People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1897–1988 ○ Natural causes

The Supreme Court chairman of rehabilitation who survived Orenburg

When Gorkin became Chairman of the Supreme Court in 1957, petitions poured in from old party members shot in the Stalin years, seeking posthumous rehabilitation. He himself had watched his entire Orenburg bureau perish in the purge.

A peasant-born Bolshevik (joined 1916). After his entire Orenburg party bureau perished in the Great Purge on his watch as first secretary, he became Chairman of the USSR Supreme Court in 1957 and spent fifteen years directing judicial rehabilitation of Stalin's victims.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1907–1981 ○ Natural causes

Chief Soviet prosecutor at Nuremberg, the longest-serving head of the Soviet procuracy

On 8 February 1946 in Nuremberg, Rudenko opened the Soviet prosecution case by condemning the Nazi leadership for instilling in the German people 'the morals of cannibals and the greed of burglars.'

Born to a Ukrainian Cossack family, he joined the Party in 1926 and became Procurator of the Ukrainian SSR in 1944. At the Nuremberg Trials he served as the USSR's chief prosecutor, cross-examining Göring and laying bare the machinery of Nazi war crimes. Appointed Procurator General in 1953, he held the post for 28 years: leading the Beria prosecution, chairing the commission that rehabilitated victims of Stalinist repression under Khrushchev, and later collaborating with Andropov on 'prophylactic' measures against dissidents. He embodied the duality of the Soviet procuracy: an instrument of terror under Stalin and an architect of its post-Stalin legal consolidation.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1911–1986 ○ Natural causes

From Nuremberg assistant prosecutor to chief justice of the USSR, the Supreme Court chairman who presided over political trials

In February 1966, RSFSR Supreme Court Chairman Smirnov personally sentenced writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel to seven and five years of hard labour for anti-Soviet agitation — they had published satirical fiction abroad under pseudonyms.

A Leningrad University law graduate who joined the procuracy in 1934, he served as assistant to chief Soviet prosecutor Roman Rudenko at Nuremberg (presenting the case for Nazi crimes against civilians across occupied Europe) and as deputy prosecutor at the Tokyo tribunal, establishing Japanese aggression at Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol. As chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Court he personally presided over the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial (1966), sentencing two writers to hard labour for publishing satirical works abroad, and in 1972 he became chairman of the USSR Supreme Court, leading the Soviet judiciary through twelve years of the Brezhnev era. He embodied the duality of the Soviet legal establishment: a jurist who prosecuted fascism at international tribunals while enforcing political conformity at home.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1916–2004 ○ Natural causes

Jurist who revived the abolished Justice Ministry and directed the codification of Soviet legislation

The Latin word justitia means justice — which is fairness. He made this principle his lifelong guide.

When the USSR Ministry of Justice was re-established in 1970, fourteen years after its abolition, Terebilov was the man entrusted with its reconstruction. As Minister of Justice from 1970 to 1984, he oversaw the review of over 400,000 normative acts, producing the 50-volume Collected Legislation of the USSR and the 11-volume Code of Laws, and steered the 1979 Law on the Bar, the first statute to define the legal status of the Soviet legal profession. Appointed Chairman of the USSR Supreme Court in 1984, he worked to strengthen judicial independence and advance the rehabilitation of victims of repression, but was compelled to resign in 1989 after corruption allegations surfaced during the Uzbek Cotton Scandal investigation. In retirement he taught the moral foundations of criminal procedure at Moscow State University.

Soviet Union Soviet communism 1920–1996 ○ Natural causes

Soviet Procurator General who served from Brezhnev to Gorbachev and personally delivered Sakharov's exile decree

On 22 January 1980, Rekunkov read Sakharov the decree stripping him of the title Hero of Socialist Labour and exiling him to the closed city of Gorky.

Born into a peasant family on the Don, he fought in the Great Patriotic War and was severely wounded before entering the procuracy. Rising through Rostov's regional prosecutor offices, he became First Deputy Procurator General in 1976 and succeeded Rudenko as Procurator General in 1981. Under Andropov he spearheaded high-profile anti-corruption campaigns (the Uzbek cotton case and trade-ministry prosecutions), while in 1980 he had personally read Sakharov the decree stripping his state awards and exiling him to Gorky. After retirement he worked in the department rehabilitating victims of political repression, embodying the procuracy's dual role as guardian of socialist legality and instrument of state coercion.