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.
Activities and affiliations
- 1924–1938 Law and justice · Soviet Union
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
The Supreme Court’s powers and judicial supervision
The 1924 Constitution and the Fundamentals of the Judiciary of the USSR and the Union Republics, adopted that October, assigned the Supreme Court of the USSR supreme supervision and direction of judicial practice in the republics. Under the Court’s Statute, approved in November 1923, it issued interpretations of Union legislation, considered protests against decisions of Union-republican supreme courts, and could annul rulings by its own divisions and other bodies exercising judicial functions when they contravened Union law. It also tried, at first instance, cases involving senior Union officials, exceptionally important criminal and civil cases, and cases affecting two or more republics, and settled judicial disputes between republics. During Vinokurov’s chairmanship, 1924–1938, the legal basis of the Court’s work continued to develop, particularly in 1924–1936.
A new Statute of July 1929 expressly empowered the Court to issue guidance and interpretations of all-Union laws in response to questions arising in judicial practice, and granted it the right of legislative initiative. Yet direction of judicial practice was not concentrated in one institution. After the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR was established in 1936, it handled court administration and the promotion of uniform practice, while the Supreme Court retained original jurisdiction and judicial supervision. A coordination procedure required the Commissariat’s instructions on judicial practice to be considered by the Court’s Plenary Session and implemented as Court decisions. These formal institutional powers should be distinguished from the political pressures under which the judiciary operated.