Soviet Criminal Justice and the Great Terror

Years ago Harold Berman observed that for many people in the west the term Soviet law represented a contradiction. Popular imagination found little place for law or criminal justice in a society where terror or extralegal coercion played a major role. Yet, as Berman argued, even in Stalin's Russia law and force existed side by side, and there was a "surprising degree of official compartmentalization of the legal and the extra-legal." Berman recognized that the separation of law and terror was no accident; rather it was a product of the regime's commitment to law and the functions it could perform for a stable, conservative social order. Three decades later western Sovietologists are only starting to come to terms with the conservative phase of Stalin's rule; and, despite a fine essay by Robert Sharlet, the promotion of law has yet to be incorporated into the standard portrait of Stalinism. A major reason is the continuation of doubts about the possibilities for law where terror also reigns

Contradiction · Criminal law · Political science · Politics · Rule of law · Sociology · International Law and Human Rights · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Soviet and Russian History

• The Death of Socialist Law

  Inga Markovits•Annual Review of Law and Social…•2007

  Añadir item

• Russians and the legal system

  William M Reisinger, Arthur H Miller et al.•Journal of Communist Studies•1997

  Añadir item

• The crime of "anti-Soviet agitation" in the Soviet Union in the 1930's

  Sarah Davies•Cahiers du monde russe•1998

  Añadir item

• Russia, the death penalty, and Europe

  Matthew Light, Nikolai Kovalev•Post-Soviet Affairs•2013

  Añadir item

• The case of the vanishing acquittal

  Peter H Solomon•Soviet Studies•1987

  Añadir item

• Regime considerations of the Soviet Union

  Joseph E Goldberg•Comparative Strategy•1990

  Añadir item

• Canadian Publications on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for 1987

  Jack McIntosh•Canadian Slavonic Papers•1988

  Añadir item

• Origins of the Great Purges

  Open Access•John Archibald Getty•Origins of the Great Purges•1985

  Añadir item

• The Search for and Discovery of New Archival Materials for Ambassador Jenkinson's Mission to Muscovy in 1571-72

  Henry R Huttenbach•Canadian-American Slavic Studies•1972

  Añadir item

• The Soviet System of Justice

  Open Access•Ger P van den Berg, Gerard Pieter Berg•Soviet System of Justice•1985

  Añadir item

• A note on the nature of Soviet totalitarianism

  Jan T Gross•Soviet Studies•1982

  Añadir item

• Local political power and Soviet criminal justice, 1922–41

  Peter H Solomon•Soviet Studies•1985

  Añadir item

• Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization

  T Anthony Jones, Donald Filtzer et al.•Contemporary Sociology A Journal…•1987

  Añadir item

• Stalinism

  Robert V Daniels, Robert C Tucker•The Russian Review•1978

  Añadir item

• The Time of Stalin

  John C Campbell, A V Antonov-Ovseyenko•Foreign Affairs•1981

  Añadir item