Iona Nikitchenko

Who was Iona Nikitchenko?

Major-General Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko was a judge of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.

Iona was born to a peasant family in khutor Tuzlukov. He studied at his local Agricultural Institute and from 1916 was a Bolshevik. His court experience started in May 1920 when he was appointed as the chairman-deputy of the Military Court of Semirechye Army Group during the Civil War. During the Civil War he participated on the frontlines in the Middle Asia. In 1924 was appointed as the member of the Military Court Collegiate of the Moscow Military District.

Nikitchenko presided over some of the most notorious of Joseph Stalin's show trials during the Great Purges of 1936 to 1938, where he among other things sentenced Kamenev and Zinoviev.