Terror as a Tool of Stalin’s Rule Book Review: Syrykh VM. The Legal Nature of Stalin’s Terror: In Compliance with the Directives of the Party, but Contrary to the Law. Moscow: Yurlitinform Publ.; 2020

The paper provides for a critical analysis of the monographic work by famous Marxist legal scholar, Doctor of Law, Professor, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation Vladimir M. Syrykh. As known, there are a lot of works investigating the crimes of Stalinist politics based on open sources that have become available to scientists. Prof. Syrykh cultivates a different, legal view of the activities of Stalinist leadership. As a legal theorist and methodologist, he set himself the goal of analyzing the legal nature of Stalin’s repressive policies and his associates in the 1930s-1950s. The researcher concluded that Stalin’s leadership in the process of building the socialist state turned away from the requirements of the constitution and Soviet legislation, acted contrary to law, replacing it with Directives, which can be qualified as undermining the state system.

Reviewers praise the work by Vladimir M. Syrykh, sharing many of his submissions. As reviewers see, the author’s intention was to purge the very idea of socialism from the distortions and perversions brought by Stalin. According to the author, Stalin perverted the creative nature of Marxism and Lenin’s legacy. However, the authors of the review indicate that the policy of terror against the Soviet people coincides with the period of Stalin’s rule, which gives grounds to Prof. Syrykh opponents to claim: 40 years of socialist construction involved violence, coercion and killing thousands of people. The book under review is written to counter such claims.

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