This was the headstone I went to the cemetery primarily to find. It marks the unkempt, weed- and bramble-covered grave of Vasily Vasilivich Ulrikh, the repellant face of Stalinist "justice" (expand the image and look closely). He was the judge at almost all of the great show trials of the 1930s, though he was over-shadowed in court by the more famous, cleverer and more influential Andrei Vyshinsky, the Prosecutor. Ulrikh was a Latvian of half German, half aristocratic Russian descent. He so enjoyed his work of applying Stalin's pre-determined sentences that he often watched the executions, and occasionally carried them out himself. He features largely in chapter 3 of my forthcoming book, The Justice Factory, which describes the Metro-Vickers trial in Moscow in April 1933. The brilliant American journalist, Eugene Lyons, described his appearance in court in terms which seem to me to be reflected exactly by the photograph on his grave: "In his round podgy face the gods had modelled a mask of impish, gloating cruelty. His flushed, over-stuffed features were twisted continually into a grimace of brutal sarcasm... That melon-face, hovering above the trial, sneering and jeering, was a caricature of the very idea of justice." There were no flowers on his grave.Monday 14 May 2007
Novodevichi Cemetery - Vasily Ulrikh
This was the headstone I went to the cemetery primarily to find. It marks the unkempt, weed- and bramble-covered grave of Vasily Vasilivich Ulrikh, the repellant face of Stalinist "justice" (expand the image and look closely). He was the judge at almost all of the great show trials of the 1930s, though he was over-shadowed in court by the more famous, cleverer and more influential Andrei Vyshinsky, the Prosecutor. Ulrikh was a Latvian of half German, half aristocratic Russian descent. He so enjoyed his work of applying Stalin's pre-determined sentences that he often watched the executions, and occasionally carried them out himself. He features largely in chapter 3 of my forthcoming book, The Justice Factory, which describes the Metro-Vickers trial in Moscow in April 1933. The brilliant American journalist, Eugene Lyons, described his appearance in court in terms which seem to me to be reflected exactly by the photograph on his grave: "In his round podgy face the gods had modelled a mask of impish, gloating cruelty. His flushed, over-stuffed features were twisted continually into a grimace of brutal sarcasm... That melon-face, hovering above the trial, sneering and jeering, was a caricature of the very idea of justice." There were no flowers on his grave.
