Abstract
The editor of this volume has defined ‘activist courts’ as those that exercise power over governmental institutions. Soviet history has seen radical shifts in judicial activism. Lenin established power over the Russian government through military might and ‘Red terror.’ Terror involved both non-judicial repression and quasi-judicial revolutionary tribunals directed against persons, including numerous government officials, suspected of anti-Bolshevik leanings. In the late 1920s, there was a temporary restoration of legalism. Courts for a brief period took an active role in deciding issues of the authority of government agencies. Under Stalin, the judiciary exercised great power over government institutions. The Courts were powerful instruments of terror directed at the officials of those institutions. From Stalin’s death through Gorbachev’s first few years, the courts exercised very little power over governmental institutions. By the end of the 1980s, Gorbachev was trying to increase the power of the courts over governmental institutions as part of his announced intention to make the Soviet Union a ‘state governed by law.’ It remains to be seen if he will succeed.
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Notes
George Ginsburgs, ‘The Soviet Judicial Elite: Is it?,’ Review of Socialist Law, 11 (1985): 293. Two years later, another distinguished analyst of the Soviet system Professor Peter Solomon, chronicled Party officials’ persistent interference in court operations. Peter H. Solomon, ‘Soviet Politicians and Criminal Prosecutions: The Logic of Party Intervention,’ Working Paper #33 (March 1987), Soviet Interview Project, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A comprehensive earlier study is Robert Sharlet, ‘The Communist Party and the Administration of Justice in the USSR,’ Soviet Law After Stalin, Vol. 3 (Alphen aan den Rijn: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1979), p. 321.
A. N. Vinokurov, ‘Ob izmenenii i dopolnenii polozheniia o Verkhsude Soiuza SSR’ [On Amending and Augmenting the Statute on the USSR Supreme Court], Vestnik Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR i Prokuratury Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR [Herald of the USSR Supreme Court and of the Procuracy of the USSR Supreme Court] No. 2 (1927) 5: 3;
A. N. Vinokurov, ‘O konstitutsionnom nadzore’ [On Constitutional Review], Vestnik Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR i Prokuratury Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR [Herald of the USSR Supreme Court and of the Procuracy of the USSR Supreme Court] No. 1 (1925): 3;
A. Vinokurov, ‘Soiuznaia Prokuratura i Soiuznyi Verkhovnyi Sud’ [The USSR Procuracy and the USSR Supreme Court], Vestnik Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR i Prokuratury Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR [Herald of the USSR Supreme Court and of the Procuracy of the USSR Supreme Court] No. 2 (1926): 3; Zagor’e, ‘Nuzhna li nam sudebnaia okhrana konstitutsii’ [Do We Need Judicial Protection of the Constitution], Vestnik sovetskoi iustitsii [Herald of Soviet Justice] No. 17 (1928);
V. Diablo, “‘Nuzhna li nam sudebnaia okhrana konstitutsii’” [‘Do We Need Judicial Protection of the Constitution’], Vestnik Verhovnogo Suda SSSR i Prokuratury Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR [Herald of the USSR Supreme Court and of the Procuracy of the USSR Supreme Court] No. 4 (1928) 13: 11;
V. Diablo, ‘Konstitutsionnyi kontrol’ v burzhuaznykh gosudarstvakh’ [Constitutional Supervision in Bourgeois States], Vestnik Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR i Prokuratury Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR [Herald of the USSR Supreme Court and of the Procuracy of the USSR Supreme Court] No. 1 (1925): 26.
Harold J. Berman, Justice in the USSR, rev. edn, enl. (New York: Vintage Books, 1963).
A. P. Vershinin, ‘Deformatsiia sudebnoi zashchity grazhdanskikh prav i interesov v kontse 20-x—nachale 30-x godov’ [Deformations in Judicial Protection of Civil-Law Rights and Interests at the End of the 1920s and Start of the 1930s], Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo [Soviet State and Law] No. 8 (1989): 133.
O. S. Ioffe and P. B. Maggs The Soviet Economy: A Legal Analysis (Boulder: Westview, 1987) describes the plan and contract process in detail.
O. S. Ioffe and P. B. Maggs, Soviet Law in Theory and Practice (Dobbs Ferry: Oceana, 1983), pp. 240–5.
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© 1991 Kenneth M. Holland
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Maggs, P.B. (1991). Judicial Activism in the USSR. In: Holland, K.M. (eds) Judicial Activism in Comparative Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11774-1_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11774-1_12
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