Appeal of notarial deeds or refusal to perform them in court in Ukraine during the soviet period

Abstract

The article is devoted to the judicial control of notarial activities during the Soviet rule on Ukrainian lands and is designed to analyze the history of notarial actions being appealed to the court or refusal to perform them under the Soviet notarial and procedural legislation.
 It is noted that at the beginning In the 20th century, when independent states were proclaimed in Ukraine, the political leadership was not engaged in reforming the notary, and therefore for some time the imperial legislation (of Austria-Hungary and Russia) regulated the institution of judicial control over the performance of notarial acts or refusal to perform them. However, the defeat in the Soviet-Ukrainian war (1917–1921) led to the beginning of the Soviet stage in the history of the Ukrainian notary.
 It is indicated that in the first stages of Soviet power, the notary institution declined, as the prerequisites for the activity of a notary were not formed, but with the beginning of a new economic policy, the need for notaries arose again, which actualized the development of mechanisms for judicial control of their activities. It is claimed that the Soviet institution of challenging notarial acts or refusal to perform them, introduced by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1924, was almost entirely based on the legislation of Tsarist Russia. However, the main difference was that complaints against the actions of notaries regarding the performance of a notarial act or refusal to perform it began to be filed according to the rules of civil procedure. Such cases were classified by the legislator as cases of a separate proceeding, since they did not involve the resolution of a civil law dispute, in respect of which a notarial act was performed.
 The institution of appealing to the court of notarial actions or refusal to perform them underwent significant changes after the adoption of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Ukrainian SSR in 1963, where it was stipulated that, based on the results of the review of complaints against notaries, a decision should be made, rather than a court decision. According to such a decision, the court could cancel the performed notarial act or oblige the notary (an official who performs notarial acts) to perform it.
 It is claimed that the Soviet model of contesting notarial actions or refusing to perform them in court operated in Ukraine for a long period of time, because the Soviet procedural legislation remained in force, and the notarial legislation of Ukraine in terms of judicial control over notarial activity actually resembled the Soviet one.