University Press Issues Anthology Of Soviet Legal Theory Since 1917

Russian thinkers today believe that a system of organized law must exist under transitional communism. In "Soviet Legal Philosophy," issued this week by the University Press, Editor John N. Hazard reports that until 1937, communist writers felt that law and socialism were incompatible.

Hazard, professor of Public Law at Columbia University, adds, "The originality of Soviet jurists lies not in striking out on a novel course but in their interpretation of Marxism to meet the particular condition of the period in which they wrote."

Most of the philosophers consider sections of Marxist doctrine immutable, but they try to improvise where the Marxist theory has no practical application. The theme of the book may be the attempt of the authors to combine static Marxism, which they considered immutable, with the changing needs of their society.

New Translations Included

"Soviet Legal Philosophy" is the fifth volume in the '20th Century Legal Philosophy Series" of the University Press. Selections by Lenin, Stalin, Vishinsky, and seven other philosophers--written for the most part after the "October Revolution" and previously unavailable in English translations--are included in this comprehensive anthology.

As editor of the work, Hazard seeks to answer the question, What does law mean in Russia? The selections, arranged chronologically show how Soviet leadership since the Bolshevik upheaval has attempted to develop a theory of law which would solve the practical problems developed by the revolution.

Two drifts or trends of thought in the writing are clearly evident. First is the era when law and socialism were treated as incompatible, in accordance with Engels' idea of "the withering away of the state." Second is the period after 1937, when the idea of incompatibility had been abandoned.

Through the early selections, Engels' conception recurs frequently. In his contribution, a lecture delivered at a time when counter-revolutionary forces were powerful, Lenin affirms this doctrine.

Stuchka, leading Soviet jurist for several years, thinks that bourgeois norms or legal rules "maintain by organized force the balance of interests of the various classes of society to the advantage of the ruling classes (bourgeois and landlords)." Laws, however, must be retained in the "transitional period of the dictatorship of the proletariat."

He believes that only when the ultimate, communist society has been attained, "can the proletariat destroy the state . . . as an agency of persuasion, and law as a function of the state."

The successor of Stuchka as the principal Soviet legal philosopher was Pashukanis. He advanced the theory that law originates in the capitalistic commodity-exchange relationships, and that it is bourgeois in character with little future in a socialist society. His philosophy is essentially nihilistic.

In the late '20's, his theories were criticized with mounting fury, and he was finally ousted after attacks by Stalin, Vishinsky, and Yudin.

Stalin, neither lawyer nor intellectual, wielded great influence in the field of jurisprudence. Hazard notes that "no had become the dominant spokesman for Soviet political theory on which all orthodox Soviet legal theorists agreed legal theory had to rest."

After Pashukanis, Hazard notes that there is a tendency to push it (concept of withering away of the state) into the background and to modify the approach to it in terms which call for the preservation and strengthening of the state.

The importance of a strong state was made clear during the period of the New Economic Policy, collective agriculture, state-owned industry, World War II, and the current imperialism.

The New School regards the teaching of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin concerning the incompatibility of law and socialism as theoretically important. But they are concerned with practical problems in the present, and are modifying their legal philosophies.

The ideal of Soviet law is no law at all: this must wait, however, for the evolution of a communist utopia. For the present, Russian jurists must content themselves with a practical, concrete body of law. The definition of the term "law" in the 1949 Russian textbook on "Theory of the State and Law," in remarkably similar to Stuchka's idea of bourgeois law, which tends to the benefit of the ruling class:

"Law is a combination of the rules of behavior, established ... by state authority, reflecting the will of the ruling class--rules of behavior, whose application is assured by the coercive power of the state for the purpose of protecting, strengthening, the developing relationships and procedures suitable and beneficial to the ruling class.