Roman Andreevich Rudenko

Rudenko's tomb in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow

General Roman Rudenko ( Ukrainian Роман Андрійович Руденко , Russian Роман Андреевич Руденко , scientific. Transliteration Roman Andreevič Rudenko ; born July 17 ^{. Jul} / thirtieth July  1907 ^greg. In Nosivka ; † 23 January 1981 in Moscow ) was for many years the Attorney General of USSR and Soviet chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals .

Life

Rudenko was born on July 30, 1907 in the village of Nossivka (now Ukraine ) in the Chernigov district to a peasant family. As a 17-year-old worker in a sugar factory, he was accepted into the communist party in 1926 . In 1929 the party leadership in his home district assigned him to study at the Moscow School of Law. He then worked in the Chernigov public prosecutor's office in the fight against “ kulaks ” and alleged Ukrainian nationalism .

After completing his postgraduate studies at the USSR Law Academy, he became head of the Donetsk Industrial District Public Prosecutor's Office in 1937 . As a member of a troika of the NKVD , he was involved in numerous death sentences during the Great Terror . In 1942 he was promoted to deputy head of the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Ukrainian SSR and replaced him two years later. As Lieutenant General of the Justice Service, he was also responsible for punishing collaborators with the German occupiers. In this function he worked closely with the party leader of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, Nikita Khrushchev .

In June 1945 Rudenko represented the indictment in the Moscow " Trial of the Sixteen " against anti-communist leaders of Polish groups who had organized the resistance against the German occupiers during World War II . The Polish politicians and military leaders, including Leopold Okulicki , the last Commander in Chief of the Home Army (AK), had been lured into a trap by the NKVD near Warsaw three months earlier and kidnapped to Moscow.

In the Nuremberg war crimes trial from 1945 to 1946 he was the main prosecutor on the Soviet side. Like François de Menthon , the French prosecutor, he called for the death penalty for all accused. During the trial, Rudenko described the secret additional protocol to the Hitler-Stalin Pact as a forgery. He also urged the Katyn massacre to be added to the list of charges. But after contradicting testimony from the witnesses summoned by Moscow, the American side managed to have this point dropped. The version that circulated in the following years that Rudenko was accused by Hermann Göring during the hearings on Katyn of being one of those responsible for the mass murder of the Polish officers and then fired two pistol shots at Göring in a fit of rage , is written by specialist historians described as absurd.

In the power struggle in the CPSU after Stalin's death in 1953, he was on the side of Khrushchev, the new First Secretary . This pushed through the appointment of Rudenko as the General Prosecutor of the USSR. In this capacity he went to the Vorkuta labor camp in August 1953 to punish the initiators of the uprising and strike . According to eyewitness reports, he personally shot and killed one of the strike leaders in front of a group of prisoners. He ordered the suppression of the uprising by force of arms; several hundred forced laborers were reportedly killed.

After the arrest of the previous NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria on June 26, 1953, Rudenko was entrusted with the official investigation, which had to accuse him of an anti-party conspiracy. In 1956 Rudenko moved up as a follower of Khrushchev in the extended party leadership, he became a candidate of the Central Committee of the CPSU . On XX. CPSU party congress at which Khrushchev condemned the crimes of Stalin committed against party members in his secret speech . As a result, Rudenko was concerned with the rehabilitation of a limited group of members of the Communist Party, none of whom had previously belonged to the party leadership. The names of the former members of the Politburo murdered on behalf of Stalin, such as Nikolai Bukharin , Lev Kamenev , Karl Radek , Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Trotsky , remained taboo .

In 1960 Rudenko led the internationally sensational investigation into Francis Gary Powers , the pilot of a US spy plane who was shot down over Soviet territory . On the XXII. At the 1961 party congress, which continued the de-Stalinization , Rudenko was appointed a member of the Central Committee. The following year he was responsible for punishing the participants in the Novocherkassk uprising , seven of whom were sentenced to death and 323 to prison terms.

In his office as attorney general, he also survived the fall of Khrushchev in 1964. Under the new party leader Leonid Brezhnev, the fight against dissidents moved into the center of Rudenko's activities. On his desk were all prominent cases, he worked closely with the KGB boss Yuri Andropov together. In 1976 he demanded the death penalty for alleged treason for Corvette Captain Valeri Sablin , who wanted to force a radio appearance through a mutiny on his ship in order to denounce the privileged life of the higher party officials.

Honored with numerous high Soviet medals, Rudenko headed the Soviet law enforcement authorities until his death in 1981. He was buried in the celebrity cemetery of the Moscow New Maiden Convent .

In 1975 he received the Gold Star of Friendship of Nations medal in East Germany .

Works

• "Let justice take its course!" Indictment speech by Lieutenant General RA Rudenko at the Nuremberg trial. Berlin: Publishing House of the Soviet. Military administration in Germany, 1946.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Der Spiegel February 2, 1981.
2. ↑ Jurij Orlov / Aleksandr Svjagincev: Prokurory dvuch epoch. Andrej Vyšinskij i Roman Rudenko . Moscow 2001. Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Memorial document 370730 decision of the Politburo N ° P51 / 94 of 2 July 1937th
4. ↑ ^{a b} Article Roman Andrejewitsch Rudenko in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D097980~2a%3D~2b%3DRoman%20Andrejewitsch%20Rudenko
5. ↑ Donetskie Novosti ( Memento of the original from March 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dnews.donetsk.ua, November 27, 2009. 
6. ↑ Nauka w Polsce ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Polska Agencja Prasowa, June 18, 2010. 
7. ↑ General Rudenko: Justice demands only one punishment for all major war criminals, the death penalty. Berlin: Verlag Daily Rundschau 1947. [1]
8. ^ The time August 27, 1953.
9. ↑ Stalin was not satisfied with Nuremberg , Der Spiegel, October 6, 1986, p. 57.
10. ↑ Adam Basak: Historia pewnej mistyfikacji. Zbrodnia Katyńska przed Trybunalem Norymberskim. Wrocław 1993, pp. 111-113.
11. ^ Joe J. Heydecker / Johannes Leeb: The Nuremberg Trial. Cologne 2003, p. 450.
12. ↑ AS Smykalin: Kolonii i tjurmy v Rossii sovetskoj. Yekaterinburg 1997, p. 184 ( penal colonies and prisons in Soviet Russia ).
13. ↑ Horst Hennig, Attorney General Roman Rudenko and the strike in Vorkuta from July / August 1953 in camp 10, shaft 2 in Vorkuta, in: Black pyramids, red slaves: The strike in Vorkuta in the summer of 1953. A documented chronicle . Edited by Wladislaw Hedeler / Horst Hennig. Leipzig 2007, pp. 55-58.
14. ↑ Wladislaw Hedeler : 30 years at Stalin's side. The rise and fall of Lavrenti Berija (Pankower lectures, volume 172). Helle Panke eV, Berlin 2013, p. 31; History Today Vol. 53, 12 (2003).
15. ^ Vadim Rogovin Stalin's Terror of 1937-1938: Political Genocide in the USSR. London 2009, pp. 430-433.
16. ↑ Der Spiegel , August 24, 1960.
17. ^ New Germany June 2, 2012.
18. ^ Andrew Christopher: The Sword and the Shield. The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. New York 1999, p. 132, excerpt ( memento of the original dated February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. rulit.net 
19. ↑ Znamya 7.1998.
20. ↑ Neues Deutschland , May 1, 1975, p. 5

Web links

• Literature by and about Roman Andrejewitsch Rudenko in the catalog of the German National Library
• Katyn, A mass murder of Polish officers and right-wing extremist propaganda
• Article Roman Andrejewitsch Rudenko in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D097980~2a%3D~2b%3DRoman%20Andrejewitsch%20Rudenko