Editing Roman Rudenko (section)

==Soviet Union 1953–1981==
After the arrest of [[Lavrentiy Beria]] in 1953, Rudenko was a judge at the closed trial at which Stalin's last secret police chief was sentenced to death.

In 1960, he acted as the chief prosecutor in [[1960 U-2 incident|U-2]] pilot [[Francis Gary Powers]]' [[espionage]] trial.<ref name=Powers>{{Cite book |last=Powers |first=Francis |title=Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident |publisher=Potomac Books, Inc. |year=2004 |ISBN=9781574884227 |page=120}}</ref>

As [[Procurator General of the Soviet Union]], Rudenko played a major role in devising measures to deal with the growing dissident movement within the USSR. 
[[File:RUSMARKA-1949.jpg|thumb|Roman Rudenko on a commemorative Russian stamp]]
In 1967, he and then KGB chairman [[Vladimir Semichastny]] submitted proposals as to how to deal with those defending the writers [[Yuli Daniel]] and [[Andrei Sinyavsky]] during and after their trial, without provoking a strong reaction abroad or within the country. This included mention of the "mental illness" suffered by several prominent dissidents.<ref>[https://bukovsky-archive.com/2017/06/07/27-january-1967-pb-325/ Joint KGB-Procurator-General's Memorandum to Central Committee, 27 January 1967 (Pb 32/5), Bukovsky Archive online].</ref> One measure, proposed jointly with [[Yuri Andropov]] in late 1972, was to reduce the number of arrests and convictions by reinforcing the issue of "prophylactic" warnings to individuals, cautioning them that their activities could lead to prosecution under [[Anti-Soviet agitation|Articles 70 and 190<sup>1</sup> of the RSFSR Criminal Code]].<ref>[https://bukovsky-archive.com/2016/07/02/16-november-1972-pb-67xviii/ Joint KGB-Procurator-General's Memorandum to Central Committee, 16 November 1972 (Pb 67/XVI), Bukovsky Archive online].</ref>