Vasili Vasilievich Ulrikh
Vasili Vasilievich Ulrikh was a significant figure in the Soviet judicial system during the tumultuous years of the early 20th century, particularly during the Stalin era. Born to a Baltic German father and a Russian mother, he faced early hardships due to his family's political involvement, resulting in a five-year exile. After earning a technical degree, he served as an officer in World War I before aligning himself with the Bolshevik regime following the revolution, leveraging his father's socialist past to gain influence.
Ulrikh became a military judge and was known for presiding over numerous trials, including the infamous Moscow Trials during the Great Terror. Although he lacked formal legal training, he was notorious for issuing death sentences and participating in politically motivated executions, often in a brutal and summary fashion. His fascination with executions and his reputation as a "hanging judge" made him a trusted instrument of Stalin’s repressive policies.
Despite his previous prominence, Ulrikh’s career ended in disgrace when he fell out of favor with Stalin, leading to his resignation and a later life marked by alcoholism. He died in 1951, leaving behind a legacy as a key enforcer of a system characterized by cruelty and political repression. His story serves as a chilling reminder of the complexities of justice and power within totalitarian regimes.
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Vasili Vasilievich Ulrikh
Soviet military judge
- Born: July 13, 1889
- Birthplace: Riga, Latvia, Russian Empire (now in Latvia)
- Died: May 7, 1951
- Place of death: Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia)
Cause of notoriety: As chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, Ulrikh served as presiding judge over all the major show trials of the Great Terror.
Active: 1926-1948
Locale: Former Soviet Union, mostly Russia and Ukraine
Early Life
Vasili Vasilievich Ulrikh (va-SEE-lee va-SEE-lyeh-vihch EWL-rihk) was the son of a Baltic German father and a Russian mother from the service nobility. Both his parents were involved in socialist organizations, and as a result the family was sentenced to a five-year term of exile to the region of Irkutsk in 1905. In 1910, Ulrikh returned to Riga to take a technical degree at the Riga Polytechnical Institute.
No sooner had Ulrikh received his degree than Russia entered World War I. Because he possessed a college education, Ulrikh was selected as an officer by the czarist army and was sent to the front. He appears to have served honorably but without distinction. He was married and divorced twice, although his second marriage appears to have been a common-law liaison of the sort often practiced by the early Bolsheviks, who rejected all forms of sacramental marriage. He had a son with one of his wives but paid little attention to him.
Political Career
After the Bolshevik Revolution, Ulrikh used his father’s record as a Socialist sympathizer to gain the trust of Leon Trotsky, at the time the war commissar, and become not only a member of the Communist Party but also a military judge. Almost at once he began his long career of issuing death sentences followed by immediate executions. Although he had no legal training whatsoever, it did not matter, for what passed as legality during the Russian civil war was identifying individuals and groups as “class enemies,” according to the Bolshevik understanding of Marxist theory, to condemn them to death. Joseph Stalin, general secretary of the Communist Party, soon saw the possibilities in such a judge.
In 1926 Ulrikh became chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union. This judicial body was, in theory, the highest court of appeals for military cases, but in practice it quickly became a special court for political cases. Ulrikh was the presiding judge at all the major show trials of the Great Terror, but he can in no way be considered to have run the trials. His authority was limited to opening and closing the trials and calling recesses as needed. The real authority belonged to the prosecutor, Andrey Vyshinsky, a handsome and charismatic man with a subtle legal mind and phenomenal oratorical ability who could be trusted to match wits with the brilliant minds of the Old Bolshevik leaders.
In addition to his role in the Moscow Trials, Ulrikh presided over enormous numbers of secret trials. The best-known trial was that of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other leaders of the Red Army, but in most Ulrikh did not make even a pretense of any real judicial procedure. The accused would enter; be told the charges, the verdict, and the sentence in rapid-fire succession; and be marched out to be shot, in a horrifying clockwork. When allowed a little more time, Ulrikh often enjoyed tormenting his victims, joking cruelly with them or leaving them sitting all night while he and his fellow judges left to “confer.” Furthermore, he appears to have had an unusual fascination with executions, to the point of carrying them out himself.
Throughout World War II Ulrikh tried and executed numerous defeated military officers as well as leaders of conquered areas such as the Baltic states and Poland. He even participated in some of the early trials of the Zhdanovshchina, the postwar repressions led by Andrey Zhdanov.
In 1948 Ulrikh suddenly fell from Stalin’s favor as the result of having exiled to Siberia a number of Ukrainian peasants whom Stalin wanted shot. Forced to tender his resignation as chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, Ulrikh was made course director at the Military Law Academy. His tenure there coincided with his descent into alcoholism, and he would regale his listeners (often prostitutes whom he had summoned) with tales of the executions he had witnessed in his heyday.
It is possible that Stalin intended to follow his old pattern of purging the purgers and make Ulrikh one of the prime defendants in a future round of show trials (particularly if the Doctors’ Plot, which was halted by Stalin’s 1953 death, was intended to be the beginning of a new terror). However, Ulrikh died suddenly of a heart attack in 1951 while still at his new post. He was subsequently buried without honors at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
Impact
Although Vasili Vasilievich Ulrikh was a figurehead under the real control of Vyshinsky and Stalin, his role as the hanging judge who could always be relied upon to return guilty verdicts made him an active participant in Stalin’s murderous system. Many of Ulrikh’s trials were mere parodies of justice, minutes-long shams in which one accused after another was condemned, often on absurd charges.
Bibliography
Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. A post-glasnost reissuing of the most authoritative volume on the era.
Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Includes information on Stalin’s use of Ulrikh and other henchmen to run the Terror while deflecting attention from himself.
Rayfield, Donald. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. New York: Random House, 2004. A study of the relationship of Stalin and his chief henchmen.
Vaksberg, Arkady. Stalin’s Prosecutor: The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. Includes information on Ulrikh’s role in the Moscow Trials as related to Vyshinsky’s.