Codification of Criminal Law in the First Years of the Soviet Rule: From Continuity to Independence

The relevance of the work lies in the study of regulatory legal acts of the Soviet rule, which became the first experience of creating norms of law in the changed socio-political reality, based on new principles, including criminal law.

The purpose is to analyze the Guidelines on the criminal law of the RSFSR of December 12, 1919, revealing the features of the content of the document.

In the process of research, general scientific methods of the sphere of humanitarian knowledge (e.g. system, structural and functional) were used. Special methods were also applied: technical and legal analysis, specification, interpretation, historical description. Legal experience is analyzed from the standpoint of the relationship of events and phenomena, as well as taking into account their development in a specific historical situation.

As early as the end of 1917 the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Justice headed by the left SR I.Z. Steinberg announced the creation of the Soviet criminal code. The developed document is recognized as an independent normative act, a monument of criminal law, which corresponded to the principle of continuity and was transitional between the legislation of the Russian Empire and the RSFSR.

When the leadership of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat of Justice became bolshevik, a working group was created, and as a result, on December 12, 1919, Guidelines on the criminal law of the RSFSR were adopted. The document was the first existing codified act in the field of Soviet criminal law.

The guidelines are a small text, the content of which resembles the general part of criminal law. Despite this, it has several fundamental differences from the previous legislation. The main mechanism is repression, and the priority is the interests of workers.

The crime is considered as a violation of the order of social relations protected by criminal law. It is defined as an act or omission of an act dangerous for public relations, causing the need for the state authorities to fight against criminals. Despite the fact that the Guidelines identified the stages of the crime, they did not affect the measure of repression, which is determined by the degree of danger of the offender.

The task of punishment is to protect public order from the offender and prevention of a crime. Punishments appear in the form of adaptation of the criminal to public order, isolation and, in exceptional cases, physical destruction. However, the punishment should not cause unnecessary and excessivr suffering to the offender. In general, the Guidelines became the basis for the further development of legal doctrine and criminal law, as well as directed the vector of law enforcement activities of new judges.

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