Cassation of Criminal Cases from Moscow Province Courts and Tribunals, 1921–1928

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Newman
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Case Files ◽  
The Law

Although students of the Soviet period have long been fascinated with criminality, few works have studied courts and common criminals on the basis of trial records, especially during the nep. Aside from scholarly treatments of show trials, the reasoning behind judicial decisions and criminal pleas has been left to the imagination of Sovietologists. This gap is addressed by examining case files involving the primary form of appeal available to Soviet convicts: cassation. After detailing the evolution of Soviet cassation from its origins in the French Revolution and contextualizing its place in the Soviet justice system, this article embarks on a close reading of convicts’ pleas, prosecutors’ reports, and judges’ written decisions in cassational cases. Cassational appeals are examined to determine how different seats of power within the judiciary sparred over verdicts. Judicial decisions of cassational cases are cross-referenced with legal codes and legislation to determine how Soviet judges applied the law, particularly when considering the social backgrounds of appellants. From the outlook of criminals themselves, the wording of their appeals is analyzed to determine how they understood the law, Soviet society, and what they thought they needed to say to gain redemption. Ultimately, this paper explores how individuals brought before courts understood Soviet power and justice through the lens of criminal appeals during the infancy of the Soviet Union.

scholarly journals Architecture and attachment: Carceral collectivism and the problem of prison reform in Russia and Georgia

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Piacentini ◽  
Gavin Slade
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Collectivist Culture ◽  
Prison Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Cultural Attachment ◽  
Post Soviet Period

This article looks at the trajectory of prison reform in post-Soviet Georgia and Russia. It attempts to understand recent developments through an analysis of the resilient legacies of the culture of punishment born out of the Soviet period. To do this, the article fleshes out the concept of carceral collectivism, which refers to the practices and beliefs that made up prison life in Soviet and now post-Soviet countries. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 revealed a penal culture in notable need of reform. Less obvious, in retrospect, was how over the course of a century this predominantly ‘collectivist’ culture of punishment was instantiated in routine penal practices that stand in opposition to western penalities. The article shows how the social and physical structuring of collectivism and penal self-governance have remained resilient in the post-Soviet period despite diverging attempts at reform in Russia and Georgia. The article argues that persistent architectural forms and cultural attachment to collectivism constitute this resilience. Finally, the article asks how studies of collectivist punishment in the post-Soviet region might inform emerging debates about the reform and restructuring of individualizing, cell-based prisons in western jurisdictions.

The Social Evaluation of Occupations in the Soviet Union

Slavic Review ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Yanowitch ◽  
Norton T. Dodge
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Social Evaluation ◽  
Economics Literature ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social

One of the consequences of the revival of sociology as a distinct discipline in the Soviet Union has been the appearance of empirical studies of prevailing attitudes toward the major occupations in Soviet society. These studies have been accompanied by discussions in Soviet newspapers and in the educational and economics literature of the problems associated with the popular perception of various occupations, particularly among student youth.

Who Gets What, When and How? Housing and Informal Institutions in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-167
Author(s):  
Dina Sharipova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Housing Allocation ◽  
Gain Access ◽  
Post Soviet Period

Informal reciprocal exchanges continue to shape people’s interactions in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. State retrenchment from the social sphere and growing inequality has markedly limited citizens’, access to scarce resources including housing. This has stimulated people’s involvement in informal exchanges. The article analyzes housing policy during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods taking a closer look at the process of housing allocation. It claims that despite formalization of housing distribution, citizens continue using informal networks to gain access to that scarce commodity in the post-Soviet period. The article draws on data collected from interviews, textual analysis, and original surveys conducted in Kazakhstan in 2011 and 2013.

On the Historiography of the Russian Revolution

Slavic Review ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Warth
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Party Line ◽  
The Status ◽  
Intellectual Climate

The Russian Revolution has not yet achieved the status of the French Revolution as an academic preserve for battalions of professional historians, but few are likely to deny that its impact on the twentieth century is already more profound than that of the French upheaval on the nineteenth. The fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution is now upon us, and it is a melancholy commentary on the uncertain intellectual climate of the Soviet Union that despite lavish funds, abundant trained personnel, and access to archives and primary sources unavailable in the West, Soviet historians have failed to produce a work of permanent importance on this crucial episode of modern Russian history. Yet the stifling orthodoxy of Stalinism has given way to the uncertain but relative freedom under his successors, and the auguries point to a further mellowing of the party line as Soviet society haltingly approaches the educational and living standards of the Western world.

Where did all the men go? The changing sex composition of the Russian North in the post-Soviet period, 1989–2010

Polar Record ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Heleniak
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sex Ratio ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Male Population ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Russian North ◽  
Male Sex ◽  
External Causes ◽  
Oriented System

Abstract Like the northern periphery regions of other Arctic countries, the Russian North had a higher male–female sex ratio than the rest of the country. During the two decades following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the male sex ratio in the Russian North declined considerably, from 101 males per 100 females in 1989 to 92 in 2010. The regions and population of the Russian North were greatly impacted by the shift in northern development approaches from the centrally planned system of the Soviet Union to the market-oriented system of Russia. This paper examines the decline in the male population in the Russian North based on data from the 1989, 2002 and 2010 population censuses. The paper finds that only one quarter of the decline in the male sex ratio in the Russian North can be attributed to higher male outmigration and that three quarters are the result of significantly higher and widening gaps between females and males in life expectancy. The conclusion is that men in the Russian North coped with the social and economic upheavals by dying prematurely not by migrating. The leading causes of death for men were cardiovascular diseases and external causes such as murder, suicide and accidents.

Problems and Unproblems in Soviet Social Theory

Slavic Review ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis S. Feuer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Intellectual Community ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Mathematical Sciences ◽  
The Government ◽  
Life Work

The status of sociology and philosophy in the Soviet Union is radically different from that of the physical and mathematical sciences. The sociologists and philosophers are still regarded by the government as ideologists, whereas the mathematicians and physicists are considered scientists; and the ideologist is in low repute in the Soviet intellectual community. Thirty years ago, Nikolai Bukharin observed in a remarkable essay that the cultural style of the current Soviet period would be technicism, and that the humanities and historical sciences would be relegated to the background. He believed that this “one-sidedness“ was founded on the economic requirements of the time. Probably, however, the hollowness in the life of the Soviet ideologist is equally responsible for his low estate. The sociologists and philosophers are not regarded as independent thinkers; their job as ideological workers is to provide a documentation and footnoted commentary on the decisions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Young men of ability consequently tend to avoid choosing a life work in the social sciences and philosophy. Why, they say, should they sacrifice their intellectual independence at the outset of their lives?

Peace Propaganda and Submarines: Soviet Policy toward Sweden and Northern Europe

1985 ◽  
Vol 481 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
INGMAR OLDBERG
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Free Zone ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
East West

Since the late 1970s, as part of an intensified peace propaganda campaign, the Soviet Union has sought to create a nuclear-free zone in Sweden and northern Europe. Simultaneously, it has increased its criticism of Sweden's defense, partly to offset the effects of Soviet submarine violations of Swedish waters. These violations have increased since the stranding of the U-137 in 1981 and have seriously impaired Soviet-Swedish relations. The Soviet leaders perceive new opportunities with the advent of the Social Democrats in Sweden, whose active foreign policy favors détente and disarmament rather than the arms race. Important factors in the background include growing East-West tension, with Soviet superiority in northern Europe, and the political and economic stagnation, militarization, and “KGB-ization” of Soviet society.

Socio-political Accommodation and Religious Decline: The Case of the Molokan Sect in Soviet Society

1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christel O. Lane
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Differential Rate ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Political Conditions

The Molokan sect, one of the strongest and most influential in prerevolutionary Russia, is today moving towards extinction. This process, however, has not gone equally far in different geographical areas of the Soviet Union. This paper puts forward an assessment of the extent of the sect's decline and attempts to explain both the general decline and its differential rate in different communities. It analyses the sect's development over a long period of time and under radically different socio-political conditions and it tries to systematize the Molokans' changing response to their different social environments, locating the sect in the typology devised by Bryan Wilson. It concludes that the severe decline in membership during the Soviet period is due to the fact that the Molokan sect is no longer an organization through which political dissent can be expressed but has fully adjusted to and affirms the values of Communist society. In the paper it is pointed out that although the sect can be typified in Wilson's terms during its early period, its changed response in Soviet society is not anticipated in Wilson's scheme. Existence in the exceptional social environment of socialist society has called forth an exceptional sectarian response. To illuminate this process we will consider both the Molokans' historical development and their religious belief, as well as their social complexion today.

scholarly journals What Makes a Leading Case? The Narrow Lens of the Law or a Wider Perspective?

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Glazebrook
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law ◽  
Work Done ◽  
The French Revolution

This article suggests that an examination of leading cases should be extended beyond an exploration of the role that a decision has played in settling an area of law. It is also necessary to examine the social and historical implications and underpinnings of a decision. Further, a concentration on leading cases alone is too narrow a focus. The study of the ordinary run of cases can say much about the law and its relationship to society and about wider trends in society. The article illustrates these themes with a discussion of a number of leading cases in New Zealand and also of the work done by the author on criminal cases in Rouen during the French Revolution.

Ten Theories in Search of Reality: The Prediction of Soviet Behavior in the Social Sciences

1958 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Soviet Rule ◽  
Human History ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Bibliography ◽  
The Way

Surely, more has been written about the Russian Revolution and the ensuing forty years of Soviet rule than about any comparable episode in human history. The bibliography of items on the French Revolution occupies, it is said, one wall of the Bibliothéque Nationale. A complete bibliography on the Soviet Union—which is yet to be compiledand may never be because of the geometric rate at which it multiplies—would probably make that earlier cenotaph to scholarship shrink the way in which the earlier tombs diminished before the great complex at Karnak.

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