Genrikh Padva, one of Russia’s best-known lawyers, has died less than two weeks before his 95th birthday. Novaya Gazeta Europe recalls his career and his place in the history of the Russian legal profession. Over more than 70 years of practice, he became a mentor to many lawyers and earned a reputation as a defender who worked confidently across very different types of cases.
Padva was born in Moscow on February 20, 1931. He entered the law faculty of Moscow State University on his second attempt and began practicing law in 1953, leaving for the Kalinin region, now Tver region, after a family tragedy. He worked in Rzhev, Pogoreloye Gorodishche, Torzhok and Kalinin, where he quickly became known because residents regularly turned to him for legal defense.
In 1971, Padva returned to Moscow. A single case effectively brought him back to the capital: after he appeared in a trial involving a Kalinin resident, Moscow colleagues highly praised his work, and he was invited to join the Moscow City Bar. He later represented Vladimir Vysotsky, relatives of Andrei Sakharov, people close to Fyodor Shalyapin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Anatoly Serdyukov, and Alisher Usmanov.
His clients also included defendants in some of the most high-profile criminal cases of their time, among them Vyacheslav Ivankov, known as “Yaponchik,” and former Soviet Supreme Soviet chairman Anatoly Lukyanov. In 1989, Padva became vice president of the USSR Lawyers’ Union, which he had helped found. In the 2000s he established the firm Padva & Partners, and by then his name was already seen as a mark of professional standing.
One of the key episodes of his career was the Constitutional Court ruling issued after Padva’s complaint in 1999: it was this case that led to the introduction of a moratorium on the death penalty in Russia. Later, in 2010, the court upheld the moratorium after jury trials had been introduced nationwide. Padva was also among the first lawyers to help develop Russian legal practice in cases involving protection of honor and dignity.
“Any citizen … has the right to defend themselves against charges brought against them and to have professional counsel,” Padva stressed, arguing that personal disagreement with a client’s views must not interfere with a lawyer’s work.
In his final years, because of age and health problems, he rarely appeared in court and gave few interviews. He managed to publish a memoir and, a month and a half before his death, launched the Telegram channel “Padva. Lawyer,” where he shared stories from his practice. His death marked the end of an era for the legal community, which, as the newspaper notes, had by then largely lost its former independence and public voice.