Pyotr Krasikov

Who was Pyotr Krasikov?

Pyotr Ananyevich Krasikov was a functionary of the All-Union Communist Party and the Soviet Union.

He was the first Procurator General of the Soviet Union.

Pyotr Krasikov was involved in revolutionary politics since 1892, when he joined the Emancipation of Labour group. Later he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. After the Russian Revolution his positions were related to legal issues and he is considered to be among the principal creators of the Soviet legal system, along with Andrey Vyshinsky. He was deputy People's Commissar of Justice since 1918, Prosecutor of the Supreme Court since 1924, Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court, 1933-1938.

He was one of the few Old Bolsheviks who died of natural causes.

Israel Getzler, in Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat says he was "intensely disliked by all and sundry [with the exception of Lenin]... [Boris Nikolaevsky] sums him up as a drunken brawler... J. Steinberg, Als ich Volkskommisar war, has devoted an entire chapter... to Krasikov's misdeeds as co-chairman of the Cheka of the Petrograd Soviet in the winter of 1917-18."