Professional Affiliation

Professor, Russian State Institute of Intellectual Property

Expert Bio

Dr. Lev Simkin is a professor at the Russian State Academy of Intellectual Property (Moscow, Russia). He received his Doctor of Juridical Sciences degree from Moscow State University. Dr. Simkin worked for the Ministry of Justice in a professorial and specialist capacity. In 1993 Dr. Simkin was a member of the Konstitutsionnoe Soveshanie (Constitutional Council) that prepared a draft of the Russian Constitution. He received several awards from the Federal Bar Association as well as the Russian Internet Award for Intellectual Property Protection. He was a Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2010 and a Diane and Howard Wohl Fellow at the Memorial Holocaust Museum in 2012. 

Wilson Center Project

Soviet trials of masterminds and their accomplices in the killings of Jews

Project Summary

The purpose of this project is to study court materials from the trials of German Nazis and Soviet collaborators for crimes committed on Soviet territory. The author intends to research materials related to Friedrich August Jeckeln (1895-1946) who was an SS-Obergruppenführer – one of the masterminds of the Holocaust and the chief mastermind of Babi Yar. Jeckeln developed his own methods of murdering large numbers of people, which became known as the "Jeckeln System." Jeckeln was tried in February of 1946 in Riga by a Soviet military court, sentenced to death, and hanged in front of some 4,000 spectators. The author plans to use the collected research materials for academic publications, the media and, in particular, a book on the subject.

Major Publications

Simkin, Lev. (2015). Korotkim budet prigovor (The short sentence). Zebra E.

Simkin, Lev. (2014). Death sentence despite the law: A secret 1962 crimes-against-humanity trial in Kiev. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 27 (2), 299-312.

Simkin, Lev. (2013). Poltara chasa vozmezdiya (An hour and a half of vengeance). Zebra E.

Simkin, Lev. (2012). Amerikanskaya mechta sektanta, ili tserkov’ emigrantov (The American dream of a Russian sectarian or the church of immigrants). Zebra E. 

Previous Terms

Galina Starovoitova Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, "Russian Law and Challenges of Religious Freedom in the 21^st Century," November 2009 - January 2010; Kennan Short Term Grant, "The Judiciary and Politics in a Law-Governed State," May - June 1992.