The article analyzes the results of the state policy implementation withing the formation and development of the Soviet judicial system on the example of Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors set the goal, based on the analysis of sources not introduced
into a wide scientific circulation, primarily stored at the State Archive of the Smolensk Region to restore the history of the creation and operation of justice institutions in the Smolensk region in the 1918s–1923s. The source base of the study was composed of documents stored at Smolensk State Regional Archive, materials on the history of the judiciary,
statistical materials of the period under the study, documents on the history of the party-state bodies of the Smolensk region.
The article studies current office documentation of both the higher and regional state bodies (Workers 'and Peasants' Government, People's Commissariat of Justice, Smolensk Governoral Executive Committee) and local authorities (Smolensk Council of Working People's Deputies, Executive
Committee of Smolensk Governoral Council of Workers, Peasants' and Red Army Deputies), as well as Smolensk Governoral Court.
The authors analyze the Soviet experience in the formation and development of judicial bodies under specific historical conditions; they consider transformations in the judicial system of the Smolensk Governorate in the 1917s–1922s, as well as the formation of Smolensk Governoral Court. The article studies
legal foundations of the Soviet judicial system formation, characterizes processes of creating a judicial apparatus in the first years of Soviet power and analyzes activities of Smolensk Governoral Court during its formation. The authors reveal the essence, degree of efficiency, concrete results,
political and socio-economic consequences, positive and negative lessons from the Soviet judicial system existed in Russia.
The authors assume that the development of new legislation system in the 1920s was caused by the need to reform legal sources as the main means of socialism building.
The authors conclude that the transformation of the Soviet judicial system completed the transition from the principle of «revolutionary expediency» to the principle of «revolutionary legality».
Irina Paperno, Stories of the Soviet Experience