Soviet practice has variously questioned, rejected, debased and affirmed law and its institutions. This new anthology of over 400 documents--including legislation, judicial decisions, legal commentary, political statements, and observations on history and social theory--examines and assesses the significance of once-dominant patterns in Soviet thought, guiding students toward an understanding of the present by exploring the past. Recent Soviet views toward nature and the role of law, ways of governance, the intensity of conflict between individual and common interest, and the extent of social disorganization may reflect change, but Zile argues that it is the conditions and experience of the past that are most likely to affect change. Presenting both the voices of the erstwhile victors and the vanquished from within the Soviet experience, this book challenges students and scholars of law and Soviet history to rethink their notions of Soviet legal culture.

This accessible text explains how Russian law works in all its principal areas. It elucidates the main concepts and frameworks behind Russian law, and uses original legal sources and case law to explain how it operates in practice. The contributors, all of whom are leading experts on Russian law, employ original research to further knowledge of the Russian legal profession, legal culture, judiciary and court systems, providing a scholarly and practical account of Russian law for students and scholars alike. It is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the subject.

In the years since Stalin's death, his profound influence upon the historical development of Communism has remained elusive and in need of interpretation. Stalinism, as his system has become known, is a phenomenon which embraced all facets of political and social life. While its effect upon the Soviet Union and other nations today is far less than it was while Stalin lived, it is by no means dead. In this landmark volume some of the world's foremost scholars of the subject, in a concerted group inquiry, present their interpretations of Stalinism and its influence on all areas of comparative Communist studies from history and politics to economics, sociology, and literary scholarship. The studies contained in this volume are an outgrowth of a conference on Stalinism held in Bellagio, Italy, sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. In his major contribution to this book, Leszek Kolakowski calls Stalinism "a unified state organism facing atom-like individuals." This extraordinary volume, augmented by a revealing new introduction by the editor, Robert C. Tucker, can be seen as amplifying that remark nearly a half century after the death of Joseph Stalin himself. Contributors to this work are: Wlodzimierz Brus, Katerina Clark, Stephen F. Cohen, Alexander Erlich, Leszek Kolakowski, Moshe Lewin, Robert H. McNeal, Mihailo Markovic, Roy A. Medvedev, T. H. Rigby, Robert Sharlet, and H. Gordon Skilling. Robert C. Tucker's principle work on Stalin has been described by George F. Kennan as "the most significant single contribution made to date, anywhere, to the history of Soviet power."

The constitutional question is of paramount importance in the political and nationalist agenda of late twentieth-century Europe. Professor van Caenegem's new book addresses fundamental questions of constitutional organisation: democracy versus autocracy, unitary versus federal organisation, pluralism versus intolerance, by analysing different models of constitutional government through an historical perspective. The approach is chronological: constitutionalism is explained as the result of many centuries of trial and error through a narrative which begins in the early Middle Ages and concludes with contemporary debates, focusing on Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Special attention is devoted to the rise of the rule of law, and of constitutional, parliamentary, and federal forms of government. The epilogue discusses the future of liberal democracy as a universal model.

Moving from the adoption of the "post-Stalin" Constitution of 1977 through its subsequent implementation under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko to the radical legal "restructuring" of the Gorbachev years, Robert Sharlet traces the gradual evolution of a nascent constitutionalism in the erstwhile USSR. Sharlet, a noted authority on Soviet law and constitutional development, demonstrates the gradual transformation of law from an instrument of Communist Party rule into the new "rules of the game" for nonauthoritarian political development. In effect, he argues, one of Gorbachev's most durable achievements may be his redefinition of Soviet politics into a legal idiom along with his relocation of policymaking from behind the closed doors of Party conclaves into the more open, emergent arena of constitutional government. In analyzing the politics of law from the Brezhnev era to the rise of Yeltsin, the author takes account of the "war of laws", the symbolic uses of the Soviet constitution, and even the fact that the leaders of the failed coup attempted to justify their seizure of power on constitutional grounds. Constitutionalism has sufficiently suffused Soviet public life, the book concludes, that most of the sovereign republics as successors to the former USSR, have begun designing their futures - to varying degrees - in constitutional forms.

This book examines how traditional indigenous Russian legal values and the 74-year experience with communism and "socialist legality" are being combined with Western concepts of justice and due process to forge a new legal consciousness in Russia today.

The first comprehensive account of Stalin's struggle to make criminal law in the USSR a reliable instrument of rule offers new perspectives on collectivization, the Great Terror, the politics of abortion, and the disciplining of the labor force.

It is now generally agreed that since Stalin's death there has been a definite broadening of group participation in policy formation and implementation. The contributors to this volume analyze seven elite political interest groups at the upper and middle levels of the Soviet social structure. Originally published in 1971. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.