USSR Prosecutor General who served at Nuremberg and was removed for refusing to sanction Beria's arrest
On 30 June 1953, Safonov refused to sign the arrest warrant for Beria, saying: "He is a deputy of the Supreme Soviet. Deputies' immunity is written into the Constitution." He was removed that same day.
Born the son of a blacksmith in Rostov, Yaroslavl province, he graduated from Leningrad State University's law faculty in 1925 and worked as legal counsel for Leningrad factories while lecturing in civil law. Spotted by Vyshinsky, he entered the procuracy in 1935 and became Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR at age 35 in 1939, later serving as First Deputy Prosecutor and taking part in the Nuremberg trials. Appointed Prosecutor General in February 1948, he led the Soviet procuracy through the late Stalin years, but on 30 June 1953 he refused to sign the arrest warrant for Lavrentiy Beria, citing Beria's parliamentary immunity as a Supreme Soviet deputy, and was removed the same day. He was demoted to minor posts in the Moscow regional procuracy and served quietly until his retirement in 1968.
Activities and affiliations
- 1935–1953 Law and justice · Soviet Union
Career Timeline
- 1925–1935Legal counsel and head of legal bureau, Leningrad enterprises; civil law lecturer, Institute of Soviet Law
- 1935–1939Prosecutor, Okulovsky district then Kirovsky district, Leningrad
- 1939Head of civil-judicial department, USSR Procuracy
- 1939–1948Deputy Prosecutor, then First Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR (Prosecutor General from 1946)
- 1945–1946Served on the Soviet prosecution team, Nuremberg International Military Tribunal
- 1948–1953Prosecutor General of the USSR
- 1955–1957Deputy prosecutor, Moscow District Transport Procuracy
- 1957–1968Deputy head of criminal-court supervision department, then prosecutor in investigations directorate, RSFSR Procuracy
Related historical events
Postwar war-crimes prosecution and the Nuremberg trials
One axis of Safonov's postwar work was the prosecution of war crimes committed by Nazi Germany and its occupation organs. As First Deputy Prosecutor he took part in the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which sat from November 1945 to October 1946, as a member of the Soviet prosecution team; in that proceeding, in which France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States tried the leadership of defeated Nazi Germany for conspiracy to wage aggressive war and for war crimes, 22 of the most important surviving leaders and six German organizations were indicted.
From 1947 he served as a member of a permanent commission that sent to open trial the most important cases of former German army servicemen and German punitive-organ personnel exposed in atrocities against Soviet citizens in territory of the Soviet Union that the German army had temporarily occupied. This was a follow-up track that handled individual occupation-era cases in Soviet courts separately from the international tribunal.