Pyotr Krasikov

Pyotr Ananyevich Krasikov (Russian: Петр Ананьевич Красиков) (5 October 1870 – 20 August 1939) was a Russian revolutionary and functionary of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and politician of the Soviet Union as well as a Marxist theorist and writer on political affairs. He was the first Procurator General of the Soviet Union, serving from 1924 to 1933.

Pyotr Krasikov Петр Красиков
Procurator General of the Soviet Union
In office 15 March 1924 – 20 June 1933
Premier	Alexey Rykov Vyacheslav Molotov
Preceded by	None—post established
Succeeded by	Ivan Akulov
Personal details
Born	(1870-10-05)5 October 1870 Krasnoyarsk, Yeniseysk Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	20 August 1939(1939-08-20) (aged 68) Zheleznovodsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Soviet
Political party	All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
Profession	Lawyer, civil servant

Career

Pyotr Krasikov was involved in revolutionary politics beginning in 1892, when he joined the Emancipation of Labour group. Later he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. After the 1917 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, and Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court from 1933 to 1938.

Death

Krasikov died in 1939. 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 (Cambridge U.P., 1967, p. 74), 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 (Munich, 1929), has devoted an entire chapter... to Krasikov's misdeeds as co-chairman (together with the notorious M. Iu. Kozlovsky) of the Cheka of the Petrograd Soviet in the winter of 1917-18."