Abstract
According to the contemporary understanding of criminal law in the Soviet science of law, it is society’s means of self-defense against attacks on its existence. Every class-organized society needs criminal law as a tool of self-protection,1 and correspondingly the Soviet state has its own socialist criminal law for the protecting of socialist order against class enemies and survivals of capitalist and bourgeois regime.2
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References
J. N. Hazard, ‘Reforming Soviet Criminal Law,’ Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law, Vol. XXIX, 1938, p. 169. Pashukanis qualified criminal law as a part of the general body of law which is bourgeois in nature. His opponents (see references in Prof. Hazard’s article) insisted that law protecting the socialist state is socialist law. ‘The criminal code is thus not simply a bourgeois institution but has existed in all societies, and will continue to exist under socialism.’ (Harold J. Berman, ‘Principles of Soviet Criminal Law,’ The Yale Law Journal, 56, 1947, p. 803–836).
Soviet jurists assert that a politically conscious citizen of a socialist society does not commit crimes (see above Ch. IV, note 36). Crimes are mostly a manifestation of the survival of the past in the peoples’ minds. Cf. A. Piontkovskii’s critical review (Literaturnaiia Gazeta, January 2, 1950) of the book by B. Utevskii, General Studies on Criminal Breach of Trust. Utevskii’s general idea contradicts the thesis explained above. He emphasizes the significance of the training of new Soviet specialists and their technical skills which allow them to increase their responsibility. Breach of trust thus becomes a crime for the newly trained Soviet officials and is not a survival of the past.
Art. 1 of the proposed new Code of Criminal Procedure mentions the protection of the socialist state of workers and peasants, the protection of the social and political structure of the state, the protection of the socialist system of economy and of socialist property rights, and legal interests of citizens of the U.S.S.R. (See John N. Hazard, ‘Soviet Criminal Procedure,’ Tulane Law Review, Vol. XV, Feb., 1941, pp. 220–240.
See above Ch. IV, 3.
Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta, 1947, No. 19.
‘Crimes which we consider extremely serious, such as murder and manslaughter, are punished by comparatively short prison sentences,’ remarks a student of Soviet Law, ‘while crimes involving theft of communal property or affecting society as a whole more than individuals, are visited with comparative severity.’ R. L. Meek, ‘Soviet Law and Justice,’ (New Zealand Law Journal, Feb. 16, 1943). After 1943, this difference became still more striking.
Izvestia, August 20, 1947.
Goliakov, op. cit., (see Ch. IV, note 30), pp. 174–175.
Circular of 1929, Goliakov, Ibidem.
Criminal Code, Art. 58 (8): The commission of acts of terrorism against representatives of Soviet authority or executive officers of revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ organizations, or participation in such acts, even by persons who do not belong to counter-revolutionary organizations, entails the measures of social defense prescribed in Art. 58 (2).’
As far as judiciary procedure is concerned, here again there is the same distinction in the Soviet legal system which was stressed in regard to regulations about the punishment of a crime against a private person and of an act against Socialist property and the Soviet state. (See Ch. 24).
‘The Criminal Code of 1922, seeking to draw a contrast with the capitalistic world, limited imprisonment to a maximum of ten years. This was humane as compared not only with old Russia but with democratic countries. Regarding the U.S. in particular, Soviet textbooks and lectures on criminology sought to expose the cruelties of its prisons and drew comparisons between the principles—the principles, to be sure, not the practice—of American and the Soviet penal systems.’ ‘Meanwhile practice remained strangely remote from principle.’ (B. W. Maxwell, The Soviet State, 1934, p. 234).
See Goliakov, op. cit., p. 200. The ukase of December 10, 1940, as a special and more recent law, repeals the general rule of Art. 22 of the Criminal Code prohibiting capital punishment for minors (lex posterior specialis derogat legi priori).
Art. 58, i-a to 1-g of the Penal Code.
Resolution of TSIK and S.N.K. of the U.S.S.R. of November 5, 1934, (U.S.S.S. Laws, 1935, No. n, text 84).
Prof. H. Berman relates the case of engineer D. Buligin (now in the United States). ‘I was pleasantly surprised,’ Buligin reports, ‘... we were accused of criminal negligence, under Article 114, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison, whereas Article 58, on counter-revolutionary crimes, could have meant capital punishment.’ (Justice in Russia, p. 86). See also Possev, 1951, No. 9, pp. 13–14.
All these examples are borrowed from the annotated edition of the Penal Code of the R.S.F.S.R., Moscow, 1947. From more recent editions of the Penal Code many of these examples have bien excluded.
Cf. John N. Hazard, ‘The Soviet Court as a Source of Law,’ Washington Law Review, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, Feb. 1949, pp. 80–90.
Sbornik deistvuiushchikh postanovlenii i direktivnykh pisem Verkhovnogo Suda SSSR. 1924–1944. Moskva, 1946, pp. 42–48.
See next chapter, notes 27, 29 regarding the adaptation of the Correctional Labor-Code of the R.S.F.S.R. of October 16, 1924, (R.S.F.S.R. Laws, 1924, text 870). See regulations of the Central Executive Committee and Council of People’s Commissars of the U.S.S.R. from August 1, 1933 (Collection of Laws, 1933, No. 48, Text 208). See also article about this code in The Soviet Encyclopedia of State and Law (in Russian), Vol. II.
According to the resolution of the Presidium of TSIK of the U.S.S.R., passed in 1933, workers, employed persons and farmers of kolkhozes, sentenced to compulsory labor without deprivation of liberty, have to serve as a general rule at the place of their permanent job.
‘Corrective-labor work without deprivation of liberty is at the present time one of the most commonly practiced forms of punishment.’ Osnovy Sovietskogo Gosu-darstva i Prava. p. 540.
Penal Code Article 35. In 1930, in the R.S.F.S.R., the application of the exile penalty was broadened. Collection of Laws, 1930, text 344.
Chronologically, concentration camps with their cruelties and inhuman exploitation of human labor, were established in the U.S.S.R. earlier than in Germany. A historical survey as well as the description of different camps and methods of exploitation of convicted and exiled are given by D. Dallin and Boris Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press, 1947; the most recent description by the former prisoner of the camp, M. Rozanov, Zavoevateli belykh piaten, Verlag Possev, 1951. See also The Challenge, Bulletin of the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Soviet Labor Camps. N. Y. Vol. V, No. 1–4, 1951. 25 Goliakov, op. cit., p. 130.
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© 1954 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Guins, G.C. (1954). Crime and Punishment. In: Soviet Law and Soviet Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0869-8_24
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