SOVIETINĖS TEISĖS SUVOKIMAS ANGLAKALBĖJE KULTŪROJE

Abstract

Despite the fact that Soviet legal history was never very popular among Western scholars as general Soviet history was, different interpretations of Soviet law (negative, positive and neutral) formed within English speaking literature. Soviet legal studies reached their peak during the Cold War and after the collapse of USSR, the interest in this field decreased greatly, however, the investigations should not be abandoned by legal scholars, as it could serve to understand the legal reality in post-Soviet societies and to predict their nearest future too. The history of studying Soviet law in the West presents various political, social and personal factors, which influenced the establishment of diverse interpretations of Soviet law in Western scholarship. During the interwar period, Soviet legal studies lacked academic interest and were carried out by non-lawyers and few legal scholars. Among the first group of experts, a positive attitude towards Soviet law prevailed (Callcot, Laski, Pritt), while in the second, more sceptical and neutral voices were heard (Gsvoski, Zelitch, Hazard). During the years of the Cold War, Soviet legal studies enjoyed great popularity and financial support, especially in the United States, but they also had to face competition between two camps: critical “terrorists”, the majority of whom had Eastern European background and knew the Soviet political system from the inside (Gsvoski, Guins, Timashef, Grzybowski, Podgorecki, Simis), and the dispassioned “legalists”, represented by Westerners who were over-focused on the Soviet law in books and the comparative method of investigating Soviet law (Hazard, Berman, Butler, Barry, Ginsburgs, Feldbrugge, etc.). After the collapse of USSR, the majority of Soviet law experts started to focus on the emerging new legal system in Russia, and Soviet law was relegated to the orbit of historical, sociological and political research. As Western legal scholars missed the opportunity to verify their interpretations of Soviet law in the Russian archives, scholars from other related fields stepped in. Students of history, (legal) sociology, politics and other areas focused on the Stalin era and their works reflected the general trend among Western and Russian researchers of Soviet history to reinvestigate the most terrible period – Stalinism. With the turn of the millennium, Soviet law experts continued with the orientation towards new Russian law and their interest in Soviet legal history was almost lost. The nearest future will reveal whether scholars from the post-communist bloc are willing to participate in the further development of Soviet legal history, and which interpretation they will choose for their investigations. Research with a dispassionate (neutral) approach towards Soviet law could serve these countries best in facing a totalitarian legal past, accepting it and moving forward.