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Thu24 Jul10:45am(90 mins)
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Where:
Room 11
Panelist:
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From the moment the Bolsheviks seized power, Soviet state and society went through phases of massive social disruption that were neither possible nor conceivable without the active role of courts, procurators, and lawyers. Courts were not merely stages for show trials. Alongside party and police forces, the organs of Soviet criminal and civil justice were essential means to disrupt the old order and at the same time to moderate the consequences of this disruption. In the Civil War, revolutionary tribunals assisted and resisted the Cheka in combat behind the frontlines, while at the same time, people’s judges were expected not only to advocate Soviet rule in the courtroom but to set a precedent for the functioning of a new Soviet legal order. Procurators enabled the transition from War Communism through NEP to a rapid Industrialization with the enforcement of ever harsher labor legislation, while arbitration courts helped to curb everyday conflicts among the growing labor force. Under and after Stalin, legal campaigns against theft, desertion from work or hooliganism uprooted millions of people while millions of people were also turning to these very courts to advance their own cause; to keep hold of their existence: by suing for property, alimony and housing.
The roundtable gathers leading scholars of the Soviet justice system to engage in a discussion on the larger trajectories of Soviet legal history. At the same time, we invite experts to reconsider established assumptions about Soviet history and its periodization – through the lens of legal history. What role did law enforcement play for the sustenance of a 70-year dictatorship? What do we learn from the daily practices of courts, procurators and lawyers about the functioning of state power, social milieus at the margins, “citizen” agency or the role of professional (legal) ethos a socialist state bureaucracy? How did law and law practice contribute to the consolidation and demise of Soviet power and imperial rule, and to its ultimate collapse?
