Soviet judge at the Nuremberg IMT, death-sentence arbiter of the Great Purge
Before the Nuremberg trials convened, Nikitchenko said: "If… the judge is supposed to be impartial, it would only lead to unnecessary delays."
Deputy Chairman of the USSR Supreme Court (1938–1949) and Soviet judge at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (1945–1946), he was a key executor of Stalin-era judicial repression. Joining the Bolsheviks in 1916, he began his career in military tribunals during the Civil War and rose to deputy chairman of the Military Collegium under Vasily Ulrikh, presiding over the Moscow show trials that sentenced Zinoviev and Kamenev to death in 1936. He was one of three principal drafters of the London Charter establishing the IMT's legal framework, and at Nuremberg filed the sole dissenting opinion against the acquittals of Schacht, von Papen, and Fritzsche. Reprimanded by the Party Control Commission in 1940 for 'conveyor-belt' procedural violations in Far Eastern trials, he retired in 1951 and died in 1967.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1916Joined RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
- 1917–1918Acting commander, Red Guard detachment, Novocherkassk
- 1918–1920Political worker, 4th Army and Turkestan Front political directorates
- 1920–1924Deputy chairman and chairman, military tribunals of Semirechye Army Group and Turkestan Front
- 1924–1926Member, Military Court Collegiate, Moscow Military District
- 1926–1935Chairman, Military Tribunal, Moscow Military District
- 1935–1938Deputy Chairman, Military Collegium, USSR Supreme Court
- 1938–1949Deputy Chairman, USSR Supreme Court
- 1943Promoted to Major General of Justice
- 1945Soviet delegate to London Conference — drafter of IMT Charter
- 1945–1946Soviet judge, Nuremberg International Military Tribunal
- 1949–1951Head, Dept. of Linear Water Transport Courts, USSR Ministry of Justice
Related historical events
The Turkestan Military Tribunals, 1920–1924
Nikitchenko's legal career began not in a law faculty but on the battlefields of the Civil War. A Bolshevik from 1916, he headed the information and communications sub-department of the political directorate of the 4th Army and the Southern Group of Forces from December 1918 to February 1920, then worked in the political directorate of the Turkestan Front. In Semirechye he served as secretary to Dmitry Furmanov, the Revolutionary Military Council's plenipotentiary for the Turkestan Front.
When the garrison of Verny (today's Almaty) rose in revolt between 12 and 19 June 1920, he took part in suppressing it. The mutiny began among part of the 26th Regiment, provoked by orders to march to Fergana against the basmachi and by the grain monopoly; Furmanov negotiated to stall for time until loyal units arrived, ending the revolt on 19 June. At the trial held afterwards in Verny, the revolt's leaders were shot and many defendants received various sentences. The surviving sources do not establish what role Nikitchenko himself played in that trial.
His judicial career proper begins in May 1920, when he was appointed deputy chairman of the military tribunal of the Semirechye Army Group. That July he headed a department of the Turkestan Front military tribunal at Dzharkent; in September he chaired the Semirechye group's tribunal while serving as deputy chairman of the Fergana group's tribunal. In March 1922 he joined the collegiate of the Turkestan Front military tribunal, becoming its chairman in March 1923.
These tribunals operated amid civil war, the campaign against the basmachi, and peasant revolts against requisitioning. Scholarly assessment treats them less as ordinary courts than as instruments of military control. It was in this setting that Nikitchenko learned, on the job, to review case files, draft verdicts, and run simplified procedures; he only completed a university course in 1928. That practical experience was the technical foundation for his career after his transfer to Moscow in 1924: chairman of the Moscow Military District tribunal (1926–1935) and deputy chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court (1935–1938).