---
title: Andrey Vyshinsky
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/andrey-vyshinsky/
description: 5 verified quotes from Andrey Vyshinsky, Chief state prosecutor at the Moscow show trials, 1936-1938; Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister and Foreign…
section: FRAME
---

![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg)

[Quotes](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/) · Soviet Union

# Andrey Vyshinsky

![Andrey Vyshinsky on 1 June 1940](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/soviet-union/andrey-vyshinsky.jpg)

[Photo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RIAN_archive_7781_Vyshinsky.jpg): Grigory Vayl (G. Vail), RIA Novosti, CC BY-SA 3.0

Chief state prosecutor at the Moscow show trials, 1936-1938; Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister and Foreign Minister; Soviet delegate to the United Nations · Soviet Union

On the regime page: [Soviet Union under Stalin](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/soviet-union/#andrey-vyshinsky)

5 quotes, oldest first. [Filter with other speakers](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/#speaker=andrey-vyshinsky).

1. **Content note:** Demands the execution of defendants, calling them mad dogs. The words are shown as they were said or written. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) — > “I demand that dogs gone mad should be shot - every one of them!” — English: Official English edition, Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre (People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1936); translator not credited. Original-language text not found. — August 22, 1936 · Speech · Moscow, Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. (Trial of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre) — Final sentence of the prosecution speech at the first Moscow show trial, where sixteen defendants including Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev were charged with forming a terrorist centre and with the assassination of Sergei Kirov. All sixteen were sentenced to death on 24 August 1936. — Closing speech of the State Prosecutor, morning session of 22 August 1936, in Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre (Moscow: People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., 1936) [Source](https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/law/1936/moscow-trials/22/mad-dogs.htm)
2. **Content note:** Demands the execution of defendants, calling them dirty dogs and a reptile. The words are shown as they were said or written. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) — > “Our whole country, from young to old, is awaiting and demanding one thing: the traitors and spies who were selling our country to the enemy must be shot like dirty dogs! Our people are demanding one thing: crush the accursed reptile!” — Original (Russian) — Вся наша страна, от малого до старого, ждёт и требует одного: изменников и шпионов, продававших врагу нашу родину, расстрелять, как поганых псов! Требует наш народ одного: раздавите проклятую гадину! — English: Official English edition, Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" (People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1938); translator not credited — March 11, 1938 · Speech · Moscow, Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. (Trial of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites") — Close of the prosecution speech at the third Moscow show trial, where twenty-one defendants including Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov and Genrikh Yagoda were charged with treason, espionage and murder. Eighteen were sentenced to death on 13 March 1938. — Closing speech of the State Prosecutor, morning session of 11 March 1938, in Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" (Moscow: People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., 1938); Russian: Sudebnyi otchet po delu antisovetskogo "pravo-trotskistskogo bloka" (Moscow: Politizdat, 1938) [Source](https://marxistleninists.org/Trotskyism/Court%20Proccedings/Vyshinsky%20speech.htm)
3. **Content note:** Personal abuse of a defendant at a show trial. The words are shown as they were said or written. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) — > “Such is Bukharin, this hypocritical, false, wily creature; this piously rapacious and respectfully malicious person, this "damnable cross of a fox and a swine," to use Maxim Gorky's words about one of the heroes from the gallery of "Those Who Once Were People."” — English: Official English edition, Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" (People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1938); translator not credited. Original-language text not found. — March 11, 1938 · Speech · Moscow, Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. — Part of the prosecution's portrait of Nikolai Bukharin in the 1938 trial. Vyshinsky quotes Maxim Gorky's description of a character in Those Who Once Were People. — Closing speech of the State Prosecutor, 11 March 1938, in Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" (Moscow: People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., 1938) [Source](https://marxistleninists.org/Trotskyism/Court%20Proccedings/Vyshinsky%20speech.htm)
4. > “The war-mongers indulge in propaganda under a smokescreen of cries about the strengthening of national defense and the so-called necessity to fight against a war danger which allegedly comes from other countries. The war-mongering propagandists try by hook and crook to frighten people poorly versed in politics by fables and vicious fabrications and slanders about alleged preparations on the part of the Soviet Union to attack the United States. They certainly know only too well that they are telling lies and slanders, that the Soviet Union is not threatening in any way an attack on any country;” — English: Official English text of the speech as issued by the Soviet delegation (Moscow, 1947); translator not credited. Original-language text not found. — September 18, 1947 · Speech · New York, United Nations General Assembly — Part of Vyshinsky's speech as head of the Soviet delegation, accusing newspapers and officials in the United States of war propaganda against the Soviet Union. Later in the speech he names John Foster Dulles, Winston Churchill and others. — Speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, 18 September 1947, in A. Y. Vyshinsky, For the Peace and Friendship of Nations, Against the Instigators of a New War (Moscow, 1947), pp. 19-20 [Source](https://archive.org/details/vyshinsky-andrei.-for-the-peace-and-friendship-of-nations-against-the-instigators-of-a-new-war)
5. > “9. Finally, I must name a name which is well-known to all of us, Mr. John Foster Dulles (excitement in the audience) who in a speech delivered on February, 10, 1947, in Chicago urged a tough foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, declaring that if the United States of America does not take such a course, counting on the possibility of reaching a compromise with the Soviet Union, then war is inevitable. In the same speech Mr. Dulles boasted that since the collapse of the Roman Empire no nation ever possessed such great superiority of material power as the United States and urged the United States to utilize this power to promote its ideals. This is good advice indeed, from a member of. the United States delegation to the General Assembly of the United Nations. (Laughter, applause.)” — English: Official English text of the speech as issued by the Soviet delegation (Moscow, 1947); translator not credited. Original-language text not found. — September 18, 1947 · Speech · New York, United Nations General Assembly — Item 9 of a list of American public figures whom Vyshinsky described as promoting a new war. Dulles was a member of the US delegation present in the hall. The reaction marks are the pamphlet's own. — Speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, 18 September 1947, in A. Y. Vyshinsky, For the Peace and Friendship of Nations, Against the Instigators of a New War (Moscow, 1947), p. 27 [Source](https://archive.org/details/vyshinsky-andrei.-for-the-peace-and-friendship-of-nations-against-the-instigators-of-a-new-war)

## Often attributed, not verified

These words circulate under Andrey Vyshinsky’s name but could not be traced to a source. They are listed so readers can check them, not as Andrey Vyshinsky’s words.

- > “Confession of the accused is the queen of evidence.” — Misattributed Usually said to come from: Vyshinsky, The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law (1941; 2nd ed. 1950); widely repeated as his rule for the show trials — Not located in a primary text. Secondary accounts report that Vyshinsky's book names the formula (Latin regina probationum) as a principle of the medieval inquisitorial system and rejects it; others attribute the phrase to Nikolai Krylenko. The book itself was not read, so this is a lead only.