"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."
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RevolutionariesPoliticians from RussiaPoliticians from the Soviet UnionJustice ministersMinisters of Russia and the Soviet Union
Original Language: English
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Sources
Lawrence Reed, Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the Krylenko Test, Foundation For Economic Education, 14 October 2020
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nikolai_Krylenko
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Nikolai Krylenko
Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko (Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Крыле́нко, IPA: [krɨˈlʲenkə]; May 2, 1885 – July 29, 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Soviet legal system, rising to become People's Commissar for Justice and Prosecutor General of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.
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