Andrey
Vyshinsky was born in Odessa, Russia, on 28th November, 1883. As a
young man he joined the Social Democratic Party.
At the
Second Congress of the Social Democratic
Party in London in 1903, there was
a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius
Martov, two of the party's main leaders. Lenin argued for a small
party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party
sympathisers and supporters. Martov disagreed believing it was better
to have a large party of activists. Martov won the vote 28-23 but
Lenin was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known
as the Bolsheviks. Those who remained
loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks.
Vyshinsky,
like George Plekhanov, Pavel
Axelrod, Leon Trotsky, Lev
Deich, Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko,
Irakli Tsereteli, Moisei
Uritsky, Noi Zhordania and Fedor
Dan supported Julius Martov.
Vyshinsky
became a lawyer and after the October Revolution
he joined the Bolsheviks. He taught
law at Moscow State University until becoming a state prosecutor.
Between 1934 and 1938 Vyshinsky prosecuted many leading politicians
accused of conspiring against Joseph Stalin
and the Soviet government.
In 1940
Vyshinsky was given the responsibility of managing the occupation
of Latvia. He also helped establish communism in Romania before becoming
foreign minister in March, 1949. He survived the purge that followed
the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and
continued as the Soviet representative in the United
Nations. Andrey Vyshinsky died in New
York on 22nd November, 1954.
(1) Andrei
Vyshinsky, Soviet Union
spokesman at the United Nations, speech (18th
September, 1947)
The
so-called Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan are particularly
glaring examples of the
way in which the principles of the United Nations are violated, of
the way in which the Organisation is ignored. As is now clear, the
Marshall Plan constitutes in essence merely a variant of the Truman
Doctrine adapted to the conditions of postwar Europe. In bringing
forward this plan, the United States Government apparently counted
on the cooperation of the Governments of the United Kingdom and France
to confront the European countries in need of relief with the necessity
of renouncing their inalienable right to dispose of their economic
resources and to plan their national economy in their own way. The
United States also counted on making all these countries directly
dependent on the interests of American monopolies, which are striving
to avert the approaching depression by an accelerated export of commodities
and capital to Europe.
It is becoming more and
more evident to everyone that the implementation of the Marshall Plan
will mean placing European countries under the economic and political
control of the United States and direct interference by the latter
in the internal affairs of those countries. Moreover, this plan is
an attempt to split Europe into two camps and, with the help of the
United Kingdom and France, to complete the formation of a bloc of
several European countries hostile to the interests of the democratic
countries of Eastern Europe and most particularly to the interests
of the Soviet Union. An important feature of this Plan is the attempt
to confront the - countries of Eastern Europe with a bloc of Western
European States including Western Germany. The intention is to make
use of Western Germany and German heavy industry (the Ruhr) as one
of the most important economic bases for American expansion in Europe,
in disregard of the national interests of the countries which suffered
from German aggression.
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