Abstract
This chapter seeks to determine what roles totalitarian legacies and their informal practices of politicized justice played in shaping post-communist constitutional developments in the former Soviet republics. In order to illustrate the impact and functions of the communist authoritarian practices in the former Soviet Union, the chapter proceeds with an analysis of the main differences between trials related to politics (political trials) in Western democracies and in transitional former Soviet republics. I provide a concise overview of each trial by conducting a comparative legal analysis of cases selected from Ukraine, Belarus, Germany and Austria. The concluding section compares roles traditionally played by political trials in established democracies with the roles played by such trials in post-Soviet societies that inherited practices of politicized justice from their communist past. Finally, it offers a list of legal criteria to evaluate future allegations about politically motivated justice.
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