Nikolai Krylenko

"We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula "chess for the sake of chess", like the formula "art for arts sake". We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess."

"After two decades of building socialism in the USSR there is no reason for anybody to be a homosexual."

"So who are the bulk of our clients in these sorts of cases? Is it the working class? No! Its classless hoodlums. Classless hoodlums, either from the dregs of the society, or from the remains of the exploiters class. They have no place to go. So they take to -- pederasty. Together with them, next to them, under this excuse, in stinky secretive bordellos another kind of activity takes place as well -- counter-revolutionary work."

"In the absence of a criminal code, a court might give a reprimand for a punch in the nose in Ryazan, while the sentence in Tula might be shooting."

"The basic mistake in eyery case is made by those women who consider freedom of abortion as one of their civil rights. We need new fighters - they built this life, we need people."

"We will secure peace, over the corpses of the counterrevolutionary command staff if necessary."

"An epileptic degenerate . . . and the most repulsive type I came across in all my connections with the Bolsheviks."

"Krylenko is brave and fearless. He is one of the typical Russians of whom the great psychologist Dostoyevsky said: "it is not he that created the idea, but the idea that created him."

"Krylenko, who began to speak at 6:10 PM, was moderate enough at first, but quickly launched into an attack on religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. "The Catholic Church", he declared, "has always exploited the working classes." When he demanded the Archbishops death, he said, "All the Jesuitical duplicity with which you have defended yourself will not save you from the death penalty. No Pope in the Vatican can save you now." As the long oration proceeded, the Red Procurator worked himself into a fury of anti-religious hatred. "Your religion", he yelled, "I spit on it, as I do on all religions, -- on Orthodox, Jewish, Mohammedan, and the rest." "There is no law here but Soviet Law," he yelled at another stage, "and by that law you must die."

"Under the communist dictatorship of Lenin and then Stalin, Krylenko (1885-1938) rose through the Soviet Union’s legal system to become People’s Commissar for Justice and a Prosecutor General. He was a leading practitioner of the theory of “socialist legality,” which held that an accused person’s innocence or guilt depended on that person’s politics (real or imagined). It sounds nuts and indeed, it was. It was the stuff of Orwell’s nightmare, and one of the reasons the Soviet Union thankfully perished of its own poison."

"We are sometimes up against a flat refusal to apply this law rigidly. One Peoples Judge told me flatly that he could never bring himself to throw someone in jail for stealing four ears. What were up against here is a deep prejudice, imbibed with their mothers milk... a mistaken belief that people should be tried in accordance not with the Partys political guidelines but with considerations of "higher justice"."

"Offering me a seat, Krylenko said: "I have no doubt that you personally are not guilty of anything. We are both performing our duty to the Party—I have considered and consider you a Communist. I will be the prosecutor at the trial; you will confirm the testimony given during the investigation. This is our duty to the Party, yours and mine. Unforeseen complications may arise at the trial. I will count on you. If the need should arise, I will ask the presiding judge to call on you. And you will find the right words."