Criminal Law Meaning of Professionalization of Сriminal Activities (the Case Study of the 1922 Criminal Code of the RSFSR and the 1996 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation)

Abstract

In 2022, 100 years have passed since the adoption of the first Soviet Criminal Code — a fundamentally new codified enactment in the history of Russian legislation. The purpose and objectives of this study are 1) to identify and analyze provisions of the 1922 Criminal Code of the RSFSR aimed at combating professional crime, to assess their validity, novelty and consistency in the context of criminal and political objectives set before legislative bodies by the Soviet Russia establishment, as well as their dependence on socio-economic and criminological situation that was developing at that time; 2) to determine to what extent the legislator’s approaches to the criminal law fight against professional crime, used in the creation of the Code under consideration, were embodied and developed in subsequent criminal legislation of our country. To solve these problems, the author used rules and techniques of formal and dialectical logic, abstraction and generalization, historical, comparative and formal legal research methods, methods of interpretation of legal norms, documentary sources examination, ideal experiment, legal forecasting, results of previous criminological studies, etc. The author analysed the main and qualified corpa delicti containing such signs as engaging in crimes of a certain type as a profession and committing a crime in the form of a trade. The paper examines the rules of sentencing professional criminals and application of other social protection measures to them in addition to punishment. The author sets out provisions of the criminal law in combination with characteristics of socio-economic and criminogenic situation of the early 20s of the 20th century. Also, the paper explains the views of Soviet lawyers on problems of criminal professionalism and provides the author’s assessment of the grounds for legislative decisions, their gaps and shortcomings. In conclusion, the author briefly describes implementation of the ideas concerning countering professional crime in subsequent Russian criminal codes and in the currently effective 1996 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.