Abuse of Office in Soviet Law and Practice

Abstract

Abuse of office, in the broad sense in which it is defined in this book, provides a major focus of concern for the political leadership, for the law enforcement agencies and for the media in the Soviet Union. The reasons for this are readily understandable. The Soviet system is based on an encompassing form of state management. This has led to a proliferation of rules surrounding the activity of all officials. Such rules are vital for any form of political and administrative control in any political system. But in the Soviet Union the great scope of state activity has increased the compass of legal regulation. In particular, it has given the criminal law a very broad scope of reference in relation to all organisational activity. At the same time, the attempt by a central authority to formulate and implement such rules has brought manifold problems of evasion. As a result a wide gulf has opened up between officially declared legal norms and moral values on the one hand, and managerial practice on the other. In this chapter I shall try to illustrate this state of affairs and to trace out some of its implications. In section 1 I give a brief account of the main forms of abuse of office as defined in Soviet law. Section 2 will look at some of the pressures and temptations that might explain the persistence of such abuses. Then in sections 3–6 I shall try to draw a picture of the pattern of law enforcement, and to link that picture with the pattern of political power as a whole.