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Dina Moyal

Did Law Matter? Soviet Law Courts under Khrushchev and Brezhnev 1953-1982

Soviet legal institutions – the courts, the Prosecution, the Bar Association – are largely terra incognita for historians and jurists alike. The few reports gathered by historians and legal scholars between 1917 and 1991 on what was happening inside Soviet legal institutions were based either on Soviet propaganda or on oral history and memoirs. Often, show trials and tales of Russian émigrés were the only available accounts of the operating of the Soviet legal system. Since access to legal materials and courtroom documents was extremely limited, it was impossible to conduct a first hand study of this arena. Interestingly, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives, hardly any research had been performed in the field. My doctoral dissertation sheds new light on this understudied topic, using newly available materials from former Soviet archives.

Thanks to this year’s CREEES travel grant I was able to work in Russian State and Municipal archives and study valuable documents of the Soviet legal system of Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s times. Since none of these documents was published before, on site research in Russia was indispensable for the purpose of my project. The CREEES grant allowed me to work in Moscow and obtain archival materials from central Soviet institutions such as the USSR and the Russian Republic (RSFSR) Ministry of Justice, the State Prosecution, the Soviet Bar Association, the USSR and the RSFSR Supreme Courts and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The collections available in Moscow contained a variety of documents: protocols of court sessions, indictments, appeals, stenographic records of meetings, correspondence of state officials and reports issued by legal institutions. Based on those documents and other published sources my dissertation examines how Party leaders and legal officials understood the task of legal institutions; how lawyers and prosecutors viewed their responsibilities in the legal sphere; what legal perceptions governed that system on the ground and what this meant for ordinary Soviet citizens.

In particular, my summer research focused on the Soviet Prosecution – the institution that had the highest supervision over law enforcement in the Soviet Union. The Prosecutor’s Office collection in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) included reports on the work of different Prosecutor’s Offices across the Soviet Union, meeting minutes of the Prosecution Board, the correspondence between the Prosecution and the Communist Party, discussions of new laws and regulations etc. Those documents open a window to what was going on inside the Soviet legal system and help us understand how it worked in practice. In addition the collection contained documentation on education programs for prosecutors and statistical data on employees of the Prosecutor’s Office. The Central Archive of the City of Moscow (TsAGM) contained interesting information on the work of the Moscow City Prosecution. Located in the capital, this office reflected what was happening in the offices of the Central USSR Prosecution.

Finally, a visit to the Moscow Oblast (district) Archive (TsGAMO) gave me access to files from Moscow district courts. Those contained statistical data on cases discussed by the court as well as surveys of the courts’ work with criminal and civil cases. The collection also included information on the election of judges for the People’s Courts (the lower courts in the Soviet Union) that took place every few years. Documents from the Moscow oblast Bar Association consisted of meeting protocols, reports on the work of advocates and elections to the board of the Association.

In sum, my summer field research was invaluable for my project on the Soviet legal system and I am grateful to CREEES for its support. Thank you.