The Bolshevik physician who built the USSR Supreme Court and led it for fourteen years
On 30 August 1918, when Lenin was carried into the Kremlin bleeding from an assassin's bullets, it was Vinokurov — a trained physician — who gave him first aid. Nobody imagined that six years later the doctor would sit at the apex of Soviet justice.
A Bolshevik jurist trained as a physician, Vinokurov served as the first Chairman of the USSR Supreme Court (1924–1938) and built the institutional foundations of the Soviet judiciary. A revolutionary of the first generation, he co-founded the Moscow Social Democratic organisation in 1893, joined the Bolsheviks in 1903, and chaired the first Bolshevik Petrograd City Duma in October 1917. He treated Lenin's wounds after the 1918 assassination attempt and, as People's Commissar of Social Security (1918–1921), laid the groundwork for Soviet welfare administration. Throughout his Supreme Court tenure he rivalled Vyshinsky and Krylenko for control of the justice apparatus, holding a comparatively legalistic line while remaining institutionally implicated in the Great Terror. Dismissed in 1938 and relegated to a health-education post, he died of natural causes in 1944.
Career Timeline
- 1893–1902Co-founded Moscow and Yekaterinoslav Social Democratic organisations; arrested, solitary confinement, exile
- 1903–1917Bolshevik party work in Yekaterinoslav and St. Petersburg; editor of 'Insurance Questions' journal
- 1917.10Chairman of the first Bolshevik Petrograd City Duma; collegium member, People's Commissariat of Labour
- 1918–1921People's Commissar of Social Security of the RSFSR
- 1921–1924Member of the Famine Relief Commission and Commission to Combat the Effects of Famine
- 1924–1938Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR
- 1938–1944Head of Health Education, People's Commissariat of Health; later at Medgiz