Special Camp Courts in the Soviet Union (the Second Half of the 1940s.)

He article describes the formation and activities of the ad hoc judicial bodies - the special camp courts in the Soviet Union during the second half of the 1940s. The author comes to the following conclusions: special courts were set up in camps hastily; deliberately there was no clearly defined jurisdiction of the camp courts; in the judicial personnel there was staff turmoil and behind-the-scene struggle. In addition, the activities of the bodies were affected by the confusion and "liquidation" sentiment that existed in the management of the camp courts. The thing was that the People's Commissar of Justice N. Rychkov had a very negative attitude towards the camp courts and, whenever convenient, indicated that the Interior Ministry only needed them as their "pocket" courts, turning to the debate on the question of inexpediency of the existence of the camp that "disorganized their work." It should be noted that the steering control apparatus saw staff turmoil. The formation of special camp courts took a fairly long period of time and did not quite corresponded with the plans of the government. The maintenance of the activities of the camp courts and the life of the court staff depended entirely on the heads of the places of detention which violated the constitutional principle of the independence of the judiciary and did not contribute to the effective work of these special courts. In addition, the special camp courts were clearly adversely affected by the excessive disclosure of their activities. The ratio of appealed convictions and sentences of the camp courts was high enough which explicitly talks about low qualifications of judges of special courts in the camp. Thus, in1947 the judicial panel on camp courts' activities of the Supreme Court of the USSR abolished 18% of sentences in cases decided under the procedure of Cassation. According to the official data of the Supreme Court of the USSR among appealed and protested sentences rendered by the courts, it upheld 69,9% in 1948; in 1949 - 68.1%; in the first half of 1950 - 66.5%.

court, judicial system, the Soviet Court, Soviet justice, judiciary, special courts, camp courts, camp justice, the courts, the Soviet judiciary

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