Fall From Power and Execution
Krylenko was promoted to Commissar of Justice of the USSR on July 20, 1936 and was not directly affected by the first waves of the Great Purges in 1935 to 1937. However, at the first session of the newly reorganized Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in January 1938 he was attacked by an up and coming Stalinist, M. D. Bagirov:
Comrade Krylenko concerns himself only incidentally with the affairs of his commissariat. But to direct the Commissariat of Justice, great initiative and a serious attitude toward oneself is required. Whereas Comrade Krylenko used to spend a great deal of time on mountain-climbing and traveling, now he devotes a great deal of time to playing chess... We need to know what we are dealing with in the case of Comrade Krylenko—the commissar of justice? or a mountain climber? I don't know which Comrade Krylenko thinks of himself as, but he is without doubt a poor people's commissar.
The attack had been clearly coordinated (Molotov endorsed it) and Krylenko was removed from his post on January 19, 1938. After turning the Commissariat over to his replacement, N. M. Rychkov, Krylenko traveled to his dacha outside Moscow with his family. On the evening of January 31, 1938, Krylenko received a phone call from Joseph Stalin in which Stalin reassured him, saying: "Don't get upset. We trust you. Keep doing the work you were assigned to on the new legal code." This phone call calmed Krylenko; however, later that evening his home was surrounded by an NKVD squad and Krylenko and many members of his family were arrested.
After three days in an NKVD prison, Krylenko "confessed" that he had been a wrecker since 1930. On April 3 he made an additional "confession" explaining that he had been an enemy of Lenin's even before the 1917 revolution. At his last questioning on June 28, 1938, he "confessed" that he had recruited thirty Commissariat of Justice employees to his anti-Soviet organization.
Krylenko was tried by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court on July 29, 1938. The trial lasted twenty minutes, just enough for Krylenko to retract his "confessions". He was found guilty and immediately shot.
Read more about this topic: Nikolai Krylenko
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