Local political power and Soviet criminal justice, 1922–41

Abstract

DURING the course of the first 65 years of Soviet rule, and especially since World War II, the USSR established an administration of justice whose operations were in the main orderly and in accordance with law.1 Though a considerable achievement, this line of development stopped short of a full legal order. For Soviet leaders continued to treat the law as an instrument of rule rather than as a value in its own right, and readily intervened in the work of justice agencies when it was expedient to so do.2 According to former Soviet lawyers in emigration, such interventions affected ordinary criminal cases as well as political ones and were conducted by politicians at all levels of the hierarchy.3 It comes as no surprise to the historian of Russia that the prerogative of the leaders should impede the development of law in the Soviet Union. The parallel between the position of law in the USSR and its position during the last years of the tsars is all too obvious.4 It is tempting to generalise further and suppose that political interference has been a characteristic feature of the administration of justice throughout the years of Soviet rule. While this proposition is probably valid, it does not imply that the influence of politicians in legal affairs has taken the same form or had the same meaning in all periods of Soviet history. In the course of research on Soviet criminal justice in the 1920s and 1930s, this author found that interventions by politicians were indeed frequent and systematic, to all appearances more so than in recent times. Even more striking, though, was the fact that as a rule influence by politicians in criminal cases and in the business of the courts and procuracy came not from the country's leaders but rather from politicians (especially party secretaries) in the provinces and localities. These intriguing findings called for an investigation of the place of local power in the development of Soviet justice. This paper provides such an investigation. It argues, first, that during the late 1920s and for most of the 1930s local power represented one of the primary obstacles to the development of an orderly and consistent administration of justice; and, second, that the efforts made by central authorities during the late 1930s to restrain local politicians from excessive meddling in the affairs of justice represented a crucial step in the building of effective legal institutions. Previous writers on Soviet law (Berman, Sharlet) argued correctly that the late 1930s represented a turning point in its history, but this was so, I contend, not only (or even primarily) because of the rejection of the legal nihilists and the reform of legal education.5 Equally important were the actions taken by the regime to restore and strengthen central direction of local justice and to reduce the influence of local politicians upon it. In documenting the importance of local power in one area of Soviet public life during the 1930s, the paper also supplies grist to the mill of those historians who treat the