Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:33:53.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Passionate Legal Debates of the Early Years of the Russian Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Michael Head
Get access

Extract

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 marked the first large-scale attempt to fundamentally reorganize economic, social and legal life along egalitarian lines. In relation to legal theory and practice, the revolution launched the boldest experiment of the 20th century, accompanied by passionate, free-ranging and scholarly debates. Lenin’s government initially sought to fashion a radically new approach to the state, law and legal theory, with some striking results in the fields such as criminal and family law. Moreover, it attempted to create the conditions for the ultimate fading away (“withering away”) of law and the state. These achievements offer insights for the future, notwithstanding the subsequent degeneration under Stalin.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , January 2001 , pp. 3 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. See, for example, Kamenka, E. & Tay, A., “The Life and Afterlife of a Bolshevik Jurist”, (Jan.-Feb. 1970) Problems of Communism 72; C. Arthur, “Towards a Materialist Theory of Law” (Winter 1976–77) 7 Critique 31; S. Redhead, “The Discrete Charm of Bourgeois Law; A Note on Pashukanis” (1978) 9 Critique 113; P. Beirne & R. Sharlet, eds., Pashukanis: Selected Writings on Marxism and Law (London: Academic Press, 1980). For earlier works see H. Kelsen, The Communist Theory of Law (London: Stevens, 1955); J. Hazard, Soviet Legal Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951); L. Fuller, “Pashukanis and Vyshinskii: a study of the development of Marxist Legal Theory” (1949) 47 Mich. L. Rev. 1157; and R. Schlesinger, Soviet Legal Theory (London: Routledge, 1951)Google Scholar.

2. Jaworskyj, M., ed., Soviet Political Thought—An Anthology (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins, 1967) at 50–51 Google Scholar.

3. F. D. Kornilov, “A Critical Review of Soviet Theories of Law” in Jaworskyj, ibid. at 207.

4. See Voronsky, A., Art as the Cognition of Life (Detroit, MI: Mehring Books, 1998)Google Scholar.

5. See, for example, Kelsen, , Hazard, , and Schlesinger, in supra note I and A. Hunt, Explorations in Law and Society (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar.

6. Pashukanis’ main treatise, Law and Marxism, A General Theory, was originally published in the Soviet Union in 1924. It was published in a new English translation in 1978 (London: Inks Links, 1978), which is the edition that will be cited in this articleGoogle Scholar.

7. See Rogovin, V., 1937: Stalin’s Year of Terror (Detroit, MI: Mehring Books, 1998)Google Scholar.

8. Trotsky, L., The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? (Detroit, MI: Labor Publications, 1991)Google Scholar.

9. See Ibid. ch. 2.

10. See, for example, Marx, K., A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977)Google Scholar; Engels, F, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1942);Google Scholar Engels, F., Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of German Classical Philosophy (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978) esp. part IV; Engels, letters to Schmidt, Blockh, Mehring, and Borgius in the period 1890–94 in P. Phillips, Marx and Engels on Law and Laws (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1980) or Selsam & Martel, Reader in Marxist Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1963)Google Scholar.

11. Engels, F., Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of German Classical Philosophy, supra note 10 at 54Google Scholar.

12. , Lenin, The State and Revolution (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) at 37,43. (My emphasis]Google Scholar

13. Ibid. at 62–63.

14. Trotsky, supra note 8, ch. 3 entitled “Socialism and the State”. See also L. Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism ch. 3 entitled “Democracy”.

15. Marx, K., Critique of the Gotha Program (New York: International Publishers, 1970) at 10 Google Scholar.

16. Lenin, The State and Revolution, supra note 12 at 138.

17. Zile, Z., Ideas and Forces in Soviet Legal Theory: Statutes, Decisions and Other Materials on the Development and Processes of Soviet Law (Madison, WI: College Printing & Publishers, 1970) at 50 Google Scholar.

18. Carr, E.H., A History of Soviet Russia, vol. 5 (London: Macmillan, 1958) at 67 Google Scholar.

19. Z. Zile, supra note 17 at 12.

20. See Harold Shukman, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell Reference, 1994) at 22.

21. “Forty Years of Soviet Law 1917–57” in Zile, supra note 17 at 12.

22. “Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Russian Socialist Federative Republic (1918)” in Zile, supra note 17 at 14.

23. See ibid. at 14–15,25.

24. Ibid. at 35–37.

25. Carr, supra note 18, vol. 5 at 68.

26. Zile, supra note 17 at 42–48.

27. Ibid. at 37–38.

28. Ibid. at 38–41.

29. Ibid. at 41.

30. Ibid. at 50. (Next two quotations from same page.)

31. Ibid. at 51.

32. See Trotsky, L., The Military Writings and Speeches of Leon Trotsky, Vol I: 1918 How the Revolution Armed (London: New Park Publications, 1979)Google Scholar.

33. Pogrebinskii, A.P., Motylev, V.E., Pazhitnova, T.K. & Podkolzin, A.M., History of the National Economy of the USSR (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964) cited in Zile, supra note 17 at 96–97Google Scholar.

34. Lenin’s report to the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), March 15, 1921, cited in Zile, supra at 55–58.

35. Ibid. at 56

36. Zile, supra note 17 at 65.

37. Ibid. at 66–67.

38. Ibid. at 67

39. Ibid. at 69.

40. Ibid. at 84.

41. Ibid at 87–89.

42. Ibid at 70.

43. Ibid at 72.

44. Ibid. at 73–74.

45. Ibid. at 76.

46. Carr, E.H., supra note 18, vol. I at 248. For Lenin’s last article on this struggle, see “Better Fewer, But Better” in Collected Works vol. 33 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980) at 487 Google Scholar.

47. E.H. Carr, ibid. vol. 5 at 88.

48. Jaworskyj, supra note 2 at v.

49. Lunacharskii, A., “The Revolution, Law, and the Courts” in Jaworskyj, supra note 2 at 53Google Scholar.

50. Ibid. at 54.

51. Goikhbarg, A.G., “The Goals and Methods of the Proletarian Revolution” in Jaworskyj, supra note 2 at 61Google Scholar.

52. Kozlovskii, M., “Law and Crime: Their Origin and the Conditions of Their Elimination” in Jaworskyj, supra note 2 at 70–71Google Scholar.

53. Magerovskii, D., “Law, Socialism, and State Capitalism in the Transition Period” in Jaworskyj, supra note 2 at 95Google Scholar.

54. Ibid. 107.

55. Ibid. at 113.

56. Ibid. at 134.

57. N.V. Krylenko, “The Conflict between Socialist Theory and Soviet Reality” in Jaworskyj, supra note 2 at 162. Lenin’s comment is from “Better Fewer, But Better”, supra note 46. The next quote in the text from Krylenko is found in Jaworskyj, supra note 2 at 176.

58. Ibid. at 177–78 [italics in original].

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid. at 72–73.

61. Zile, supra note 17 at 229.

62. Zile, supra note 17 at 211.

63. Ibid. at 211–15.

64. Pashukanis, supra note 6 at 58, 81.

65. Zile, supra note 17 at 215–19.

66. Ibid. at 220.

67. Pashukanis, “The Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Law” in Jaworskyj, supra note 2 at 137.

68. Pashukanis, supra note 6 at 61.

69. Zile, supra note 17 at 230.

70. Ibid. at 229.

71. Ibid. at 233.

72. Ibid. at 234.

73. Trotsky, supra note 8 at 62.

74. Ibid. at 62.

75. Zile, supra note 17 at 258.

76. Ibid. at 259.

77. Zile, supra note 17 at 258–59.