Formation of a Quasi-Marxist Legal Understanding in Soviet Legal Science in the 1920s–1930s

The paper is devoted to one of the clearest examples of misconceptions and falsifications known to the science of the theory of state and law — the ongoing identification of the Soviet (Marxist-Leninist) legal understanding with Marxism. The relevance of the topic is also due to the need to correct the prevailing ideas about «Marxist» (materialistic) concepts of legal understanding and the theory of the origin of the state and law. The subject of the study is the process and general causes of the distortion of the Marxist legal understanding in Soviet jurisprudence in the 1920s-1930s. The aim of the work is to identify the main differences between the authentic Marxist legal understanding and the quasi-Marxist Soviet legal understanding, as well as to attract attention of the scientific community to the problem of their unjustified identification.

Based on a wide range of legal literature of the early Soviet period, the course of the development of the Marxist debate on the understanding of law and the reasons for the appearance of the quasi-Marxist definition of law from 1938, which became the ideological basis and model for subsequent definitions for several decades, is considered. The main contradictions between the Marxist and Soviet understanding of law are shown, primarily related to the «nationalization» of the institution of law, the identification of law and law, ignoring the production and economic conditionality of law, as well as recognition of the key role of state power, force and coercion in the genesis of law.

According to the author, the authority of the Lenin’s works, then Stalin’s ones initially influenced the Soviet legal understanding. It later developed along a simplified positivist path and significantly distanced itself from Marxism, because the Soviet theory of state and law was formed post factum on the foundation of state legal practice, consolidating and sacralizing decisions developed during not scientific, but political discussion.

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