The Supreme Court chairman who purged judges and was removed for rehabilitation measures
In January 1954, Volin's Supreme Court plenum issued a ruling that rehabilitated citizens could reclaim their confiscated housing. The Party leadership immediately branded the interpretation erroneous — and it became the decisive reason for his dismissal three years later.
Born the ninth child of a poor fisherman's family in Kuban, he fought in the Civil War, then rose through workers' faculties and the Leningrad State University law school to become a proletarian jurist. As Prosecutor of the RSFSR from 1939, he led the prosecutor's office through the late Great Terror and the war; as Chairman of the USSR Supreme Court from 1948, he personally organized and supervised judicial panels that purged sitting judges through 1952. But in January 1954 his court's plenum issued guidance suggesting rehabilitated citizens might reclaim their confiscated housing, a position the Party leadership soon branded erroneous, and in February 1957 he was dismissed. He served twelve more years as Deputy Chief Arbitrator of the State Arbitration Commission and lived to 104, the longest-lived senior Soviet judicial official.
Activities and affiliations
- 1933–1957 Law and justice · Soviet Union
Career Timeline
- 1920–1921Worker, Temryuk fish factory
- 1921Chief of secret section, Red Army unit HQ; Civil War participant
- 1923–1926Student, workers' faculty, Krasnodar
- 1925Joined RCP (Bolsheviks)
- 1930Graduated, Law Faculty, Leningrad State University
- 1930–1931Postgraduate, Communist Academy, Leningrad
- 1931–1932Lecturer and department head, Leningrad University
- 1932–1933Head of culture and public education sector, Karelian ASSR
- 1933–1935Prosecutor of Petrozavodsk
- 1935–1937Asst. prosecutor, Volodarsky District; prosecutor, Sokolniki District, Leningrad
- 1937–1939Deputy Prosecutor of the RSFSR
- 1939–1948Prosecutor of the RSFSR
- 1948–1957Chairman, Supreme Court of the USSR
- 1957–1969Deputy Chief Arbitrator, State Arbitration under the USSR Council of Ministers
- 1969–2007Union-level personal pensioner; consultant, "Man and Law" magazine
Related historical events
The 1956 Judicial-Administration Initiative: Expanding Court Powers and Dismantling Ministry Supervision.
As the Supreme Court chairman who had organized and supervised the purges of judicial bodies in 1948–1952, Volin entered his last years in office with the legitimacy of those purges now at issue in the Party's own reassessment of the terror-era judiciary.