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The Post-Stalin “Thaw” and Soviet Political Science*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Bohdan R. Bociurkiw
Bohdan R. Bociurkiw*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Extract

“Political science,” as the term is understood in Canada and the United States, is still not recognized in the USSR as a distinct academic discipline. Although the phrase “Soviet political sciences(s)” has been occasionally used in Soviet literature of recent years, and though in 1960 a “Soviet Association of Political (State) Sciences” was formed, the Academy of Sciences and the institutions of higher learning in the USSR continue to view “political science” as a somewhat alien concept, ideologically ambiguous and academically suspect.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , February 1964 , pp. 22 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1956

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Footnotes

*

A revised text of the paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Quebec, June 6, 1963.

References

1 See, e.g., Levin, I. D., Sovremennaia burzhuaznaia nauka gosudarstvennogo prava (Moscow, 1960), 135.Google Scholar For a recent assessment of Soviet scholars' views on political science and of the status of political studies in Soviet institutions of higher learning and research see Skilling, Gordon, “In Search of Political Science in the U.S.S.R.,” this Journal, XXIX, no. 4, 02, 1963, 519–29.Google Scholar

2 There is a striking continuity between the post-1938 Soviet concept of the “science of the state and law” and the pre-revolutionary academic treatment of the “state science(s)” as juridical in nature. The latter's development in Tsarist Russia had been strongly influenced by German Staatslehre, especially Jellinek's school (see Sveshnikov, M. I., Ocherk obshchei teorii gosudarstvennogo prava [St. Petersburg, 1896], 13, 106–14Google Scholar; and Korkunov, N. M., Russkoe gosudarstvennoe pravo [St. Petersburg, 1909], I, 48–52, 72–4).Google Scholar

3 Kerimov, D. A. and Sheidlin, B. V., “O predmete obshchei teorii gosudarstva i prava,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo (cited hereafter as SGP), no. 12, 1957, 6–7.Google Scholar For a more elaborate though slightly outdated treatment of the problem of the state-law relationship, see Arzhanov, M. A., Gosudarstvo i pravo v ikh sootnoshenii (Moscow, 1960), 6–78.Google Scholar

4 Konstantinov, F., “Politicheskie teorii i politicheskaia praktika,” Kommunist, no. 16, 1958, 86.Google Scholar Cf. Levin, , Sovremennaia hurzhuaznaia nauka, 27–8.Google Scholar

5 Akademiia nauk SSSR, Teoriia gosudarstva i prava (Moscow, 1962), 14.Google Scholar

6 “Iuridicheskaia nauka i kodifikatsiia,” Pravovedenie, no. 1, 1958, 11.Google Scholar

7 Piontkovskii, A. A., “Nekotorye voprosy obshchei teorii gosudarstva i prava,” SGP, no. 1, 1956, 18.Google Scholar

8 Levin, , Sovremennaia burzhuaznaia nauka, 191.Google Scholar

9 As defined by the “First Conference of Legal Workers” in July 1938 and by the 1941 “theses” of the Academy's Institute of Law, the “unified system of Soviet socialist law” consists of the following “basic branches” (determined by the “content and character of the social relations regulated by law”): the state (constitutional) law; the administrative law; the financial law; the agrarian law; the civil law; the collective farm law; the labour law; the family law; the criminal law; and the law on judicial procedure. Cf. Akademiia nauk SSSR, Osnovnye zadachi nauki sovetskogo sotsialisticheskogo prava (Moscow, 1938), 176–91Google Scholar; and Meshera, V. F., “O delenii sovetskogo prava na otrasli,” SGP, no. 3, 1957, 93–9.Google Scholar

10 For a discussion of this discipline, see below, 40–2.

11 In the words of Arzhanov, illustrating the difficulties of fitting the notion of international law into the Soviet ideological framework, “it is impossible to view international law as an ordinary ‘branch of law’. By its nature it cannot enter into any system of law of a separate country, as it is called upon to regulate relations among countries, including those with dissimilar social-economic systems. …” (Gosudarstvo i pravo v ikh sootnoshenii, 79–81). For a more recent discussion of the Soviet concept of international law by the representative Soviet specialists in this field, see Academy of Sciences of the USSR, International Law (Moscow, 1961).Google Scholar

12 Easton, David, “Problems of Method in American Political Science,” International Social Science Bulletin, no. 1 (spring, 1952), 108.Google Scholar

13 English-language literature on the problem is extremely meagre. See Szczerba, K. and von Schelting, Alexander, “State and Law in the Soviet Union,” in UNESCO, Contemporary Political Science: A Survey of Methods, Research and Training (Paris, 1950), 382–405 Google Scholar; Yurchenko, A., “The Latest Trends in Communist Constitutional Law,” Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of the USSR, 05, 1961, 50–6Google Scholar; and Davletshin, T., “Law and the State,” Studies on the Soviet Union, no. 3, 1963, 89–97.Google Scholar An important contribution to the problem has been made by Professor Skilling's recent article in this Journal (see above, footnote 1), based on his conversations with Soviet scholars during visits to the USSR in 1958 and 1961.

14 Speaking at the Twentieth Party Congress in February, 1956, A. I. Mikoyan pointed out that “during the first period of the Soviet regime, in Lenin's time and a few years after his death, [Soviet juridical science] developed faster in accord with the ideas of Marxism-Leninism [and] the principles of socialist legality.… This cannot be said about the later period and this evoked a legitimate concern within the C.C. [Central Committee] of the CPSU which felt that it must intervene without delay in these affairs to correct the situation …” ( Mikoyan, A. I., Promova na XX z”izdi KPRS [Kiev, 1956], 37 Google Scholar).

15 The question, never adequately answered by the post-Stalin leadership, was eloquently posed in Togliatti's June 1956 interview for Nuovi Argomenti: “… as long as we confine ourselves, in substance, to denouncing the personal faults of Stalin as the cause of everything we remain within the realm of the ‘personality cult’. First, all that was good was attributed to the superhuman, positive qualities of one man; now all that is evil is attributed to his equally exceptional and even astonishing faults. … The true problems are evaded, which are why and how Soviet society could reach and did reach certain forms alien to the democratic way and to the legality which it had set for itself, even to the point of degeneration” (cited in The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism [New York, 1956], 120–1Google Scholar).

16 Akademiia nauk SSSR, Teoriia gosudarstva i prava, 20.

17 P. I. Stuchka (1865–1932), M. V. Kiylenko (1885–1938), and E. B. Pashukanis (1891–1937) represented a sociological school of legal thought which dominated Soviet jurisprudence until the early 1930's. See Grzybowski, Kazimierz, Soviet Legal Institutions: Doctrines and Social Functions (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1962), 2–3 Google Scholar; Hazard, John N., Settling Disputes in Soviet Society: The Formative Years of Legal Institutions (New York, 1960), 477–91Google Scholar; Vyshinsky, Andrey Y., The Law of the Soviet State (New York, 1954), 36–8, 53–9Google Scholar; and Hazard's, J. N. introduction to Soviet Legal Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), xxi–xxvi.Google Scholar

18 See the editorial “Za podlinno nauchnuiu razrabotku korennykh voprosov nauki istorii Sovetskogo gosudarstva i prava,” SGP, no. 6, 1956, 3–11 Google Scholar; I. V. Pavlov, “O razvitii sovetskoi pravovoi nauki za sorok let,” Ibid., no. 11, 1957, 30–49; and Strogovich, M. S., “K voprosu o postanovke otdel'nykh problem prava v rabotakh P. I. Stuchki, N. V. Krylenko, E. B. Pashukanisa,” in Vsesoiuznyi institut iuridicheskikh nauk, Voprosy obshchei teorii sovetskogo prava (Moscow, 1960), 384–405.Google Scholar

19 The official attack on Vyshinsky opened shortly after the Twentieth Congress with the editorial “XX s” ezd KPSS i zadachi sovetskoi pravovoi nauki,” SGP, no. 2, 1956, 3–14.Google Scholar A more elaborate list of Vyshinsky's errors was soon supplied in the editorial “Ukreplenie sotsialisticheskoi zakonnosti i iuridicheskaia nauka,” Kommunist, no. 11, 07 1956, 21–2.Google Scholar The “purge” of Vyshinsky became “official” with Shelepin's speech at the Twenty-Second Party Congress (see Pravda, Oct. 27, 1961). For a much more comprehensive recent criticism of Vyshinsky's influence on the science of the state and law, see the editorial “Za polnuiu likvidatsiiu posledstvii kul'ta lichnosti v iuridicheskoi nauke,” Praoovedenie, no. 3, 1962, 3–14 Google Scholar; Nedbailo, P. and Nazarenko, Ie. N., “Ostatochno podolaty naslidky kul'tu osoby v radians'kii iurydychnii nautsi,” Radians'ke pravo, no. 3, 1962, 3–12 Google Scholar; and Akademiia nauk SSSR, Teoriia gosudarstva i prava, 358–9. Significantly, the post-1961 criticism of Vyshinsky attempted to link him up with the “anti-party group” members, especially Molotov.

20 Nedbailo and Nazarenko “Ostatochno podolaty naslidky kul'tu,” 7.

21 See Kim, M. P., “O zadachakh izucheniia istoricheskogo opyta sotsialisticheskogo stroitel'stva v SSSR v svetle reshenii XXII s”ezda KPSS,” Voprosy istorii, no. 2, 1962, 14 Google Scholar; “Vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie istorikov,” Ibid., no. 2, 1963, 7–8, 9; “Za polnuiu likvidatsiiu posledstvii kul'ta lichnosti,” 11–2; Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta: Seriia ekonomiki, filosofii, prava, no. 2, 1957, 156 Google Scholar; SGP, no. 12, 1982, 101; and no. 4, 1963, 7, 9.

22 See, in particular, the criticism of Vyshinsky's impact on the study of Soviet constitutional law appearing in Gurvich, G. S., “Nekotorye voprosy sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo prava,” SGP, no. 12, 1957, 106–12.Google Scholar

23 Nedbailo, and Nazarenko, , “Ostatochno podolaty naslidky kul'tu,” 8.Google Scholar

24 “Za podlinno nauchnuiu razrabotku korennykh voprosov,” 3.

25 Alexeev, S. S., “Tendentsii razvitiia iuridicheskoi nauki v period razvernutogo stroitel'stva kommunizma,” Pravovedenie, no. 2, 1962, 9.Google Scholar

26 “Za polnuiu likvidatsiiu posledstvii kui'ta lichnosti,” 10.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., 8–9, 12; see L. F. Il'ichev's speech at the December 1961 All-Union Conference on the Problems of Ideological Work, in XXII s”ezd KPSS i voprosy ideologicheskoi raboty (Moscow, 1962), 37–44 Google Scholar; and Romashkin, P. S., “Koordinatsiia issledovanii—neobkhodimoe uslovie razvitiia sovetskoi iuridischeskoi nauki,” SGP, no. 3, 1963, 3–5.Google Scholar See also Kommunist, no. 16, Oct. 1962, 13–38, and no. 1, Jan. 1963, 10–35.

29 Until the mid-fifties, participation of Soviet legal scholars in international organizations was largely limited to the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which was established in 1946 and was made up of official representatives of Communist bloc jurists (in the case of the USSR, representatives of the Law Section of VOKS) and “progressive” groups of jurists in other countries. One of the many international “front organizations,” the IADL served as a quasi-scholarly platform for broadcasting the current policies of the USSR and the international communist movement. After the death of Stalin, Soviet jurists began to participate in such international learned societies as the International Association of Legal Sciences, the International Association for the Study of Comparative Law, International Institute of Administrative Sciences, and International Political Science Association. See SGP, no. 8, 1959, 138–9; no. 10, 1959, 60–9; no. 6, 1960, 126–7; no. 8, 1960, 73–82; no. 2, 1961, 9–17; no. 7, 1961, 128–35; no. 5, 1962, 132–4 (dealing also with the other kinds of external contacts of the Institute of the State and Law); no. 8, 1962, 126–7; and no. 1, 1963, 136–8.

30 Illustrative of the Soviet attitude towards international learned societies is the criticism of the International Association of Legal Sciences appearing in Romashkin, P. S. and Zivs, S. L., “MAIuN dolzhna sluzhit' ideiam mira i progressa,” SGP, no. 10, 1959, 60–9.Google Scholar The authors argue against the notion of an “apolitical” learned society, admitting at the same time that “the broadening of the scientific contacts between the Soviet and foreign jurists should become a serious obstacle to the people spreading misinformation and slanderous concoctions about the Soviet law.” In another article, Dr. Romashkin, the Director of the Institute of Law, observes: “… participating together with the bourgeois jurists in the work of the organizations dealing with comparative legal science, Soviet jurists should express and defend Soviet conceptions, show the superiority of the Soviet law as a law of a higher historical type, and not find the common [denominator] in the socialist and bourgeois law (which, unfortunately, has sometimes been the case with us)” (Ibid., no. 7, 1959, 144).

31 For reports of the annual meetings of the Soviet International Law Association, see SGP, no. 8, 1957, 130; no. 6, 1958, 149–53; no. 5, 1959, 140–3; no. 6, 1960, 124–7; no. 7, 1961, 128–31; no. 6, 1962, 138–41.

32 The exact date on which the Soviet Association of Political (State) Sciences was created could not be established from the available Soviet sources. The first reported meeting of the SAPS took place in September 1960, at which time Dr. Tadevosian stated that “one can observe some weakening of the Association's activities in recent time (za poslednee vremia)” (SGP, no. 1, 1961, 143). While it is possible that the Association was formed as early as the summer of 1959 (see the ambiguous footnote 1, Ibid., the indirect evidence rather points to the first half of 1960 as the most likely date of the SAPS's founding.

33 See Barghoorn, Frederick C., The Soviet Cultural Offensive (Priceton, NJ, 1960), 17, 31, 39, 43, 48–50, 161–6.Google Scholar In February, 1958, VOKS was renamed the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Contacts with Foreign Countries. “For all practical purposes the new alliance represented the continuation of VOKS under a new name … [However] VOKS' conspicuous association with foreign communist parties and the crudity and obstructionism of its past policies, one inferred, were to be modified and its activities brought into better coordination with the foreign policy of coexistence” (Ibid., 160–1). To direct and coordinate Soviet cultural and scientific relations with foreign countries, a ministerial-status body, the State Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries was established in May, 1957.

34 SGP, no. 1, 1961, 143. See also above, n. 29.

35 This function has since been assumed by the Soviet Association of Political (State) Sciences. The most recent of such appeals was addressed by the Association's January 1963 annual meeting to the International Political Science Association, protesting against the “persecution of the Communist Party of the United States.” In 1962, the SAPS addressed similar protest to its American counterpart, the APSA (SGP, no. 5, 1963, 163).

36 Kommunist, no. 16, Oct. 1958, 86; SGP, no. 1, 1961, 143.

37 Konstantinov, , “Politicheskie teorii i politicheskaia praktika,” 86.Google Scholar

38 Another motive for the establishment of a Soviet “political science” organization appears in the first authoritative critique of Western political science, published in the January 1960 issue of Kommunist: “In the conditions of the contemporary ideological struggle, the study and critical analysis of the new phenomena and processes in bourgeois social science and propaganda assume an especially great importance. … It is natural that being at the root (vo glave ugla) of the present ideological struggle, political questions of social development have found a corresponding reflection also in bourgeois sociology, within which, as its separate branch, there [emerged] a special [discipline], [the] so-called ‘political science’, [which] spread widely a long time ago.…” ( Shabad, B., “Apologiia politicheskoi sistemy kapitalizma [O tak nazyvaemoi ‘politicheskoi nauke’ v burzhuaznoi sotsiologii],” Kommunist, no. 2, 01 1960, 87).Google Scholar It is significant that Soviet authorities turned down the conception of a broad Union of Soviet jurists proposed in 1958–59 by a number of Soviet legal scholars and “practical workers” (see Aristakov, Iu. M., Piskotin, M. I., Suleimanova, Kh. S., and Urakov, L. I., “O neobkhodimosti sozdaniia Soiuza sovetskikh iuristov,” SGP, no. 10, 1958, 32–5Google Scholar; and the summary of the letters to the editors supporting this proposal, appearing under the same title, Ibid., no. 7, 1959, 125–7).

39 Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 2, Feb. 1961, 101. The undated item in Vestnik announces the “confirmation” by the Presidium of the Academy of Dr. V. S. Tadevosian as President of the Association, stating that the latter is attached to the Department (otdelenie) of economic, philosophical, and legal sciences of the Academy. The “basic tasks” of the Soviet Association of Political (State) Sciences are described in Vestnik as “the assistance in the development of these sciences in the spirit of the strengthening of mutual understanding and international cooperation of scholars—specialists in this branch of learning, in the name of the strengthening of peace in the entire world and peaceful coexistence of states with different social-political systems; the acquainting of the public in the Soviet Union with political sciences; the acquainting of the foreign scholarly circles with the achievements of Soviet political science; the participation of Soviet scholars in international meetings and conferences along the line of the International Political Science Association, as well as die establishment of personal contacts with foreign scholars.” Significantly, a similar language was used in 1958 to describe the tasks of the newly formed Soviet Sociological Association (see Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 6, 1958, 100).

40 Shatrov, V. P., “V Sovetskoi assotsiiatsii politicheskikh (gosudarstvovedcheskikh) nauk,” SGP., 143–4.Google Scholar

41 V. Slavin, “Pervoe ezhegodnoe sobranie Sovetskoi assotsiatsii politicheskikh (gosudar-stvovedcheskikh) nauk,” Ibid., no. 7, 1961, 131–5.

42 The speaker was V. A. Tumanov, a candidate of juridical sciences (Ibid., 133).

43 Ibid., 134.

44 V. P. Shatrov, “V Sovetskoi assotsiatsii politicheskikh (gosudarstvovedcheskikh) nauk,” Ibid., no. 8, 1962, 126–7.

45 Ibid., 127. Dr. Zivs' suggestion apparently remained unheeded.

46 Shatrov, V. P., “Tret'e ezhegodnoe sobranie Sovetskoi assotsiatsii politicheskikh (gosudarstvovedcheskikh) nauk,” SGP, no. 5, 1963, 161.Google Scholar About one half or the participants in the 1963 meeting came from Leningrad and the academies and university centres in the union republics.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., 162–3.

49 After spending a year at the Institute of the State and Law, Professor Harold J. Berman of Harvard Law School reported a much greater freedom of discussion prevailing at the meetings of Soviet scholars than could be gathered from the published reports of such meetings (see his “The Struggle of Soviet Jurists against a Return to Stalinist Terror,” Slavic Review, no. 2, June 1963, 314–20).

50 An instructive analogy could be drawn in this connection with the role played by the Soviet Sociological Association, a similar “front organization” for combating “hostile” tendencies within Western sociology—and the partial resuscitation of sociology in the USSR.

51 The catalogue of Stalin's theoretical “errors” which is still being compiled, includes, among others, his “mistaken and harmful” thesis about the sharpening of the class struggle after the victory of socialism (officially interpreted now as Stalin's theoretical justification of the “crudest violations of socialist legality”); Stalin's 1939 thesis that the “economic-organizational” and “cultural-educational” functions of the Soviet state did not “seriously develop” during the “first stage,” i.e., the period of transition from capitalism to socialism; his 1936 thesis that the dictatorship of the proletariat should not only be left intact (despite the “broadening” of its social basis), but also intensified with emphasis on its punitive, coercive functions; Stalin's limited interpretation of “socialist legality” as merely limited to the “protection of socialist property.” See Akademiia nauk SSSR, Teoriia gosudarstva i prava, 20–1, 216, 222. Among the Leninist theses “creatively” abandoned by the post-Stalin Soviet leaders, are Lenin's rejection of a parliamentary means of transition to socialism under the conditions of “imperialism”; his identification of the socialist state with the dictatorship of the proletariat (the view also shared by Marx and Engels); and Lenin's thesis on the inevitability of wars.

52 The working class, according to the 1961 Program, nevertheless remains a “leader of society,” as “the foremost and best organized force of Soviet society.” Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York, 1961), 103–4.Google Scholar

53 Ibid. Several possible explanations could be advanced for this essentially semantic change in the Soviet theory of the state: (1) propaganda considerations aiming at removing the stigma of “dictatorship”—a universally unpopular concept—from the Soviet system (according to Izvestiia [Aug. 18, 1961], the replacement of the formula of the dictatorship of the proletariat with that of the “state of the entire people,” “strikes a crushing blow at bourgeois and reformist ideologists who spread cock-and-bull stories about the egoism of the working class and the adherence of Communists to totalitarianism and violent methods of dictatorship” ); (2) a symbolic concession to the popular desire for the strengthening of the rule of law and of the guarantees of individual rights; (3) an implicit recognition of the actual leading class in society—the intelligentsia; and last but not least (4) a rationalization further postponing the “withering away” of the state in the USSR.

54 Program of the CPSU, 137–8; Golunskii, S. A., “Osnovnye napravleniia razvitiia obshchenarodnogo prava,” SGP, no. 11, 1962, 3–14.Google Scholar

55 Cf. Stalin's 1936 speech on the draft constitution of the USSR stating the still firmly embraced theory of Soviet society and the “broadening of the social base” of the Soviet state in the “Stalin Constitution,” as well as Stalin's 1939 restatement of the problem of the “withering away” of the state in the USSR. The continuity (also marked in regard to the treatment of the nationality question in the USSR) is implicidy admitted in Akademiia nauk SSSR, Teoriia gosudarstva i prava, 222–3.

56 See, e.g., the editorial “Proekt novoi programmy KPSS i nekotorye voprosy teorii gosudarstva i prava,” Pravovedenie, no. 3, 1961, 3–14. Voprosy istorii KPSS, no. 4, 1961, compiled before the publication of the Draft Program but published after the former, still quoted Marx and Lenin in support of the thesis that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is essential throughout the period of transition from capitalism to communism” (p. 42). The subsequent manipulation and distortion of “quotations” from Lenin to “prove” the orthodoxy of the new concept of the Soviet state, is exemplified by Farberov's and Romashkin's article in Akademiia nauk SSSR, Teoriia gosudarstva i prava, 226–7

57 Akademiia nauk SSSR, Teoriia gosudarstva i prava (Moscow, 1962), edited jointly by Romashkin, P. S., Strogovich, M. S., and Tumanov, V. A..Google Scholar

58 Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 4, Apr. 1962, 112.

59 Alexeev, , “Tendentsii razvitiia iuridicheskoi nauki,” 9.Google Scholar Cf. SGP, no. 10, 1962, 134–6.

60 See, in particular, L. F. Il'ichev's speech at the general meeting of the Academy of Sciences in October 1962, setting out the “concrete” problems for the elaboration by legal scholars (especially the assistance in the preparation of the new Soviet Constitution), Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 11, Nov. 1962, 25. See also Pravovedenie, no. 3, 1961, 3–4.

61 See the criticism and self-criticism in Pravovedenie, no. 3, 1962, 3–14; and SGP, no. 3, 1963, 3–5, and no. 2, 1963, 135–8.

62 The previous text was Kachek'ian, S. F. and Fed'kin, G. I., eds., Istoriia politicheskikh uchenii (Moscow, 1955).Google Scholar The 1959 text of the same name was edited by K. A. Mokichev.

63 Professor Ladyzhens'kyi in Radians'ke pravo, no. 5, 1960, 148. Cf. the review of Mokichev's book in SGP, no. 3, 1960, 150–4.

64 To fill the gap, a revised (fourth) edition of the old text by the founder of this discipline, Professor S. V. Iushkov, has been brought out recently ( Istoriia gosudarstva i prava SSSR [Moscow, 1961])Google Scholar, under the editorship of V. S. Pokrovskii. It was received with considerable criticism (see SGP, no. 2, 1963, 146–9).

65 Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, Sorok let sovetskogo prava (Leningrad, 1957), 2 vols.Google Scholar

66 Akademiia nauk URSR, Istoriia derzhavy i prava Ukrains'koi RSR (1917–1960) (Kiev, 1961)Google Scholar; Istoriia gosudarstva i prava Sovetskogo Kazakhstana, Vol. I (1917–1925) (Alma Ata, 1981)Google Scholar; Istoriia Sovetskogo gosudarstva i prava Uzbekistana, Vol. I (1917–1924) (Tashkent, 1960Google Scholar). One of the difficulties encountered by Soviet scholars in this field has been the lack of officially approved periodization of the constitutional history of the USSR and the republics, after the Stalinist periodization (identical with the now withdrawn Short Course) was found to be “subjective” and “scientifically incorrect.” Titov, Se Iu. P. and Chistiakov, O. I., “Nekotorye voprosy istorii gosudarstva i prava SSSR,” SGP, no. 3, 1981, 30–9Google Scholar, and especially the section “Voprosy istorii Sovetskogo gosudarstva i prava v svetle Programmy KPSS,” SGP, no. 10, 1962, 25–46. The obvious and, indeed, most formidable factor hindering scholarly research in this field has been the rapidly changing “historical perspective” of the party, which exposes the historians of the Soviet state to charges of “dogmatism,” “distortions,” and “errors” with every official revaluation of the past.

67 See, e.g., Margunskii, S. P., Sozdanie i uprochenie belorusskoi gosudarstvennosti, 1917–1922 (Minsk, 1958)Google Scholar; Gordienko, A. A., Sozdanie sovetskoi natsional'noi gosudarstvennosti v Srednei Azii (Moscow, 1959)Google Scholar; and, especially, Babii, M. B., Ukrains'ka radians'ka derzhava v period vidbudovy narodnioho hospodarstva (1921–1925) (Kiev, 1961)Google Scholar, based to a large degree on the hitherto “classified” archival documents. On the other hand, the more recent the period of investigation, the more “dogmatized” and the less factual the relevant studies tend to be. The history of the Russian state and law during the half-century before the 1917 Revolution has been perhaps the most neglected period, though with the recent publication of select documentation on the Dumas and of the valuable study by Eroshkin, N. P., Ocherki istorii gasudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow, 1960)Google Scholar, this lacuna evidently has begun to attract the attention of the Soviet state historians. See also Nelidov, A. A., Istoriia gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii SSSR, 1919–1936 gg. (Moscow, 1962).Google Scholar

68 S”ezdy Sovetov Soiuza SSSR, soiuznykh i avtonomnykh sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respuhlik (Moscow, 1959–1960), 3 vols.Google Scholar; S”ezdy Sovetov RSFSR i avtonomnykh respublik RSFSR (Moscow, 1959–1960), 3 vols.Google Scholar In addition to these selections, republication of the stenographic records of the individual congresses was commenced after the Twentieth Party Congress. See also Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow, 1959–1960), 2 vols.Google Scholar A number of specialized collections of the government and party documents have appeared during the past few years, dealing with such areas as foreign affairs, the army, “cultural construction,” religion, economy, youth, etc.

69 In particular, the publication of the early correspondence of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and of “new” articles, letters, and other materials by Lenin; and the appearance of specialized collections of party documents, and of memoires of the “old Bolsheviks.” Some of the most important documents in these categories have appeared in the Party journal, Voprosy istorii KPSS, launched in 1956.

70 The most important publications in this area are the histories of the republic and local Party organizations, as well as those of Party organizations in individual functional branches of the Soviet system.

71 The best criticism of Vyshinsky's sterilizing influence on the science of constitutional law appears in the article by Gurvich, G. S., “Nekotorye voprosy sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo prava,” SGP, no. 12, 1957, 106–12.Google Scholar

72 Denisov, A. and Kirichenko, M., Soviet State Law (Moscow, 1960).Google Scholar

73 Vysshaia partiinaia shkola pri TsK KPSS, Osnovy sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo stroitel'stva i prava (Moscow, 1961)Google Scholar, and Zlatopolsky, D., State System of the U.S.S.R. (Moscow, 1962)Google Scholar, the latter work dealing largely with the origin, nature, and the tendencies of development of Soviet federalism.

74 Lepeshkin, A. I., Kurs sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo prava (Moscow, 1961, 1962), 2 vols.Google Scholar The first volume was produced by Lepeshkin alone, the second (under his editorship), jointly with A. I. Kim, N. G. Mishin, and P. I. Romanov.

75 Thus, e.g., Herman Finer is ascribed fascist tendencies (Ibid., I, 123), while Chicago's Leo Strauss becomes “one of the West German state scientists” who “openly confessed that he is a supporter of the natural law mainly due to the fact that for such a system the principle of legality is not obligatory” (Ibid., I, 127).

78 Akademiia nauk SSSR, Sovetskoe gosudarstvennoe pravo. Bibliografiia, 1917–1957 (Moscow, 1958).Google Scholar In 1960, the Institute of the State and Law produced a rather selective English-language guide to bibliographies of Soviet law, including also the state science and international law ( Literature on Soviet Law. Index of Bibliography [Moscow, 1960]).Google Scholar

77 Constitutional law of the “countries of people's democracies” has been introduced into the curriculum of the Soviet juridical institutes and faculties since 1946 and has subsequendy developed into a specialized area of research. Until recently, no satisfactory (from the Soviet point of view) text had been produced for this discipline, which has suffered not only from the fluidity of laws and institutions in the “people's democracies,” but also from attempts to apply the scheme of the Soviet Constitution and the familiar “dogmatic,” “commentary” style (see Chirkin, V. E., “O sisteme uchebnogo kursa gosudarstvennogo prava stran narodnoi demokratii,” Pravovedenie, no. 2, 1961, 143–52Google Scholar). A slight recovery from these tendencies appears in two recent texts in the field (Akademiia nauk SSSR, Institut gosudarstva i prava, Gosudarstvennoe pravo stran narodnoi demokratii [Moscow, 1961]Google Scholar, and the somewhat less up-to-date text of the same name produced in 1960 by Voevodin, Zlatopol'skii, and Kuprits of the Moscow State University). The first attempt at a joint research project by Soviet and satellite scholars resulted in the publication of a 1960 symposium ( Kotok, V. F. and Farberov, N. P., eds., Voprosy gosudarstva i prava stran narodnoi demokratii [Moscow, 1960]).Google Scholar

78 See the editorial “Glubzhe izuchat' i kritikirovat' burzhuaznuiu iurisprudentsiiu,” SGP, no. 4, 1956, 3–14. The article attacks such shortcomings as the almost complete ignoring by Soviet critics, of “the so-called ‘political science’” in the West, “the substitution of shouting and loose language for a substantive critique,” the failure to read contemporary Western works in the field and the obsolete nature of sources used combined with sweeping generalizations about the “epigonism” of Western scholars, factual errors and careless documentation, “declarative and unproved general phrases,” vulgarization of the process of the subordination of the capitalist state to monopolies which “many researchers even now reduce to the enumeration of the representatives of the big firms who occupy responsible posts in the government.” With greater ambivalence evident in the official Soviet view of the West and the opening of access to the relevant Western literature, some improvement could be observed in Soviet studies of Western politics. See, e.g., a recent text in this field, Levin, I. D. and Krylov, B. S., eds., Gosudarstvennoe pravo burzhuaznykh stran (Moscow, 1962)Google Scholar, and Uchenye zapiski of the Department of State Law of the Institute of International Relations, a series started in 1960 under the title Voprosy gosudarstva i prava zarubezhnykh stran. A number of popular essays on political systems of individual foreign countries have appeared in the series “Gosudarstvennoi stroi stran mira” published by the State Publishing House of Juridical Literature in Moscow.

79 The revisions in question are primarily the admission of the possibility of a “peaceful” proletarian revolution, especially through the winning of parliamentary majorities (admitted as possible in France and Italy), and the recognition of a new category of “national democracies” (the newly emancipated nations which Stalin dismissed until 1952 as “puppets” and “reactionary dictatorships”). See the editorial “Glubzhe izuchat' i kritikirovat' burzhuaznuiu iurisprudentsiiu,” 7–13; and Chernilovskii, Z. M., “O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii burzhuaznogo gosudarstva i prava noveishego vremeni,” SGP, no. 9, 1956, 27–37.Google Scholar

80 Several tendencies in Western politics are singled out by the Soviet writers as “representative” of this crisis: (1) the growing intervention of the state into economic and social life (the intensification of “state monopoly capitalism” under the guise of a “welfare state”); (2) the decline of representative parliamentary institutions and the growing power of the executive and administrative organs (“bureaucratization”); (3) the “breakdown of bourgeois legality” manifested in the greater limitation of individual rights, “legislation by the judges,” and “administrative justice”; and, finally, (4) the attrition of federalism and local self-government. See Levin, , Sovremennaia burzhuaznaia nauka, 81–9, 92–5, 239–56, 290–4, 299–300, 390–4Google Scholar; “Glubzhe izuchat' i kritikirovat' burzhuaznuiu iurisprudentsiiu,” 11–2; and Lepeshkin, et al., Kurs sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo prava, II, 251–4, 571–86.Google Scholar

81 Cf. “Glubzhe izuchat' i kritikirovat' burzhuaznuiu iurisprudentsiiu,” 7–9.

82 “Of certain interest might be also the logical-juridical elaboration of the normative material done by bourgeois scholars in the form of various definitions and classifications … [which] are, of course, completely inapplicable to socialist state law. However, they may play an auxiliary role in the study of the bourgeois state law and may even serve as working tools in the elaboration of the corresponding, though fundamentally different, scientific apparatus of the socialist state law” ( Levin, , Sovremennaia burzhuaznaia nauka, 6 Google Scholar).

83 Ibid., 396–7.

84 So far the best text in Soviet administrative law was produced in 1959 by Vlasov, V. A. and Studenikin, S. S. (Sovetskoe administrativnoe pravo [Moscow, 1959]).Google Scholar Another recent text was brought out by a Leningrad University administrativist, ProfessorPetrov, G. I. (Sovetskoe administrativnoe pravo. Chast' obshchaia [Leningrad, 1960]).Google Scholar

85 Ananov, I. N., Ministerstva v SSSR (Moscow, 1960).Google Scholar

86 Vlasov, V. A., Sovetskii gosudarstvennyi apparat (Moscow, 1959).Google Scholar See also his Osnovy Sovetskogo gosudarstvennogo upravleniia (Moscow, 1960).Google Scholar

87 Luk'ianov, A. I. and Lazarev, B. M., Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i obshchestvennye organizatsii (Moscow, 1960).Google Scholar

88 See, e.g., Rovinskii, E. A., ed., Sovetskoe finansovoe pravo (Moscow, 1961)Google Scholar; Kogan, M. L., Biudzhetnye prava soiuznykh respublik (Moscow, 1960)Google Scholar; Piskotin, M. I., Biudzhetnye prava mestnykh Sovetov deputatov trudiashchikhsia (Moscow, 1961)Google Scholar; Organizatsiia suda i prokuratury v SSSR (Moscow, 1961, 1962)Google Scholar; and Berezovskaia, S. G., Prokurorskii nadzor za zakonnost'iu pravovykh aktov upravleniia v SSSR (Moscow, 1959).Google Scholar

89 During the early 1930's, the discipline of “sovetskoe stroitel'stvo” embraced, however, elements of all other branches of the state science, which it was later charged, was representative of the orientation of Krylenko and Pashukanis towards the “withering away of law.

90 See Barabashev, G. V. and Sheremet, K. F., “O prepodavanii sovetskogo stroitel'stva v iuridicheskikh vuzakh,” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, no. 1, 1960, 41–8.Google Scholar See also Askerov, A. A., Ocherki sovetskogo stroitel'stva (Moscow, 1953), 12.Google Scholar

91 See the Oct. 5, 1946, resolution of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) “On Extending and Improving Legal Training in the Country.”

92 Sheremet, K. F. and Barabashev, G. V., Sovetskoe stroitel'stvo (Moscow, 1961), 16–8.Google Scholar Cf. Khakimov, M. Kh., “O predmete nauki sovetskogo stroitel'stva,” SQP, no. 5, 1961, 110–16.Google Scholar

93 Khakimov, , “O predmete nauki,” 116.Google Scholar

94 Askerov, , Ocherki sovetskogo stroitel'stva, 17 Google Scholar; Sheremet, and Barabashev, , Sovetskoe stroitel'stvo, 42–3.Google Scholar

95 Khakimov, “O predmete nauki,” 111. Since 1960, chairs (kafedry) in the state (constitutional) law in the faculties of law and at the juridical institutes have been transformed into chairs in “state law and Soviet construction” (Ibid., 110).

96 The other two texts have been the pioneering Ocherki sovetskogo stroitel'stva of Askerov, written, however, under the “conditions of the personality cult,” and Kozlova, E. I., Sovetskoe stroitel'stvo (Moscow, 1960).Google Scholar The monthly journal, Sovety deputatov trudiash-chikhsia, published since 1957 by Izvestiia, is devoted primarily to the practical problems of “Soviet construction.”

97 See the report on a December 1960 conference of scholars and “practical workers” in Moscow devoted to the problems of the “science of Soviet construction” (“Za dal'neishee razvitie nauki sovetskogo stroitel'stva,” SGP, no. 5, 1961, 116–20Google Scholar). According to Dr. V. F. Kotpk, “specialists in administrative law should study Soviet construction, since ultimately they will become experts in Soviet construction. Legal regulation would gradually die out and will be replaced by the regulation of [social] relationships by socialist traditions which are already in existence” (Ibid., 118).

98 See, e.g., a useful commentary on the new party rules, Bugaev, E. I. and Leibzon, B. M., Besedy ob ustave KPSS (Moscow, 1962)Google Scholar; Akademiia obshchestvennykh nauk pri TsK KPSS, Nekotorye voprosy organizatsionno-partiinoi raboty v sovremennykh usloviiakh (Moscow, 1961)Google Scholar; and the somewhat sterile venture into a crucially important area of Soviet politics, Lesnoi, V. M., Rukovodiashchaia rol' KPSS v Sovetskom gosudarstve (Moscow, 1961).Google Scholar A recent authoritative definition of the “party construction” describes the latter as “a component part of the Leninist teaching on the Communist party; a science of the regularities (zakonomirnosti) of the emergence, development, and strengthening of the Marxist-Leninist party, [dealing with] the Leninist principles of the party's organizational structure, its historical experience, the principles of party leadership, the Leninist style, forms, and methods of party work, the political and organizational direction of the state, economic, and cultural construction and the communist education of the toilers. The party construction includes the practice of the organizational work of the party organizations and the leading party organs” ( Ukrains'ka Radians'ka Entsyklopediia, X[1962], 548).Google Scholar The semi-monthly journal, Partiinaia zhizn', which resumed publication in April 1954, is devoted primarily to the theoretical and practical questions of “party construction.”

99 The other three, more concerned with the “practical questions” of the judiciary, procuracy, arbitration, and lawyers' and notaries' practice, are Sovetskaia iustitsiia (Moscow), published by the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Court of the RSFSR; the Georgian-language Sovetskoe pravo (Tbilisi); and the Lithuanian Sovetskaia zakonnost' (Vilnius). By 1961, twenty-two Soviet juridical institutes and law faculties were publishing their “Proceedings” or “Papers” (“Nauka o gosudarstve i prave na novom rubezhe kommunisticheskogo stroitel'stva,” SGP, no. 9, 1961, 5).

100 See “Iuridicheskaia nauka i pravovye uchrezhdeniia v soiuznykh respublikakh,” SGP, no. 12, 1962, 96–101.

101 Romashkin, , “Koordinatsiia issledovanii,” 3–8.Google Scholar

102 “O reorganizatsii Instituta prava v Institut gosudarstva i prava,” Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 8, 1960, 116.Google Scholar

103 Romashkin, , “O zadachakh Instituta gosudarstva i prava,” 13–5.Google Scholar

104 Cited in Rakhmaninova, E. A., “Obsuzhdenie voprosa o zadachakh Instituta gosudarstva i prava,” SGP, no. 1, 1961, 141.Google Scholar

105 Romashkin, , “O zadachakh Instituta gosudarstva i prava,” 15.Google Scholar

106 Ibid., 17.

107 Ibid., 15, 21–3.

108 See Pravda, Oct. 27, 1961. For a more recent official criticism of the lag in Soviet “legal science,” see Il'ichev, L., “Nauchnaia osnova rukovodstva razvitiem obshchestva: Nekotorye problemy razvitiia obshchestvennykh nauk,” Kommunist, no. 16, 02, 1962, 30, 33.Google Scholar

109 “O rabote Instituta gosudarstva i prava,” Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 4, 1962, 112.Google Scholar

110 Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR, no. 12, 1962, 6–8, 19–62; Romashkin, , “Koordinatsiia issledovanii,” 6.Google Scholar The new reorganization had evidently been decided on in principle at the November 1962 Plenum of the Central Committee. Like the latter's decisions with regard to the Party and government organization, the re-organization of the Soviet research institutions stresses specialization, “concrete problems,” and complex unorthodox approaches.

111 See the report of the December 1962 meeting of the section on the “Political Organization of Society,” SGP, no. 3, 1963, 130.Google Scholar

112 Romashkin, , “Koordinatsiia issledovanii,” 6–15.Google Scholar Evidently, the performance of Soviet state scientists under the 1963–64 thematic plan has been somewhat less than enthusiastic. For an official criticism of “serious shortcomings” in this area, see the recent editorial “Povyshat' rol' pravovoi nauki v formirovanii kommunisticheskogo mirovozzreniia,” SGP, no. 8, 1963, 3–14.Google Scholar

113 See the report, “Soveshchanie direktorov institutov gosudarstva i prava sotsialisticheskikh stran,” SGP, no. 12, 1962, 148–9.Google Scholar The first such conference met at the initiative of Hungarian jurists, in Budapest, in November 1961; the second meeting took place in Warsaw in September 1962. A collection of articles by Soviet, Polish, Czechoslovak, and East German jurists, dealing with the “Legal Co-operation among Socialist Countries,” appeared in 1962 ( Tadevosian, V. S., ed., Pravovoe sotrudnichestvo mezhdu sotsialisticheskimi1 gosudarstvami [Moscow, 1962])Google Scholar; in the same year another joint study, “The Representative System of the USSR and the Countries of People's Democracy,” had been prepared for publication. See Shatrov, V. P., “O mezhdunarodnykh nauchnykh sviaziakh Instituta gosudarstva i prava AN SSSR v 1962 g.,” SGP, no. 4, 1963, 144.Google Scholar

114 Il'ichev, , “Nauchnaia osnova rukovodstva,” 37.Google Scholar

115 Ibid.

116 Leoniuk, E. F., “Ob osnovnykh napravleniiakh kriticheskogo izucheniia sovremennogo imperialisticheskogo gosudarstva i prava i bor'by s vrazhdebnoi ideologiei,” GSP, no. 6, 1963, 136.Google Scholar Previously this field of study has been under the sector of state (constitutional) law and was largely confined to this branch of law.

117 Ibid., 136–7. For an interesting summary of the completed volume on political parties and party-systems in “bourgeois states,” see “Politicheskie partii v sisteme diktatury monopoly,” SGP, no. 8, 1963, 69–80.Google Scholar Other projected volumes will reportedly deal with such problems as the impact of the “state-monopoly capitalism” on constitutions, governmental institutions and processes of “bourgeois states”; “functions of the contemporary imperialist state and methods of their realization”; the concepts of a “presidential republic” and a “political regime”; and, inevitably, the “unmasking of the numerous bourgeois and reformist conceptions.”

118 Leoniuk, , “Ob osnovnykh napravleniiakh,” 137.Google Scholar The significance of Dr. Levin's suggestion, though limited to the study of non-socialist (from the Soviet point of view) political systems, lies in the novel use of the concept of “state science” which comes close to the Western notion of political science. While, as has been pointed out in this paper, the concept “state science” (gosudarstvovedenie) has long been established in Soviet usage, it served rather as a conventional common designation of certain subdivisions of the “science of the state and law.” To this writer's knowledge, Dr. Levin's is the first published suggestion to make “state science” into a distinct scholarly (nauchnaia) discipline. Should it be carried into effect, even in the proposed limited application, such a break in the dogmatized “state and law” pattern would undoubtedly influence the Soviet study of their own and “fraternal” political systems and would represent an important step towards the admission of political science into the Soviet organization of knowledge.

119 In his December 1962 address, one of the principal party spokesmen in social sciences, Academician B. Ponomarev, elaborated on the principle of “partisanship” in scholarship: “In determining the topic, selecting the object or research, choosing the form of generalization from the [source! material, presenting and illuminating this or that event, a scholar must always realize the social significance of each of the elements of his work, strictly control what and how he announces to the masses, to what extent his evaluations are permeated by the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, [and] what will be the real contribution of his work to the cause of the people's movement towards communism” ( Ponomarev, B., “Istoricheskuiu nauku i obrazovanie—na uroven' zadach kommunisticheskogo stroitel'stva,” Kommunist, no. 1, 01 1963, 35 Google Scholar). As for the practical application of the principle of partiinost, note, for example, the highly selective treatment of Stalin's record; the continued distortion of the positions taken by the Trotskyite, the “Left,” and the “Right” oppositions; an almost complete expurgation of any mentions of positive contributions of members of the 1957 “anti-party group” in the current Soviet literature, especially in the new party history edited by Ponomarev; the “rewriting” of history to build up Khrushchev's political stature; or the silence on the two “un-nations”—the Volga Germans and the Crimean Tatars—which were denied the “rehabilitation” accorded to five other groups that were deported in the mid-forties.

120 L. Il'ichev's December 1961 speech, reproduced in XXII s'ezd KPSS i voprosy ideologicheskoi raboty, 44.