1 This paper will follow Leonard Schapiro's distinction between ‘dissent’ and ‘opposition’. The former involves an effort ‘merely to criticize, to exhort, to persuade, and to be listened to’, while the latter refers to ‘an organized political group, or groups, of which the aim is to oust the government in power and to replace it by one of its own choosing’. Schapiro, Leonard ’“Putting the Lid on Leninism”: Opposition and Dissent in the Communist One‐Party State’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 2, No. 2, 02, 1967, p. 183.Google Scholar See also Barghoorn, Frederick C., ‘Soviet Political Doctrine and the Problem of Opposition’, Bucknell Review, Vol. XII, No. 2, 05, 1964, pp. 1–29 Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, the two special issues of Problems of Communism, Vol. XVII, No. 4, July‐August, 1968, pp. 31–114 and Vol. XVII, No. 5, September‐October, 1968, pp. 66–112. See also Survey, No. 69, October, 1968, pp. 107–21.

3 According to Bertram Wolfe, ‘there are now two lunatic asylums, one on the outskirts of Moscow and another near Leningrad, given over to “political lunatics”, and a third of increasingly political character’. The practice of incarcerating political dissidents was foreshadowed a decade ago when Nikita Khrushchev declared: ‘We have no more political criminals in the USSR. The only ones who oppose our system today are madmen.’ See Bertram Wolfe, An Ideology in Power, New York, 1969, pp. 3 93–4, footnote 23.

4 Ksenofontov, F., ‘Revolution, Dictatorship and Civil Freedom’, in Jaworskyj, Michael (ed.), Soviet Political Thought, Baltimore, 1967, p. 198 Google Scholar. According to Nikolay Buk‐harin, ‘In the hands of the working class, the state power is an axe that is being held ready against the bourgeoisie.’ Quoted in A. Ya. Vyshinsky, ‘Proletarian Justice’, in Jaworskyj, op. cit., p. 201.

5 Quoted in ‘Information on Russia’, Senate Document 50, 67th Congress, 1st session, Washington, D.C., 1921, p. 64. Cited in Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled, revised edition, Cambridge, Mass., 1963, p. 426. To this, Lenin added that courtroom trials ‘must not supersede the terror. To promise that they would do so would be self‐deception or deceit; it [the terror] should be put on a definite basis and legalized as a matter of principle, clearly, without hypocrisy or embellishments.’ Quoted in Krylenko, N. V., ‘Changes and Additions in the Codes of the RSFSR’, in Rappard, William et al., Source Book on European Governmenfs, Princeton, I937, part 5, p. 173.Google Scholar

6 The decree, promulgated on 10 November, authorized the closing down of newspapers which ‘call for open opposition’ to the government or ‘sow sedition by a frankly slanderous perversion of facts’. It added that, ‘As soon as the new order will be consolidated, all administrative measures against the press will be suspended.’‘Suppression of Hostile Newspapers’, Izvestiya, 10 November 1917, in Meisel, James H. and Kozera, Edward S. (ed.), Materials for the Study of the Soviet System, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1953, PP. 23–4.Google Scholar

7 See Article 65, in Sovetskiye konstitutsii, Moscow, 1963, pp. 148–9.

8 D. Kraminov, ‘Krokodilovy slezy,’Pravda, 3 March 1968, p. 4.

9 Lenin, V. I., ‘Politicheskiy otchet tsentral ‘nogo komiteta RKP (b)’, 27 03 1922 , in Lenin, V. I., Sochineniya, fourth edition, vol. 33, p. 25 3.Google Scholar

10 Soviet officials are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of a censorship system. Thus, for example, in a 1957 interview with Turner Catledge of The New York Times, Nikita Khrushchev resorted to the following casuistry: ‘I don't know about this censorship or check on the flow of news. We apply it only in case of libel… I believe some restrictions should be applied if people call for the disruption of normal society…We take measures only in the case of correspondents who distort conditions and the real life of our country. I would not call that censorship, but the rational use of the means at the disposal of society, in order not to waste means such as ink, paper and paint on information that only creates harm’. The New York Times, II May 1957. p. 3. According to Izyvestiyu, 3 September 1957, ‘…everyone is entitled to write what he likes and how he likes. But must everything that is written be published in…?’ Cited in Friedberg, Maurice, ‘Keeping Up With the Censor’, Problems of Communism, Vol. XIII, No. 6, 11‐12 1964, p. 27.Google Scholar

11 Friedberg, Maurice, ‘Soviet Books, Censors and Readers’, in Hayward, Max and Labedz, Leopold (ed.), Literature and Revolution in Soviet Russia, 1917–1962, London, 1963, p. 199.Google Scholar Censors are to review performances at least ten days before the official première. The management must reserve for the censors two seats at every performance, no farther from the stage than the fourth row. Ibid.

12 Moore, Barrington Jr. Terror and Progress, USSR, Cambridge, Mass., 1954, p. 153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Khrushchev, N. S., ‘Marxism‐Leninism Is Our Banner and Our Fighting Weapon’ (speech at a plenary session of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 21 06 1963 ), in The Great Mission of Literature and Art, Moscow, 1964, p. 219.Google Scholar In 1905, Lenin wrote: ‘Every artist… has the right to create freely, according to his ideal and independently of everything else. But we are communists, of course. We must not stand with folded arms and let chaos develop as it will. We must guide this process according to a systematic plan and mould its results.’ Lenin, V. I., in Lifshits, M. (ed.), Lenin o kulture i isskustvo, Moscow, 1938, p. 112.Google Scholar

14 Quoted in Robert Conquest, The Politics of Ideas in the USSR, New York, 1967, p. 43.

15 According to Andrey Vyshinsky, ‘when it is a question of annihilating an enemy, we can do it without a trial as well’. N. V. Zhogin, ‘Ob izvrashcheniyakh Vyshinskogo v teorii sovetskogo prava i praktike’, Sovetskoye Gosudarstvo i Pravo, No. 3,1965, p. 27. Vyshinsky and Stalin seem to have viewed dissenters as counter‐revolutionaries. ‘Peremptorily silencing the dissenter, labelling him an anti‐Marxist and sometimes an out‐and‐out saboteur, and then applying measures of criminal repression—this is what characterized the “scientific leadership” provided by Vyshinsky.’ Editorial, ‘Do kontsa likvidirovat’ vrednyye posledstviya kul'ta lichnosti v sovetskoy yurisprudentsii’, Sovetskoye Gosudarstvo i Pravo, No. 4, 1962, p. 15.

16 Quoted in Berrnan, Harold J., Justice in the USSR, revised edition, Cambridge, Mass., 1963, P. 36.Google Scholar

17 Stalin, J. V., ‘On the Draft Constitution of the USSR’, Problems of Leninism, eleventh English edition, Moscow, 1953, p. 700.Google Scholar

18 Article 125.

19 Vyshinsky, Andrey, The Law of the Soviet Sfafe, New York, 1948, p. 617.Google Scholar

20 Farberov, N., ‘Socialist Democracy’, Trud, 28 01 1969 , pp. 2–3.Google Scholar Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet PreJf (hereafter CDSP), Vol. XXI, No. 5, pp. 17–18. Another legal scholar has remarked that the Soviet regime ‘long ago left behind the decrepit attributes of bourgeois political freedoms, which are thoroughly saturated with the mutual antagonisms of bourgeois parties and with class and national animosities’. A. Lukyanov, ‘Sotsializm i politicheskiye svobody’, Pravda, 4 December 1968, p. 3.

21 ‘Criminal Code of the RSFSR’, in Berman, Harold J. (ed.), Soviet Criminal Low and Procedure, Cambridge, Mass., 1966, p. 180.Google Scholar

22 ‘Decree of Presidium of Russian Republic Supreme Soviet: On Additions to the Russian Republic Criminal Code’, Vedomosti Verkbovnogo Soveta RSFSR, No. 38, 22 September 1966, p. 819. In CDSP, Vol. XVIII, No. 41, p. 3.

23 Until 1956, the practice had been to interpret Article 70 rather strictly. Oral or written attacks, no matter how false, on any individual Soviet leader, were not covered by Article 70. Nor was criticism of particular programmes of the party or government, such as the virgin lands scheme or some foreign policy measure. Personal diaries with an anti‐Soviet content were said to be not covered by the article. However, Article 70 was applied against persons who supported the 1956 Hungarian uprising and who openly opposed Soviet intervention to put down the revolt. Berman, Harold J., ‘The Writer & Soviet Law’, The New leader; Vol. XLIX, No. 4, 14 02 1966 , pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

24 Sinyavsky and Daniel denied having deliberately attempted to weaken or slander the regime. Indeed, the presiding judge at their trial acknowledged on one occasion that the authors' views and words spoken by their characters were not necessarily the same. See Hayward, Max (ed.), On Trial. revised edition, New York, 1967, p. 56.Google Scholar

25 Smith, Paul A. Jr. ‘Protest in Moscow’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 47, No. I, 10 1968, P. 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 ‘Final Trial Statement of V. Bukovsky’ I September 1967, Problems of Communism, Vol. XVII, No. 4, July‐August, 1968, pp. 32–3, 35.

27 Vyshinsky, Andrey, Sudoustroistvo v SSSR, Moscow, 1935, p. 32.Google Scholar Cited in Berman, Justice in the USSR, op. cit., pp. 42–3.

28 Cited in Feifer, George, Justice in Moscow, New York, 1964, p. 251.Google Scholar

29 Perlov, I., ‘Pravosudiye i obshchestvennoye mneniye’, Izvestiya, 30 06 1966 , p. 6.Google Scholar

30 In 1964, some 3120 of the 3413 people's judges elected in the RSFSR were party members or candidate members; in 1966, the ‘overwhelming majority’ of all people's judges were said to be communists. At the same time, 4 per cent of all people's assessors are party members or candidate members. Robert Conquest, Justice and the Legal System in the USSR, New York, 1968, p. III. Moreover, according to a Central Committee official, ‘The political and ideological tempering of the personnel of courts…is a most important task before party organizations…[Personnel must be] morally stable, totally devoted and politically mature’. Mironov, N., ‘Ukrepleniye sotsialisticheskoy zakonnosti i pravoporyadka’, Partiinaya Zhizn', No. 1, 1962, p. 14.Google Scholar

31 The prosecutor in ‘The Trial Begins’, a short story by Abram Tertz (Andrei Sinyavsky), declares at one point: ‘Let scores, let hundreds of innocents be condemned rather than allow one enemy to go free.’ Abram Tertz, The Trial Begins, New York, 1960, P. 56.

32 See Morgan, Glenn G., Soviet Administrative Legality, Stanford, California, 1962.Google Scholar

33 Yury Idashkin, ‘Reflections on Legal Defense’, Okiyabr, No. 5, 1967, pp. 172–7. In CDSP, Vol. XIX, No. 26, pp. 23–6; Feifer, op. cit., p. 245. According to Frederick C. Barghoorn, the best legal minds in the Soviet Union work in the Procuracy. The courts and the bar are staffed with persons of more modest talents. See Barghoorn, Frederick C., Politics in the USSR, Boston, 1966, p. 329.Google Scholar

34 Gorkin, A., ‘O sotsialisticheskom pravosudii’, Izvestiya, 2 12, 1964, p. 3.Google Scholar

35 ‘Letters: Replies, Comment, Discussion: On the functions of the Court and the Investigatory Agencies’, Literaturnaya Gazeta, 18 August I964, p. 2. In CDSP, Vol. XVI, No. 39, p. 24. Similarly, a Soviet professor of law has argued: ‘In criminal cases a great deal is said and written about guarantees for the individual. What individual is this? A criminal! We are afraid that the investigator, the militiaman or the court might “offend” the criminal and we worry about the criminal's rights and guarantees and thus impede the struggle against crime.’ Quoted in A. Bovin, ‘Istina v pravosudii’, Izvestiya, 9 February 1962, p. 4. The prosecutor's position, in addition to being disturbing, has no basis in law. When a criminal case is sent to a court with the prosecutor's office concurring in the findings of the indictment, the judges issue an order to bring the accused to trial ‘without deciding the question of guilt beforehand’. ‘Letters: Replies, Comment…’, op. cit., p. 24. Moreover, Article 7 of the Principles of Criminal Procedure of the USSR and of the Union Republics states that ‘no person may be considered guilty of a crime and subjected to criminal punishment except by sentence of a court’. Gorkin, op. cit., p. 3.

36 For suggestions that the role of defence counsel be enlarged by permitting him to participate in the preliminary investigation, see Strogovich, M., 'O pravovykh garan‐tiyakh v ugolovnom sudoproizvodstve', Izvestiya, 23 08 1957 , p. 2.Google Scholar and Chai‐kovskaya, O., ‘Opasnoye nevezhestvo’, Izvestiya, 10 09 1964 , p. 3.Google Scholar See also Weiner, Stephen, ‘Socialist Legality on Trial’, Problems of Communim, Vol. XVII, No. 4, July‐August 1968, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

37 Strogovich, M. S., ‘Law, Morality and the Individual: Judicial Error’ ’, Literaturnaya Gazeta, 23 05 1964 , p. 2.Google Scholar In CDSP, Vol. XVII, No. 39, p. 23.

38 Chaikovskaya, op. cit., p. 3.

39 Urakov, S. O., ‘Povisit kultute sledstva’, Sotsialisticbeskaya Zakonnost’, No. 7, 1960, pp. 12–16 Google Scholar. Cited in Grzybowski, Kazimierz, ‘Soviet Criminal Law’, Problems of Communism, Vol. XIV, No. 2, 03‐04 1965, p. 58.Google Scholar

40 Indeed, as late as 1956, a Soviet commentator acknowledged that, ‘Frequently defence counsel assume the role in court of public accusers and virtually become second accusers.’Pravdao Vostoka, 27 July 1956. Quoted in Robert Conquest, The Soviet Police System, New York, 1968, p. 76, footnote 19.

41 Cited in Feifer, op. cit., p. 233. Another commentator has added: ‘An attorney has no right to harm his client under any circumstances, no matter how he feels about the case…[If] he fails in this, he ceases to be the counsel for the defence, and thereby breaks the law.’ Ya. Kiselev, ‘Speeches for the Defense’, Zvezda, No. 12, 1966, pp. 69–98. In CDSP, Vol. XIX, No. 10, p. 29.

42 Perlov, I. D., Sudebnoye sledrtviye v sovetskom ugolovnom protsesse, Moscow, 1955, pp. 124–5.Google Scholar Quoted in Conquest, Robert, Jurtice and the Legal System in the USSR, New York 1968, pp: 37–8.Google Scholar

43 Chakovskaya, op. cit., p. 3. Similarly A. Gorkin has argued that: ‘A competent prosecution and a vigorous defence of the defendant are equally necessary to administer justice correctly…the defence counsel helps the court in examining the contradictory and often confused materials of the case… [Justice will be achieved only when each party] renounces claim to infallibility, bias and subjectivism.’ Gorkin, op. cit., p. 3. See also N. Chetunova, ‘The Right to Defend’, Literatumaya Gazeta, 20 September 1966, p. 2. In CDSP, Vol. XVIII, No. 38, pp. 18–19. For^r a more comprehensive treatment of the proper role of defence counsel, see Tsypkin, A. L., ‘Aktual'nyye voprosy teorii i praktiki sovetskoy zashchity’, in Kruglov, A. A. (ed.), Sovetskaya advokatura, Moscow, 1968, PP. 48–54.Google Scholar

44 M. S. Strogovich, op. cit., pp. 23–4.

45 See, e.g., Yu. Korenevsky and K. Sukhodolets, ‘Otchevo byvayut oshibki’, Izvestiya 15 March 1966, p. 6.

46 Dm. Yeremin, ‘Perevertyshi’, Izvestiya. 13 January 1966, p. 6 and ‘Klevetniki—perevertyshi’, Izvestiya, 18 January 1966, p. 3.

47 Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333 (1966). It is perhaps appropriate to recall Alexander Hamilton's remarks in Federalist No. 84: ‘What is liberty of the press? Who can give it any definition which would not leave the utmost latitude for evasion? I hold it to be impracticable; and from this I infer, that its security, whatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government.’The Federalist, Modern Library edition, New York, n.d., p. 560.

48 Korenevsky and Sukhodolets, op. cit., p. 6.

49 Gorkin, op. cit., p. 3. See also Yu. Feofanov, ‘Angely, demony i istina’, Izvestiya 5 January 1966, p. 4. Korenevsky and Sukhodolets, op. cit., p. 6; Perlov, op. cit., p. 6; and G. Anashkin, ‘A Word to Our Readers: Reading Courtroom Reporting’, in Litera‐turnaya Gazeta, No. 14, 26 March 1966, p. 10, in CDSP, Vol. XXI, No. 14, p. 10. For the opposite view, see I. Galkin, ‘Sud i obshchestvennyye strasti’, IZxvestiya, 17 April 1969, P. 3.

50 Max Hayward, ‘Introduction’, in Hayward and Labedz, op. cit., p. 13.

51 See Berman, ‘The Writer & Soviet Law’, op. cit., p. 13.

52 See the editorial, ‘The Ideological Struggle: The Writer's Responsibility’, Litera‐turnayu Gazeta, No. 26, 26 June 1968, p. 5. In CDSP, Vol. XX, No. 6, p. 4.

53 Yesenin‐Volpin, Alexander A Leaf of Spring, New York, 1961, p. 7.Google Scholar