The Soviet Legal System: Socialist Legality, Show Trials, and Gorbachev's Reform
The Soviet legal system evolved through several distinct phases, from the revolutionary rejection of pre-revolutionary law to the establishment of a comprehensive legal framework under the doctrine of socialist legality. The Soviet period profoundly shaped Russian legal culture, establishing patterns of instrumental legality, hierarchical control, and the subordination of law to political authority that continue to influence the post-Soviet legal order.
Revolutionary Law and the NEP Legal Framework
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 initiated a radical break with the pre-revolutionary legal order. The Decree on Courts No. 1 of 22 November 1917 abolished the existing judicial system, the bar, the Procuracy, and the system of judicial investigation. The decree established new courts — peoples’ courts (narodnyye sudy) and revolutionary tribunals (revolyutsionnyye tribunaly) — composed of lay judges elected by local soviets. The courts were instructed to apply the revolutionary legal consciousness (revolyutsionnoye pravosoznaniye) and the decrees of the Soviet government. The concept of revolutionary legality (revolyutsionnaya zakonnost) was developed to justify the application of law in the service of the revolution, with the courts acting as instruments of class struggle rather than neutral arbiters of legal disputes.
The New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921–1928) required a more stable and predictable legal framework to support economic recovery and the limited market economy. The Civil Code of the RSFSR of 1922, the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1922, the Land Code, the Labour Code, and the Code of Criminal Procedure were adopted to provide a legal framework for the NEP economy. The codes were based on the continental European civil law tradition but infused with Soviet ideological content. The Civil Code included provisions limiting private property rights and subjecting civil relations to the requirements of socialist construction. The Criminal Code introduced the concept of the socially dangerous person and provided for punishment by analogy where a specific offence was not defined.
Stalin’s Constitution of 1936
The Constitution of the USSR of 1936 (Stalin Constitution) was presented as the most democratic constitution in the world, guaranteeing a wide range of rights including universal suffrage, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and inviolability of the person. The Constitution provided for the separation of powers in form, established the Supreme Soviet as the highest organ of state power, and guaranteed judicial independence. The Constitution also proclaimed the building of socialism and the elimination of exploiting classes. The formal provisions of the 1936 Constitution stood in stark contrast to the reality of the Great Terror (1937–1938), during which millions of citizens were arrested, subjected to summary justice, and executed or sent to labour camps. The Stalin Constitution’s guarantees were rendered meaningless by the absence of independent judicial review, the subordination of the courts to the political police (NKVD), and the extrajudicial procedures of the troikas (special commissions with the power to impose sentences including execution).
Show Trials
The Moscow show trials of 1936–1938 were the most dramatic example of the instrumental use of criminal procedure for political purposes. The trials of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre (August 1936), the Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre (January 1937), and the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites (March 1938) involved leading Bolsheviks — including Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Karl Radek, Nikolai Bukharin, and Alexei Rykov — who were charged with terrorism, espionage, and conspiracy to assassinate Stalin. The trials followed a scripted procedure in which the defendants confessed to crimes they had not committed, the court accepted the confessions as conclusive evidence, and the predetermined death sentences were carried out. The show trials demonstrated the complete subordination of law to political authority. The trials were conducted under the supervision of Andrey Vyshinsky, the Procurator General of the USSR, who developed the theoretical justification for using law as an instrument of class struggle and state policy.
The Brezhnev Constitution of 1977
The Constitution of the USSR of 1977 (Brezhnev Constitution) replaced the 1936 Constitution and provided the constitutional framework for the developed socialist society. The Constitution declared the USSR a socialist state of the whole people, reaffirmed the leading role of the Communist Party (Article 6), and expanded the catalogue of rights (including the right to housing, the right to healthcare, and the right to education). The 1977 Constitution provided for a more detailed regulation of state institutions, including the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Soviet, and the Procuracy. The Constitution also included provisions on the international legal order and the promotion of peace. Like the 1936 Constitution, the 1977 Constitution’s rights provisions were not enforceable against the state and were contradicted by the realities of the Soviet system.
Soviet Legal Institutions
The Soviet legal system was characterised by several distinctive institutional features. The Procuracy (Prokuratura) exercised general supervision (obshchiy nadzor) over compliance with the law by all state bodies, officials, and citizens, in addition to its prosecutorial functions. The Procuracy was a centralised, hierarchical institution independent of local authorities and subordinated solely to the Procurator General of the USSR. The courts of general jurisdiction heard both criminal and civil cases, organised according to the territorial-administrative structure of the USSR (district, regional, republican, and all-union levels). The principle of socialist legality required the strict and uniform application of laws but subordinated the courts to party direction, with party committees reviewing judicial decisions in politically significant cases. The advokatura (the bar) provided legal representation but was subject to state control and could not effectively represent clients in politically sensitive cases. The state arbitration system (Gosarbitrazh) resolved economic disputes between state enterprises, applying civil law in a form adapted to the planned economy.
Gorbachev’s Legal Reform (Perestroika)
The legal reforms of the perestroika period (1986–1991) under Mikhail Gorbachev represented the most significant attempt to reform the Soviet legal system since the 1920s. The reforms aimed to establish a socialist rule-of-law state (sotsialisticheskoye pravovoye gosudarstvo), to strengthen judicial independence, to expand individual rights, and to reduce the role of the party in legal administration. Key reforms included the establishment of the Constitutional Supervision Committee (1989) — a precursor to a constitutional court — the reform of criminal procedure to strengthen the rights of the accused, the liberalisation of criminal law (including the abolition of the death penalty for certain offences), the introduction of judicial review of administrative acts, and the strengthening of the advokatura. The reforms also included the adoption of new legislation on the press, association, and religion, which expanded freedom of expression and association. The 1989 Law on the Status of Judges established judicial independence and irremovability. The 1991 Concept of Judicial Reform proposed the establishment of a Constitutional Court, the introduction of jury trials, the creation of an independent bar, and the reform of criminal procedure. The perestroika legal reforms were cut short by the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, but they provided the foundation for the post-Soviet legal reforms of the 1990s.
Significance
The Soviet legal system left a complex legacy for post-Soviet Russian law. The instrumental approach to law — in which law is a tool of state policy rather than a constraint on state power — persisted from the Soviet period and continues to influence Russian legal culture. The Procuracy’s general supervisory function, the hierarchical organisation of the courts, and the limited independence of the judiciary are Soviet-era institutional legacies. The gap between formal legal provisions and actual practice, the selective application of law, and the vulnerability of courts to political influence all have roots in the Soviet legal tradition. At the same time, the perestroika reforms demonstrated the possibility of legal transformation from within the Soviet system, and the constitutional and legal reforms of the perestroika period provided important precedents for post-Soviet constitutional development.