The Presidential Library marking the anniversary of the famous lawyer Fyodor Plevako

April 25, 2022 marks the 180th anniversary of the birth of Fyodor Plevako, a Russian lawyer, the father of judicial rhetoric, who was called the “great orator”, “metropolitan of the bar”, “genius of words”, “Moscow Chrysostom” and even ... “Pushkin in jurisprudence”. Little-known facts from the life of this outstanding person, reviews of contemporaries about his talent are available in the materials of the collection of the Presidential Library Fyodor Plevako (1842-1909) which also includes his speeches, letters and documents on individual court cases.

Fyodor Plevako was born in 1842 in the town of Troitsk, Orenburg province. He was the illegitimate son of court councilor Vasily Plevako. His patronym Nikiforovich Fyodor received by the name of the godfather of his elder brother, and later added the letter “o” to his father’s “dissonant” surname - Plevak.

In 1851 the Plevako family moved to Moscow. The materials from the Personal file of a member of the State Duma of the Third Convocation from the city of Moscow Fyodor Nikiforovich Plevako report that after completing a course at the Faculty of Law of the Imperial Moscow University, he was enrolled in the service of the Court of Justice, and in 1870 joined the class of attorneys at law.

In addition, he dealt with cases of crimes against the person, and cases of property crimes - theft, extortion, embezzlement, forgery, fraud, and often on the side of not the defendant, but the civil plaintiff - the victim. In his speeches, Fyodor Plevako first analyzed in detail the factual side of the matter, and then moved on to the actual defensive, emotional and pathetic part.

Thus, in the Case of Abbess Mitrofania, accused of forgery and fraud, which is available in Plevako's collection of public speeches Speech on cases of property crimes (1910), petitioning for the plaintiffs at the trial, the lawyer analyzes the course of the investigation, draws attention to the nature of previous newspaper publications, the origin of bills of exchange, handwriting, ink color and spelling in the completed forged documents, cites expert opinions.

After that, he appeals to the mind and conscience of the judges: “Do not let outward signs of piety captivate you. This woman has long and skillfully abused them. <...> And after that, she dares to say that her life is entirely dedicated to God, that without her the orphans and the poor who are in her arms will perish! Sheepskin on a wolf should not blind you! I do not believe that people seriously think about God and goodness, committing robberies and forgeries.

In the lecture Fyodor Plevako, read in 1909, his colleague, lawyer and politician Vasily Maklakov noted: “Not everyone knows that Plevako was an excellent lawyer and ... a subtle theologian, but everyone knows that he was an incomparable orator ... He managed this reputation make popular". Even critics could not deny the absolutely exceptional, mysterious power of Plevako's speech. This power lay in the original content of his speech, the peculiar impression that his listeners were under, and "Plevako can be understood only when you understand the essence of this originality".

Plevako possessed an amazing freedom of speech, the ability to easily find the right words and arrange them into correct and flowing phrases. He skillfully used several methods of literary presentation: well-aimed epithets, definitions (“a swear word is an interjection of the national language”), successful comparisons (“a crowd is a building, faces are bricks”), picture descriptions. The orator was also inexhaustible in witticisms and puns, mastered verse and rhyme, could improvise, parody any writer.

According to Maklakov, Fyodor Plevako was an excellent lawyer, "and this instinct, the resourcefulness of a good lawyer, imbued with a sense of law ... this instinct in jurisprudence was Plevako's main strength".

“In all the methods of defence, Plevako turned to the best human feelings; but this is not enough; for a while he made the listeners themselves better than they were...- Maklakov wrote. – <…> You can learn a lot - logic and rhetoric as well as real eloquence. But one cannot learn such an understanding of life, such an attitude towards people, in order to be such a speaker as Plevako was..."

Having devoted 40 years of his life to advocacy Fyodor Plevako died of a heart attack on December 13, 1908.