A Famous Russian Jurist

Russia's most brilliant prosecutor and judge Anatoly Koni, was born 160 years ago on February 9. Anatoly studied at the German school at St. Anne's Church in St.Petersburg, and in the senior grades specialized in mathematics. He then went on to the Mathematics Department of St. Petersburg University, and when the university was closed following a students’ unrest, Koni got a transfer to Moscow University's Law School. There he attended lectures by the country's top legal experts, including Konstantin Pobedonostsev, a staunch conservative who would later become his arch-enemy. In 1865 he graduated with a candidate's degree in law. His thesis, The Right to Necessary Defense, got the young jurist into trouble with the authorities. Statements such as "The government cannot demand that law should be 'respected if it fails to respect the law itself," were unacceptable to the Czarist regime, though not the Czarist regime only.

Of the large number of trials Koni took part in, the most spectacular was the case (heard on March 31,1878) of Vera Zasulich, a member of the Narodnik radical movement who shot Fyodor Trepov, St. Petersburg’s governor. The trial was presided over by A. F. Koni who gave one of his brilliant speeches urging the jury to be unbiased. Zasulich was acquitted and released. The Russian progressive public celebrated A. Koni's victory rapturously, but the czars never forgave his failure to have Zasulich sentenced.

In 1866 A. F. Koni was appointed assistant secretary of the St. Petersburg-Court. Koni moved slowly but surely up the ladder of the judicial system, being appointed to the courts of Sumy, Kharkov, Samara, and Kazan. Everywhere Koni actively implemented the progressive changes of the judicial reform. He also lectured at the Law School for many years.

In the 1880s A. Koni began to publish his literary works. Koni's first major literary piece to be published was Friedrich Joseph Haas. This book brought back from oblivion an outstanding philanthropist who lived and worked in Russia, and was translated into German, French and English. His contributions to Vestnik Yevropy (Europe Bulletin) and other periodicals would continue for forty years. In 1888 A. F. Koni was sent to head the investigation into the derailment of the Czar's train near Kharkov. The anti-Semite Alexander III, who had barely escaped with his life, blamed the accident on the railroad's Jewish owner. Koni established the truth and pointed the finger at the technicians who were really to blame.

By his own example A. Koni proved that it was possible to serve the state's legal interests without forgetting the accused individual. In Russia the indictment of a member of the ruling estates was regarded as an attack against the entire estate, and A. F. Koni was forced to deal with this medieval attitude. When he persecuted a wealthy merchant, all merchants were indignant; when he indicted an officer the whole officer caste grumbled. But for A. F. Koni all were equal before the law.

A. F. Koni refused to accept offers of high posts, aware that he would be involved in intrigue in the highest circles. In 1907 he did consent to become a member of the State Council. But even there A. F. Koni never forgot the dictates of justice and concern for the ordinary person, a criminal though that person night be.

Between 1906 and 1914, A. F. Koni published several volumes of essays and memoirs on literature and legal matters, including The Fathers and Sons of the Judicial Reform dedicated to the 50^th anniversary of the judicial reforms.

After the February 1917 Revolution, A. F. Koni was appointed to an important position in the Provisional Government. But when the Bolsheviks came to power some ten months later, Koni lost all his posts. Yet Koni, now over seventy-five and suffering from hunger and cold, offered to give lectures under the new regime. In a conversation with Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Bolshevik Commissar for Education, he warned that the regime had to be defended from the excesses of the revolution itself.

A. F. Koni died on September 17, 1927, in Leningrad at the age of 83.