Abstract
‘Is there really any law in the Soviet Union?’ Such a question is often addressed to jurists writing or speaking about Soviet law. This question does not surprise those who believe that the idea of law is at the same time a concept of justice and as such belongs to the world of ethics. This question does not seem strange to those who understand law as a cultural value of the civilized world, as a foundation of the social order protecting individual rights as well as the social order itself.
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References
Soviet Legal Philosophy, p. 294.
Ibidem, Strogovich, p. 374; Trainin, p. 442.
Ibidem, Trainin, p. 447.
See above, Ch. II, III, and XII.
M.N. Agarkov, ‘Osnovnye printsipy Sovetskogo grazhdanskogo prava’, Sov. Gos. i Pravo, 1947, p. 35.
Osnovy sovetskogo gosudarstva i prava.Moskva, 1947, p. 504.
Cf. The Materials for the XlXth Congress of the ACP (b) in October, 1952 (The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Nov. 1952, No. 41). An amazing picture of the failure of the Soviet agricultural economy had been presented by the new Secretary of the C.P., Khrushchev in his momentous report to the Plenary Session of the Party Central Committee, September 3, 1953. His main statements were the following ones: ‘… from 1940 through 1952 gross agricultural output increased (in comparable prices) only 10%; An obvious discrepancy between the populations’ growing needs and the production level has been formed during past years;… husbandry is in an unsatisfactory economic state;… the same can be said for vegetables and potatoes;… the unsatisfactory leadership of collective and state farms and M.T.S.;… labor discipline is still very low in many collectives; the number of cows at the beginning of 1953 was 3,500,000 less than at the beginning of 1941 and 8,900,000 less than at the beginning of 1928; the area sown to vegetables is 250,000 hectares less than 1940.’
Memorandum published in Pravdaand other Soviet papers on January 30, 1939. 9 Pravda, November 4, 1946.
Lenin, Sochineniia, Vol. XXXIII, p. 14.
Stalin, Voprosy Leninisma, Moskva, 1922, p. 59.
Ukase of July 6, 1945. Vedomosti Verkhovnogo SovetaSSSR, 1945, No. 39.
As an example: Ukase of June 28, 1949, on the militarization of the guard of the Ministry of Ways of Communication; the earlier example the militarization of river fleet.
The Soviet attitude toward certain institutions of international law cannot be correctly explained on the basis of ‘patriotic feelings and pride’ as J. Hazard does it in his article ‘Soviet Union and International Law’ in The Illinois Law Review, Vol. 43, November-December, 1948.
Many illustrations of this divergence in fundamental principles of international law are given by Charles Prince: ‘Current Views of the Soviet Union on the International Organization of Security, Economic Co-operation and International Law: A Summary,’ The American Journal of International Law, 1945, pp. 450–485; also in The Annals(‘Soviet Policy in the United Nations,’ by C. Dale Fuller, and others).
‘A claim by Russia to be bound only by a portion of the law of her own selection,’ L. B. Shapiro, ‘The Soviet Concept of International Law,’ Year Book of World Affairs, Vol. II, 1948, p. 287.
Attack on Poland and on Finland; violation of non-aggression pact with Japan; postwar policy in Manchuria and in Iran.
The Annals, p. 160. In Germany the Soviet Union tranferred a number of factories into its own property for the reparation account. The twenty-five holding companies control about 180 factories belonging at present to the Soviet Union.
L. D. Levin, in his widely circulated pamphlet Printsip suvereniteta v sovetskom i mezhdunarodnom prave (The Principle of Sovereignty in Soviet and International Law), Moscow, 1947, pp. 11, 15, emphasized the fact that in addition to formal political independence, true sovereignty presupposes economic independence from the imperialist states and sufficient defensive power. From the point of view of this theory, sovereignty of the Constituent Republics of the Soviet Union has to be denied. Levin’s theory, though corresponding to the Soviet attitude toward small nations, has naturally been criticized for political reasons and rejected by Soviet jurists (see below Ch. XXV, 3 and note 43). Sergius Yakobson, in his article The Soviet Concept of the Satellite State’ (Review of Politics, April, 1949, v. 2, No. 2, pp. 184–195), asserts that within the sphere of Soviet political influence, actual sovereignty has already been abolished. His conclusion corresponds to Levin’s theory because the satellites have neither economic independence nor sufficient defensive power. The Soviet practice of extermination of all inimical groups in the occupied countries finds its theoretical justification in Professor Korovins’ discussion of the Hague rules (Eugene Korovin, ‘The Second World War and International Law,’ The American Journal of International Law, v. 32, p. 753). Every anti-Communist and anti-Soviet organization and group is ‘anti-democratic,’ and its extermination is a sacred duty of the Soviet Union as the protector of justice and liberty and as a real democracy. From this point of view any preventive military measures can also find justification and approval.
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© 1954 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Guins, G.C. (1954). Conclusion. In: Soviet Law and Soviet Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0869-8_28
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