https://legal.excellentwiki.com/russia/legal-theory/ Recent content in legal theory on ExcellentWiki - Legal Encyclopedia Hugo en-US Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://legal.excellentwiki.com/russia/legal-theory/russian-legal-theory/ Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://legal.excellentwiki.com/russia/legal-theory/russian-legal-theory/ <h2 id="soviet-legal-theory">Soviet Legal Theory</h2> <p>The development of Soviet legal theory was marked by profound ideological struggles over the nature and function of law under socialism. Evgeny Pashukanis, the most original Marxist legal theorist, advanced the commodity exchange theory of law in <em>The General Theory of Law and Marxism</em> (1924). Pashukanis argued that law is a specifically bourgeois phenomenon that arises from the commodity form — the legal subject corresponds to the commodity owner, and the legal relation mirrors the exchange relation. On this view, law would &ldquo;wither away&rdquo; under communism along with the market relations that produced it. Pashukanis&rsquo;s theory was politically influential until the late 1930s, when Stalin&rsquo;s purges led to his execution and the repudiation of the &ldquo;withering away&rdquo; thesis.</p>