Andrey Vyshinsky was born in Odessa. His father, Januarius Feliksovich Vyshinsky, a descendant of an old Polish noble family, worked as a pharmacist; his mother was a music teacher. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Baku, where Andrey graduated from the First Men’s Classical Gymnasium (1900).
In 1901, he enrolled in the law faculty of Kyiv University. In March 1902, he was expelled for participating in student unrest, without the right to re-enroll, and was placed under police surveillance. He returned to Baku, where in 1903 he joined the Menshevik branch of the RSDLP.
In 1906–1907, Vyshinsky was arrested twice but released shortly afterward due to lack of evidence. In early 1908, he was convicted by the Tiflis Judicial Chamber for “publicly delivering an anti-government speech.”
He served one year in the Bailov Prison, where he became closely acquainted with the Bolshevik revolutionary Joseph Stalin; some accounts claim that they shared a cell for a time. After 1917
After the February Revolution of 1917, Vyshinsky was appointed police commissar of the Yakimansky District. At that time, he signed an order “demanding strict execution of the Provisional Government’s directive to locate, arrest, and bring to trial Lenin as a German spy” (see sealed train).
After the October Revolution, through the patronage of Artemy Khalatov, he secured a position as inspector in the People’s Commissariat of Food Supply, eventually rising to head of the food distribution department.
In 1920, Vyshinsky left the Menshevik party and joined the RCP(b).
From 1920 to 1921, he taught at Moscow University and served as dean of the economics faculty at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy.
From 1928 to 1930, he headed the Main Directorate of Vocational Education (Glavprofobr). From 1928 to 1931, he was a member of the Collegium of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Education. He supervised the academic-methodological sector of the Commissariat and substituted for the chairman of the State Academic Council.
From May 11, 1931, he served as Prosecutor of the RSFSR and, from May 21 of the same year, as Deputy People’s Commissar of Justice of the RSFSR. From June 1933, he was Deputy Prosecutor of the USSR, and from March 1935 to May 1939, Prosecutor of the USSR.
According to the memoirs of Orlov–Feldbin, old party members boycotted him because of his Menshevik past. Vyshinsky even appeared on a list for expulsion during one of the party purges and managed to be reinstated only with the help of Aaron Soltz. 1936–1938
He served as the state prosecutor in all three Moscow Trials of 1936–1938.
During the “Great Terror” of 1937–1938, Vyshinsky and the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov sat on the NKVD–USSR Prosecutor’s Office Commission, which extrajudicially reviewed espionage cases as part of the NKVD’s national operations. In practice, the NKVD central apparatus received “albums” (summaries of cases), which were reviewed by several department heads who never saw the investigative files themselves. Each evening they issued decisions on 200–300 cases.
The list of those sentenced to execution or labor camp was then retyped and submitted to Yezhov for signature, and afterward sent by courier to Vyshinsky.
Thus, on December 29, 1937, after reviewing lists of 1,000 persons of Latvian nationality, Yezhov and Vyshinsky sentenced 992 of them to execution.
From 1937 to 1941, he served as director of the Institute of Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences and as editor-in-chief of the journal Soviet State and Law.
From 1935 to 1939, he sat on the secret Politburo commission on judicial affairs, which approved all death sentences in the USSR. Legal Career from 1939 Onward
On May 31, 1939, during a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Vyshinsky was confirmed as Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (SNK). In this role, he oversaw culture, science, education, and the repressive organs. No order from the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, the People’s Commissar of Justice, the Prosecutor of the USSR, or any decision of the Plenum of the Supreme Court could be approved without his authorization.
He resolved conflicts within the repressive apparatus and was one of the chief organizers of major criminal-legal campaigns between 1940 and 1944. He supervised several structural divisions of the SNK: the administrative-judicial sector, the NKVD sector (1939–1940), and the legal department.
From June 22, 1941, to January 19, 1949, he chaired the newly formed Legal Commission under the SNK (later replaced by Konstantin Gorshenin). His influence partially revived during the Great Patriotic War.
During the Nuremberg Trials, he effectively headed the Soviet delegation and reported daily to the Politburo. On November 10, 1945, he chaired the Permanent Commission for conducting open trials of former German military personnel and punitive authorities guilty of atrocities against Soviet citizens on occupied territory. He left the post in 1947. Diplomatic Career from 1940
From June to August 1940, he served as the CPSU Central Committee plenipotentiary in Latvia.
From September 6, 1940, to March 1946, he was First Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. During the wartime evacuation of the Commissariat to Kuibyshev, he directed its operations.
On July 12, 1941, Vyshinsky was present at the signing of the agreement between the USSR and Great Britain on joint action against Germany—an event marking the birth of the anti-Hitler coalition.
He became Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Soviet Union on June 14, 1943.
He participated in the October 1943 Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers of the USSR, the USA, and Great Britain.
In 1944–1945, he played an active role in negotiations with Romania and later with Bulgaria.
In February 1945, as a member of the Soviet delegation at the Yalta Conference, he worked in one of its commissions. In April of the same year, he witnessed the signing of treaties of friendship and mutual assistance with Poland, Yugoslavia, and other countries.
From March 1946, he served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for general affairs. From 1949 to 1953, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, during which time the Korean War took place.
From March to June 1949, he headed the Information Committee under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1952–1953, he was a member of the Permanent Commission on Foreign Affairs under the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee.
After Stalin’s death, Vyshinsky was replaced as Minister of Foreign Affairs by Vyacheslav Molotov and became the Soviet representative to the United Nations.
He died of a heart attack in New York on November 22, 1954. His ashes were interred in an urn in the Kremlin Wall on Red Square in Moscow.
