CONCEPTUAL BASIS FOR CLASSIFYING STATE CRIMES DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

Abstract

The article explores problematic issues of defining crimes against state security during the Great Patriotic War. It is emphasized that, from the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the government of the USSR in a certain way formulates the main, conceptual doctrine in the field of management and combating state crime, in connection with which a number of provisions of the criminal legislation were radically transformed, where the main changes were mostly concentrated to increase the role of the repressive component of criminal punishment, and this circumstance was even more pronounced in areas of active hostilities. It is stated that the legislation of the reviewed period was characterized by signs of emergency legislation – wartime legislation, in connection with which many regulatory prescriptions were of a temporary nature – they were valid only for the period of the war. It is argued that in the studied period, the practice of criminalizing administrative offenses and disciplinary offenses is widely used, which established new formats for assessing socially dangerous acts against the security of the state. The provisions considered in the article make it possible to establish how, during the specified period, counteraction to socially dangerous acts was carried out, many of which were equated with state crimes by the legislator of that period. After all, it should be recognized, and this seems more than obvious, that the legislator of that period qualified most of the previously considered acts in wartime as treason to the Motherland – a grave crime against the state.