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Vie et mort en Union Soviétique

Krylenko was promoted to Commissar of Justice of the USSR on July 20, 1936 and wasn’t directly affected by the first waves of the Great Purges in 1935 to 1937. However, at the first session of the newly reorganized Supreme Soviet in January 1938 he was attacked by an up and coming Stalinist M. D. Bagirov:

Comrade Krylenko concerns himself only incidentally with the affairs of his commissariat. But to direct the Commissariat of Justice, great initiative and a serious attitude toward oneself is required. Whereas Comrade Krylenko used to spend a great deal of time on mountain-climbing and traveling, now he devotes a great deal of time to playing chess. [...]
We need to know what we are dealing with in the case of Comrade Krylenko — the commissar of justice? or a mountain climber? I don’t know which Comrade Krylenko thinks of himself as, but he is without doubt a poor people’s commissar. I am sure that [Soviet prime minister] Comrade Molotov will take that into account in presenting the slate of nominees for the new Council of People’s Commissars of the Supreme Soviet.

The attack had been clearly coordinated and Krylenko was removed from his post on January 19, 1938. After turning the Commissariat over to his replacement, N. M. Rychkov, Krylenko was arrested late at night on January 31, 1938. After 3 days in an NKVD prison, he “confessed” that he had been a wrecker since 1930. On April 3 he made an additional “confession” explaining that he had been an enemy of Lenin’s even before the 1917 revolution. At his last questioning on June 28, 1938, he “confessed” that he had recruited 30 Commissariat of Justice employees to his anti-Soviet organization.

Krylenko was tried by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court on July 29, 1938. The trial lasted 20 minutes, just enough for Krylenko to retract his “confessions”. He was found guilty and immediately shot. The NKVD officer who had taken Krylenko’s testimony, one Kogan, was, in turn, shot in 1939 for “anti-Soviet activity”. Krylenko’s sentence was annulled by the Soviet government during the first wave of destalinization in 1955.

Source: Wikipedia

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