The Death of a Judge

Abstract

Prosecutors charged top judges serving in the supreme courts of the USSR and, the Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian republics, as well as the Moscow City Court, and judges serving in several other important regional courts. The investigations were conducted completely in secret; neither the charges nor the associated trials were ever mentioned in the press. An exploration of these cases links an investigation of Stalinist high politics with an inquiry into the construction of narratives of corruption and deviance, and the repression of the judiciary after the war. What can the prosecution of prominent jurists tell us about the politics of fighting corruption and the methods of the regime in the late Stalin period? “The Affair of the High Courts,” as I call it, was a critical dimension of a postwar attack on the Soviet courts, carried out by the USSR Procuracy and the Central Committee Secretariat, most likely on the orders of Stalin. This chapter uncovers the origins of the scandal. The cases involved accusations of bribery against at least two dozen judges serving in the supreme courts of the RSFSR, the USSR, Ukraine, and Georgia, the Moscow City Court, and several other high courts. The Affair marks an important but unknown episode in the history of Stalinism. The chapter argues that the investigation into these cases in the High Courts should be treated as a Late Stalinist “Affair,” in some ways similar to the Leningrad Affair, the Mingrelian Affair, and the Affair of the Jewish Fascist Committee. While all these affairs have been closely examined by scholars with good access to archives, the Affair of the Soviet High Courts has not. The scandal ultimately tainted several prominent Soviet jurists, many with international reputations,