean and Italy. He later (1944-45) represented Soviet interests in the Balkans, forcing King Michael of Romania to appoint a pro-Communist as premier by threatening military reprisals. As a major Soviet figure in the United Nations, he acquired a reputation for biting wit as well as for the violence of his attacks on the United States. He was foreign minister of the USSR from 1949 until 1953, when he was succeeded by Molotov and became permanent Soviet delegate to the United Nations. He died in New York City.
Wikipedia: Andrey Vyshinsky
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Andrey Januaryevich Vyshinskiy (Russian: Андре́й Януа́рьевич Выши́нский, Andrej Januar'evič Vyšinskij; Chinese: 维辛斯基 Wéi xīn sī jī) December 10 [O.S. November 28] 1883 – November 22, 1954) was a Russian and Soviet jurist and diplomat. He is mostly known as a state prosecutor of Stalin's show trials. He served as the Soviet Foreign Minister from 1949 to 1953.

Contents

Biography

Vyshinsky was born into a Polish Catholic family in Odessa, who later moved to Baku. He became a Menshevik in 1903 and in 1917 he undersigned an order to arrest Lenin according the decision of the Russian Provisional Government.[1]. In 1920, he joined the Bolsheviks.

Vyshinsky was one of the architects of the Holodomor. He carried out administrative preparations for a "systematic "drive" against harvest-wreckers and grain-thieves."[2]

In 1935 he became Prosecutor General of the USSR, the legal mastermind of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. He is widely cited for the principle that "confession of the accused is the queen of evidence". His monograph that justifies this postulate, Theory of Judicial Proofs in Soviet Justice, was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1947. He was the prosecutor at the Moscow Trials of the Great Purge, lashing its defenseless victims with vituperative, sometimes cruelly witty rhetoric:[3]

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!

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 [4]

In June, 1940, Vyshinskiy was sent to the Republic of Latvia[5] to supervise establishment of puppet government and incorporation of country into USSR, and later arranged for a communist regime to assume control of Romania in 1945.[6] Later he was among the main accused during the investigation of the occupation of the Baltic states by U.S. Congress Kersten Committee in 1953[7]

He was responsible for the Soviet preparations for the trial of the major war criminals by the International Military Tribunal.

The positions he held include those of vice-premier (1939–1944), deputy Commissar for Foreign Affairs (deputy foreign minister effective 1946) (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 while in New York and was buried near the Red Square.

Scholarship

Vyshinsky was the director of the Soviet Academy of Science's Institute of State and Law. In fact, 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.

References

  1. ^ С весны 1917 работал в наркомтруде и прокуратуре, летом 1917 подписал ордер на арест В.Ленина,... (Starting in the spring of 1917 [he] worked in the Narkomtrud and the Prokuratura, in the summer of 1917 signed the order to arrest V. Lenin,...)
  2. ^ Soviet Crop Failure: New Campaign against "Wreckers", The Times August 10, 1933
  3. ^ Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stéphane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-674-07608-7, page 750
  4. ^ Raider Vyshinsky by Novaya Gazeta
  5. ^ "Analytical list of documents, V. Friction in the Baltic States and Balkans, June 4-September 21, 1940" (html). Telegram of German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg) to the German Foreign Office. http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/nsr/nsr-05.html#14. Retrieved 2007-03-03. 
  6. ^ "Vyshinsky, Andrey". Encyclopædia Britannica (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia ed.). 2007. http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9075802/Andrey-Yanuaryevich-Vyshinsky's. Retrieved 2007-03-03. 
  7. ^ The Iron Heel, TIME Magazine, December 14, 1953

External links


Preceded by
Vyacheslav Molotov		 Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union
1949–1953		 Succeeded by
Vyacheslav Molotov


v • d • e
Foreign ministers of Russia and the Soviet Union
Tsardom of Russia
Russian Empire
Provisional Government
Soviet Russia and
the Soviet Union
Russian Federation

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
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