Presiding judge of the Moscow show trials, Stalin's 'judicial guillotine'
To an Estonian lawyer he had just condemned to death, Ulrikh smiled and said: "So your profession came in handy after all!"
Chairman of the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court (1926–1948) and the judicial face of the Stalin-era Great Purge. Born in Riga to a Baltic German revolutionary father and a Russian noble mother, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1910 and began his Cheka career in 1918. He presided over the Moscow show trials of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and Tukhachevsky (1936–1938), directing a body that handed down over 30,000 death sentences in two years. After the war he presided over the trials of Nazi collaborators Vlasov and Krasnov, and the leaders of the Polish Underground State. Reporting directly to Stalin outside the ordinary judicial hierarchy, he embodied a parallel justice system designed for political repression. Removed in 1948, he died of a stroke in 1951.
Career Timeline
- 1910Joined RSDLP (Bolsheviks)
- 1914Graduated from Riga Polytechnical Institute, commercial dept.
- 1915–1917Podporuchik, Imperial Russian Army sapper battalion
- 1918–1919Head of Finance, NKVD and Cheka
- 1920Judge, Revolutionary Military Tribunal of the Republic
- 1921–1926Chairman, Military Collegium of RSFSR Supreme Court
- 1926–1948Chairman, Military Collegium of USSR Supreme Court
- 1935–1948Deputy Chairman, USSR Supreme Court
- 1948–1951Director, Higher Military-Juridical Courses, Military Law Academy
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign Interventionmilitary tribunal judge
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationDeputy Chairman of Supreme Court
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeMilitary Collegium chairman & show trial presiding judgeAs Chairman of the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court, he presided over the Moscow show trials of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and Tukhachevsky, and directed a body that handed down over 30,000 death sentences in 1937–1938 alone. Reporting directly to the Politburo, he was the judicial executor of the Great Purge.