Vasiliy Ulrikh

Vasiliy Vasilievich Ulrikh (Василий Васильевич Ульрих, July 13, 1889 – May 7, 1951) was a senior judge of the Soviet Union during most of the regime of Joseph Stalin. In this capacity, Ulrikh served as the presiding judge at many of the major show trials of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union.

Early life
Vasili Ulrikh was born in Riga, Latvia, then a part of the Russian Empire. His father was a Latvian revolutionary of German descent, and his mother was a Russian noblewoman. Because of their open involvement in revolutionary activity, the entire family was sentenced to a five-year period of internal exile in Irkutsk, Siberia.

In 1910, young Ulrikh returned to his native Riga and began to study at the Riga Polytechnical Institute. He graduated in 1914, and with the beginning of World War I he was sent to the front as an officer.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, Leon Trotsky secured him entrance into the Cheka. Ulrikh subsequently served on a number of military tribunals, and came to the attention of Stalin, who apparently liked the efficient way in which he carried out his duties and his terse, even laconic style of reporting these tribunals' actions.

Career
In 1926, Ulrikh became Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. It was in this capacity that he handed down the pre-determined sentences of the Great Purges. Ulrikh sentenced Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Tukhachevsky, Rodzaevsky, Yezhov and many others. He attended the executions of many of these men, and occasionally performed executions himself. Ulrich personally executed Yan Berzin, former head of Red Army Intelligence Directorate, later called GRU

During the Great Patriotic War, Ulrikh continued to hand down death sentences to people accused of sabotage and defeatism. He was also the chief judge during the Trial of the Sixteen leaders of the Polish Secret State and Armia Krajowa in 1945.

After the conclusion of the war, Ulrikh presided over a number of the early trials of the Zhdanovshchina.

In 1948 a number of top judges, including Ulrikh, were removed from their positions for severe drawbacks in the judicial system, including corruption and what were classified as political errors. Ulrikh was subsequently reassigned to be the course director at the Military Law Academy. He died of a heart attack on May 7, 1951, and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Opinions
Anton Antonov-Ovseenko labeled him a "uniformed toad with watery eyes."