The Stalin-era chief investigator who pioneered the Soviet detective story
Kamil Ikramov recalled that even in the Khrushchev years, whenever Sheinin drove past the house where Vyshinsky had lived, he wept real tears.
A State Counsellor of Justice 2nd Class who, as head of the USSR Procuracy's Investigative Department (1935, 1939–1949), directed investigations into the Kirov assassination, the Zinoviev–Kamenev and Bukharin–Rykov–Yagoda trials, and other major political cases of the Stalin era. He served on the Soviet prosecution team at the Nuremberg Trials as assistant to Chief Prosecutor Roman Rudenko. At the same time he built a parallel literary career: his collection Notes of an Investigator (1938) pioneered the Soviet detective genre, and his screenplay for Meeting on the Elbe (1949) won the Stalin Prize. Arrested in 1936 and again in 1951 (the second time in connection with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee case), he survived both imprisonments and spent his later years as deputy editor-in-chief of Oktyabr and editor-in-chief of Mosfilm, dying of a heart attack in 1967.
Career Timeline
- 1923–1927USSR Procuracy, Moscow
- 1927–1931Senior investigator, Leningrad Regional Court
- 1931–1935Investigator for especially important cases, USSR Procuracy
- 1935, 1939–1949Head of Investigative Dept., USSR Procuracy; State Counsellor of Justice 2nd Class
- 1945–1946Assistant to Chief Soviet Prosecutor, Nuremberg Trials
- 1953–1960Editorial board member, deputy editor-in-chief, Oktyabr
- 1960–1964Editor-in-chief, Mosfilm; member, Art Council, USSR Ministry of Culture