The last reform-era Procurator General of the USSR, who oversaw the legal rehabilitation of Stalin's victims during perestroika
"Prosecutors must be closer to the life of the people," Sukharev declared after becoming Procurator General in 1988, as his office processed the rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of victims of political repression.
Born into a peasant family in Voronezh, he worked as a lathe operator at an aircraft factory as a teenager before going to the front at 18. As a signals officer he advanced from Moscow to the Vistula, earning four combat orders, and was severely wounded crossing the Narew River in Poland in 1944. After demobilisation he rose through the Komsomol and the CPSU Central Committee apparatus specialising in procuracy and justice, becoming first deputy minister of the re-established USSR Ministry of Justice in 1970. Appointed Procurator General by Gorbachev in 1988, he pushed forward the mass legal rehabilitation of victims of Stalinist repression. After retiring in 1990 he directed the research institute under the Russian procuracy, devoting his remaining decades to strengthening legality and criminal justice reform.
Career Timeline
- 1941–1944Signals Platoon Commander, Company Commander, Regimental Signals Chief, 69th Rifle Division; Captain
- 1947–1950Secretary, Komsomol Railway District Committee; Department Head, Voronezh Oblast Komsomol Committee
- 1950–1959Instructor, Deputy Head, then Head of International Department, Komsomol Central Committee
- 1959–1966Instructor, then Deputy Head for RSFSR, Administrative Organs Department, CPSU Central Committee
- 1966–1970Head of Procuracy, Court and Justice Sector, Administrative Organs Department, CPSU Central Committee
- 1970–1984First Deputy Minister of Justice of the USSR
- 1984–1988Minister of Justice of the RSFSR
- 1988.2–1988.5First Deputy Procurator General of the USSR
- 1988–1990Procurator General of the USSR
- 1991–2006Deputy Director, Director, then Chief Researcher, Institute for Problems of Strengthening Legality and Legal Order, Russian Federation Procuracy