Nikolai
Krylenko was born in Bekhteevo near Smolensk in 1885. As a student
at St Petersburg University he joined the Bolsheviks
and helped organize demonstrations during the 1905
Revolution.
In 1907
Krylenko was arrested and exiled to Lubin in Russian Poland. He returned
to St. Petersburg and in 1911 began contributing to pro-Bolshevik
newspaper, Zvezda. Later he joined
the editorial board of Pravda.
Krylenko
travelled to Berne, Switzerland, in March, 1914, to participate in
a conference held by the Social Democratic Labour
Party. On his return he was arrested and drafted into the Russian
Army.
He served on the South-Sestern Front where he persuaded a large number
of soldiers to join the Bolsheviks.
After the
abdication of Nicholas II he returned to
the capital where he joined the executive committee of the Petrograd
Soviet and the Party Central Committee. Vladimir
Lenin appointed him military commissar and he played the leading
role in capturing Stavka, the command headquarters of the Russian
Army.
As president
of the supreme tribunal he prosecuted all the major political trials
of the 1920s. In 1931 Joseph Stalin appointed
Krylenko as Commissar for Justice and was involved in the conviction
of a large number of members of the Communist
Party during the Great Purges. Nikolai
Krylenko was himself arrested and executed for treason in 1938.
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