Sources of Transport Law in the Soviet State (October 1917—1920)

Abstract

The article analyzes historical and legal sources of transport law in the Soviet State after the October Revolution, the 100-year anniversary of which is to be celebrated in 2017. The early months of the Soviet Rule were characterized by the tendency supported by public authorities for rejecting legal institutions that had operated in the Imperial Russia and being guided by revolutionary legal consciousness with the view to law disappearing as a legal category in the future. However, the daily reality urged that the immediate implementation of that step was impractical; the author develops the concept of preserving legal norms until "the establishment of the communist system." Decrees adopted with the participation of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (ARCEC), the Council of People's Commissars (CPC) became main normative-legal acts of transport law. In the conditions of the Civil War the decrees of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense (CWPD) amounted to important sources of transport law. The author considers that not only law-making activities of the Soviet State authorities should be taken into account, but also activities of the Governments of the White Movement and "democratic counterrevolution" that operated in several regions of the country. The hierarchical ladder of transport law sources included decrees, orders, regulations and decisions of departmental regulatory authorities, charters of railways, business customs, and treaties. The author outlines his opinion with regard to a debatable issue concerning the possibility of referring party acts to sources of law. The paper demonstrates the specificity of the sources of transport law.