Evolution Of The Prosecutor’s Role In Criminal Pursuit In Russian Empire

Abstract

The relevance of the research topic is associated with the ongoing processes of reforming the judicial and law enforcement systems in modern Russia, as well as disputes about the role of the prosecutor in criminal proceedings and the search for a reasonable balance between the prosecutor’s powers in the field of criminal pursuit of crimes perpetrators and his supervisory powers with the corresponding powers of the body head of the preliminary investigation and the investigator. Despite the fact that the function of criminal prosecution, which should be implemented by the prosecutor at both the pre-trial and judicial stages of criminal proceedings, is one of the traditional areas of activity of the prosecutor's office in modern Russian realities, the criminal procedural powers of the prosecutor are weakened and are in dire need of improvement. Researchers who previously addressed the issues under consideration generally underestimated the real potential of a prosecutor in pre-revolutionary Russia as a “criminal prosecutor”. The most common point of view, according to which, before the judicial reform of 1864, the prosecutor’s role was limited to overseeing the implementation of laws by the authorities, while the function of criminal prosecution was not realized, and in the post-reform period he was already becoming a public prosecutor with an emphasis on prosecuting in court proceedings. The author makes an attempt to refute this position established in science and defends the concept of an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process of forming the prosecutor’s role in the field of public criminal pursuit.