First Department, Oversight of Trials (evaluation of death sentences from lower tribunals)
Second Department, Military Tribunals of the Red Army
Third Department, Military Tribunals of the NKVD Troops19
Fourth Department, Military Tribunals of the Navy
Appellate Section (appeals from the districts/fronts)
Archival-Statistics Section
Secret Ciphering Section
General Section
Commandant’s Office (Komendatura), in charge of prisoners and executions.
The Directorate of Military Tribunals, which was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the military tribunals, was part of the Justice Commissariat (headed by N. M. Rychkov from 1938–1948).20 This directorate was also responsible for the education of military jurists through their Military-Judicial Academy. Yevlampii Zeidin headed the Directorate from 1940-1948, which, during this time, was comprised of the following departments:
Personnel Department
Department of Military Tribunals of the Red Army
Department of Military Tribunals of the Navy
Department of Military Tribunals of the NKVD Troops
Section of Military Tribunals of Transportation
Statistics Section
Military-Judicial Academy (from 1939), education of military jurists for Military Tribunals and prosecutors’ offices.
From January 1940 till the German invasion, the NKVD district military tribunals heard all political cases investigated by the OOs.21 After the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the divisional tribunals attached to the fighting troops heard most of the cases. Tribunals at the army level heard cases of commanders with the rank of major and above, as well as of battalion commanders and officers of the regimental or battalion staffs. Front tribunals considered cases of high-ranking commanders and generals, as well as the most important cases of low-ranking perpetrators.
Each military tribunal consisted of three officers and a secretary who recorded the minutes of the hearing. The chairman was always a military jurist, and until 1942, two members of divisional tribunals were also military jurists, but later, the members were chosen from officers of the same division.22 Therefore, the chair was, in fact, a judge.
Typically, a hearing was conducted with numerous violations of the Criminal-Procedure Code of the Russian Federation. M. Delagrammatik, former secretary of a corps tribunal at the Southern Front, describes:
Commonly, a copy of the indictment was not given to the defendant 24 hours before the trial as it should have been done according to law, but the indictment was simply read to him, usually during the day of the court trial. The defendant was shown and not given, according to law, a printed form that stated: ‘The indictment was announced to me’ (a date). This was a flagrant violation of the law. Most frequently, witnesses were not called up to the hearing because they supposedly were in fighting detachments, and only their testimonies were read.23
According to Soviet legal procedure, the defendant had the right not to testify against himself. However, the judges usually asked the defendant to testify because sincere admission of guilt by the defendant would supposedly help him. In fact, the judges needed this admission to pronounce the defendant being guilty.
The defendant was not told that there was no time restriction for his final statement. Deceptively, when giving the defendant his last chance to speak, the judge only said: ‘What do you ask from the court?’ This was a clear violation of the defendant’s rights.
The presence of a jurist as a chairman did not guarantee a fair court procedure. Delagrammatik explains: ‘Military judges had poor legal knowledge; they were poorly educated or even lacked education. The judges and prosecutors with the background of party functionaries were especially ignorant and semi-literate. This affected the quality of the pre-trial investigation and of a court trial, and as a result, justice suffered.’
Dual Function of Prosecutors
The role of Soviet prosecutors differed from that in the common law system of Britain and the United States. In general, the Soviet legal system followed continental criminal procedures in which prosecutors are not actively involved in prosecuting cases in courts. Prosecutors and defense representatives were not present at hearings in military tribunals. The military prosecutors’ role was investigation of criminal cases in the army, navy, and NKVD troops, and legal oversight of the OOs. The crimes they investigated were mostly covered by Article 193, the military part of the Criminal Code.
In 1941, Article 193 included 31 paragraphs.24 For instance, 193-7 described desertion as ‘an unauthorized leaving of a position for more than 24 hours’, while 193-10a introduced a one-year imprisonment for escaping draft during the wartime, and 193-12 covered self-inflicted injury. Four paragraphs, 193-17b (negligence or abuse of power by a commander), 193-20a (surrender of troops or a destruction of fortifications or a battleship by a commander), 193-21a (not following orders from superiors by a commander), and 193-22 (intentional leaving of a battlefield), required the death penalty. Paragraph 193-23, which also required the death penalty, applied specifically to the navy: ‘A commander leaving a sinking military vessel, who has not fulfilled his duties to the end, is punished by the highest measure of social defense [death].’ To such crimes as rape or embezzlement, prosecutors applied the ‘usual’, not military, articles of the Criminal Code.
Military prosecutor offices were attached to military tribunals. During the war, an Army Prosecutor had two assistants, two military investigators and several technical office workers.25 At the divisional level, there was a prosecutor and an investigator. A platoon of Red Army men was attached to each prosecutor’s office at the divisional and army levels to guard the arrestees and people under investigation.
Military prosecutors had their own vertical structure. District (front) military prosecutors reported to the Chief Military Prosecutor, who reported to the chief USSR Prosecutor, Bochkov (after November 1943, that position was filled by Konstantin Gorshenin), and needed his approval to appoint military prosecutors. The USSR Prosecutor appointed all front level prosecutors. Therefore, from 1940 to 1943 Bochkov oversaw the whole system of military prosecution and, through him, the NKVD maintained control.
The Chief Military Prosecutor’s office in Moscow consisted of the following departments:
Department of the Chief Prosecutor for the Red Army
Department of the Navy Prosecutor26
Department of the Prosecutor for NKVD Troops
Department of the Military Prosecutor for Railroad Transportation (from 1943)
Department of the Military Prosecutor for Marine and River Navigation (from 1943).27
It was headed by the following individuals:
N. F. Rozovsky, 1935–1939 (arrested)
P. F. Gavrilov, 1939–May 1940 (acting)
P. F. Gavrilov, May 1940–February 1941
N. I. Nosov, March 1941–March 1945
In an Army Prosecutor’s Office cases were usually opened on the order of a member of the Military Council of the Army. Military councils (not to be confused with military tribunals) were unique Soviet institutions of shared command and responsibility in the Red Army. Lieutenant General Konstantin Telegin, a long-time member of such councils during the war, described their role: