1. This is the most often cited figure; of these, 12,550 were in the RSFSR. “Improve the Work of Bar Association Presidiums,” Sovetskaia iustitsiia, no. 17 (1984), reprinted in Soviet L & Gov't Spring 1985, at 71–78.Google Scholar

2. Hazard, John, Settling Disputes in Soviet Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960) (“Hazard, Settling Disputes”); Eugene Huskey, Russian Lawyers and the Soviet State: The Origins and Development of the Soviet Bar 1917–1939 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986) (“Huskey, Russian Lawyers”).Google Scholar

3. Troyat, Henri, Daily Life in Russia under the Last Tsar (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959).Google Scholar

4. None of these introductions came by formal invitation through official channels. All were arranged in diverse ways after arrival in the Soviet Union. In Moscow, three initial introductions came from the university and one from the Institute of Ethnography (after long-standing academic contacts), the Institute of Pedagogical Sciences of the Academy of Science (with the generous assistance of Professor Tom Popkewicz, University of Wisconsin-Madison), and the Institute of State and Law (by telephone request following an advocate's recommendation). In Leningrad, one came from the university and one from Iniurcollegia, the agency that represents Soviet citizens in foreign courts and foreign citizens in Soviet courts. This last was arranged by entering the office as a client and then asking to meet local advocates. My contacts were also my translators, although on one occasion Pro fessor Ernest Gellner of the University of Cambridge kindly performed that chore.Google Scholar

5. As I have tried to show by comparing their post-revolutionary histories in Michael Burrage, “Revolution as a Starting Point for the Comparative Analysis of the French, American and English Legal Professions” in Richard L. Abel & Philip S. C. Lewis, eds., Lawyers in Society, vol. 3: Comparative Theories (Berkeley: University of California, 1989).Google Scholar

6. Id.Google Scholar

7. Kucherov, Samuel, Courts and Lawyers under the Last Three Tsars 124 (New York: Praeger, 1953) (“Kucherov, Courts”).Google Scholar

8. Lawyers in training in both Moscow and St. Petersburg found these rules irksome, oppressive, and unnecessary and often protested against them. Id at 133–39.Google Scholar

9. In 1874. Huskey, , Russian Lawyers 14 (cited in note 2).Google Scholar

10. It may be that defending their occupational jurisdiction was not much of a problem for the advocates, given the social and geographical distance that separated them from “unsworn” attorneys. In any case, for unknown reasons, the number of unsworn attorneys steadily declined in the closing decades of the imperial regime. Id at 21.Google Scholar

11. For a detailed analysis see Kucherov, Courts 161–96.Google Scholar

12. Id at 197–296; Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974) (“Pipes, Old Regime”).Google Scholar

13. Nancy Mandelker Frieden, Russian Physicians in an Era of Reform and Revolution 1856–1905 at 109 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Hazard, Settling Disputes 165–66.Google Scholar

15. Kucherov, Samuel, The Organs of Soviet Administration of Justice: air History and Operation 461 (Leiden: Brill, 1970) (“Kucherov, Soviet Administration”).Google Scholar

16. Wyle, Frederick, “The Soviet Lawyer: An Occupational Profile,” in Alex Inkeles & Kent Geiger, eds., Soviet Society: A Book of Readings 217 (London: Constable, 1961) (“Wyle, ‘Soviet Lawyer’”), K. Grzybowski, Soviet Legal Institutions: Doctrines and Social Functions 179 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962).Google Scholar

17. Kucherov, Soviet Administration 287–89.Google Scholar

18. Friedman, Lawrence M. & Zile, Zigurds L., “Soviet Legal Profession: Recent Developments in Law and Practice,” 1964 Wis. L Rev. 47.Google Scholar

19. Actually 95%, although it is still impossible to say what exactly this consisted of. Huskey has suggested that it would be a further 20 years before the advokatura will be all-graduate. Huskey, Eugene, “The Limits to Institutional Autonomy in the Soviet Union: The Case of the Advokatura,” 34 Soviet Stud 202 (1982).Google Scholar

20. Elsewhere in the Soviet Union, the dumping into advokantura of persons “compromised” in other kinds of legal work may well continue, as Berman and Luryi suggest (Harold J. Berman & Yuri I. Luryi, “The Soviet Advokatura: The RSFSR Statute with Annotations,” 14 Soviet Union/Union Soviegique 273 (1987). Huskey, Eugene, “Between Citizen and State: The Soviet Bar (Advokatura) Under Gorbachev,” 28 Colum J. Transnat'l L. 110–11 (1990). One Moscow informant I pressed on this issue said: “this simply does not exist anymore, though maybe there were cases several years ago” and added: “if there was any attempt to do this, members of the presidium would object and ordinary members would bring pressure to stop it.” The academic informants did not mention this problem.Google Scholar

21. Kaminskaya, Dina, Final Judgement: My Life as a Soviet Defense Lawyer, trans. by Michael Glenny at 12 (London: Harvill, 1983) (“Kaminskaya, Final Judgement”).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Feifer, George, Justice in Moscow 245 (London: Bodley Head, 1964) (“Feifer, Justice”).Google Scholar

23. Huskey, , 34 Soviet Stud. at 224.Google Scholar

24. The stazhirovka has been regulated (not very precisely or uniformly it seems) by “guidelines” from the Ministry of Justice rather than by statute. It goes back to 1940 at least. Kucherov, , Soviet Administration 474–75 (cited in note 15). The 1980 RSFSR statute requires up to 3 months for those with at least two years' experience and 6–12 months for the rest, but allows the presidium of the college to “organize the probationary period”; see Berman & Luryi, 14 Soviet Union at 235–99.Google Scholar

25. For the operation of a similar system under Stalin, see Hazard, John, “Legal Education in the Soviet Union,” 1938 Wis. L. Rev. 374.Google Scholar

26. These procedures, or something very similar, are, according to one informant, included in the draft of the new law on the advokatura.Google Scholar

27. Such concerns are not new. Huskey reported something similar in 1982 (34 Soviet Stud 213 (cited in note 19)) and Kucherov did so in 1970 (Soviet Administration (cited in note 15)).Google Scholar

28. Sovetskaia iustitsiia 1984 at 74 (cited in note 1).Google Scholar

29. Simona and Roman Pipko note that the Moscow City College has unsuccessfully tried to increase its numbers for the past 30 years. “Inside the Soviet Bar: A View from the Outside,” 21 Int'l Law. 853, 860 (1987).Google Scholar

30. One advocate added the telling point: “it is hardly reasonable or possible to limit the number of advocates after the creation of legal cooperatives”.Google Scholar

31. Normative acts are written decisions of legally authorized bodies establishing, amending, or repealing legal norms. “They include laws, edicts, or decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, government decisions and ordinances, the orders and instructions of ministries, the orders and instructions of state committees, the decisions of local Soviets and other measures of state bodies containing legal norms, and also acts relating to the amendment coming into force, sphere of operation, or repeal of norms previously adopted.” P. P. Gureyev & P. I. Sedugin, eds. Legislation in the USSR 24 (Moscow: Progress, 1977).Google Scholar

32. Hazard, John N., “Legal Trends,” in Archie Brown & Michael Kaser, eds., Soviet Policy for the Eighties 101 (London: MacMillan, 1982) (“Hazard, ‘Legal Trends’”).Google Scholar

33. Berman, Harold J., Justice in the USSR 8 (Cambridge, Mass.: Russian Research Center, Harvard University, 1963). Shelley persuasively argued that “codified law prevails when decisions affect only the government or only private citizens,” i.e., before arbitragh or in civil cases in the people's courts. All other cases are vulnerable to interference. Louise I. Shelley, Lawyers in Soviet Work Life 147–48 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

34. Ioffe, Olimpiad S., Soviet Law and Reality (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. For a review of sources on this question see Sharlet Robert, “Politics of Soviet Law,” 35 Problems of Communism, Jan. 1986.Google Scholar

36. Specifically, it reaffirmed the right of “Representatives of public organisations and of work collectives…(to) take part in civil and criminal proceedings”.Google Scholar

37. Friedman & Zile, 1964 Wis. L Rev. 27–33.Google Scholar

38. They currently number between 70,000 and 80,000. V. Terebilov, “May Justice Be Done!” New Times, Oct. 1988, at 44.Google Scholar

39. Zile, Zigurb L., “Soviet Advokatura Twenty-five Years After Stalin,” in Barry, Donald B. et al eds., Soviet Law After Stalin: Law in Eastern Europe, Vol. 20, at 212–14 (Alphen and den Rijn: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1979).Google Scholar

40. Huskey, , 34 Soviet Stud at 201 (cited in note 19); Sovetskaia iustitsiia, 1984, at 72 (cited in note 1).Google Scholar

41. The Law on Appeals, adopted on 30 June 1987, came into force Jan. 1988. Quigley, John, “The New Soviet Law on Appeals: Glasnost' in Soviet Courts,” 37 Int'l & Comp. L.Q. 172–77 (1988); “Appeals to Courts Against Actions by Officials,”Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, 1978, no. 11, reprinted in Soviet L. & Gov't, Summer 1979.Google Scholar

42. And it was, in November 1989; see art. 2 of the decree, On the Procedure for Protesting to the Courts Unlawful Acts of Organs of State Administration and Officials Which Violate the Rights of Citizens, ST-416, Bull. Congress of People's Deputies & the Supreme Soviet, November 2, 1989.Google Scholar

43. A reaction that lends support to Abbott's thesis that professions define each other by their interaction and competition. Andrew Abbott, The System of professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).Google Scholar

44. For a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the powers of procurators and of the limited rights of advocates see Wrobel, B., “Ghost' and Soviet Criminal Trials,” in Butler, W. E., ed., Yearbook on Socialist Legal Systems 1987 at 176–200 (New York: Transnational, 1987) (“Wrobel, Glastnost'”).Google Scholar

45. Provision for this was also included in the reforms of November 1989. Art. 14 Fundamentals of Court Organization, ST–441, Bull. Congress of People's Deputies & the Supreme Soviet, No. 23, 1989. However, interviews some three months later disclosed that the procedures and fees under which the advocates would work had still to be agreed on.Google Scholar

46. One advocate mentioned: “We have recently introduced the innovation of a family advocate. We have a kind of a contract, and the clients pay and the connections are very close. They can telephone for advice on any event in their life. The relationship is very close. It is better for us because we know the person; it is easier to give help, and I think it will develop further.” This might, I suppose, be an example of the marketing of advocates' services.Google Scholar

47. A one-off All-Union Meeting of “advokatura leaders” was held in 1950 and in 1978 when the Ministry of Justice summoned presidium chairmen in 1978 for a joint meeting. Huskey, 34 Soviet Stud. at 205–6.Google Scholar

48. Those granted by the 1980 RSFSR statute are documented and analyzed in Berman & Luryi, 14 Soviet Union at 266–74 (cited in note 20).Google Scholar

49. Pipko, & Pipko, , 21 Int'l Law. at 859–64 (cited in note 29).Google Scholar

50. Kaminskaya, , Find Judgement 2426 (cited in note 21).Google Scholar

51. Berman, & Luryi, , 14 Soviet Union at 274. While observing that there are “quite narrow limits on the decision-making power of the profession,” Huskey's analysis was rather more optimistic than that of the Pipkos. He notes, for instance, that the advokatura's autonomy had been enhanced by legislation of 1979 and that Moscow advocates were willing to circumvent and resist some of these limits. Huskey. 34 Soviet Stud. at 219–20.Google Scholar

52. One informant brought up a form of control not mentioned by the Pipkos or other observers: namely, that “advocates depend on the Moscow City Soviet, since it is responsible for distributing goods which are difficult to obtain, such as cars, furniture, and other things, among various organizations, including the advokatura.”.Google Scholar

53. In the 1984 report of the Ministry of Justice the chairmen of the presidiums of the colleges are continually held personally responsible for the failings identified in the selection, training, and deployment of advocates as well as for unsatisfactory behavior, and they are called on to exercise more discipline and control, just as though they were managers of a service industry. Sovetskaia iustitiia 1984, at 17 (cited in note 1).Google Scholar

54. See, for instance, the listing of their responsibilities in art. 25 of the 1962 RSFSR statute (Friedrnan & Zile, 1964 Wis. L. Rev. at 59 (cited in note 37), and art. 18 of the 1980 RSFSR statute (Berman & Luryi, 14 Soviet Union at 283–85 (cited in note 20)). The latter conclude: “The head of the legal consultation office has very great power over the work of the advocates in it, which he exercises in complete subordination to the presidium of the college of advocates.” Id.Google Scholar

55. Kaminskaya, Find Judgement 24–26 (cited in note 21).Google Scholar

56. Some, however, still object to the delegate system imposed by law on large colleges and to the indirect election of the chairman by the presidum. According to one informant, in April 1990 the entire membership would, for the first time, elect the presidium in the Moscow City College.Google Scholar

57. Huskey, , 34 Soviet Stud. at 202–3 (cited in note 19).Google Scholar

58. This suggests that the chairman was cooperating with the Ministry of Justice's unsuccessful campaign to forestall the advocates' efforts by creating a rival association of Soviet jurists. According to his visiting card, and that of one of the university informants, an association of Soviet jurists had, in fact, already been formed.Google Scholar

59. New York Times, 26 Feb. and 5 March 1989. The advocates defined the profession in a narrow French or English sense (although members of the profession are both barristers and solicitors), while the ministry officials and their allies favored a broad Amercian definition that would leave the ministry with more power. For further details of this struggle, see Berman & Luryi, 14 Soviet Union at 260–62 (cited in note 20): Huskey, 28 Columb. J. Transnt'l L. at 97–104 (cited in note 20).Google Scholar

60. Kaminskaya, Final Judgement 312–17 (cited in note 21).Google Scholar

61. Grouped under 25 headings such as “accepting assignments,”“transferring clients,”“receiving money other than through the bureau,”“behavior in court,”“everyday behavior”-all of which might be seen as the case materials for a code of ethics but which were obviously not so perceived by the advocates. None referred to the pamphlet, and 1 was only able to obtain it after concluding these interviews. P. A. Ognev, The Disciplinary Practice of the Moscow City and Regional Colleges of Advocates (Moscow, 1971).Google Scholar

62. Sovetrkaia iustitsiia 1984, at 72–75 (cited in note 1).Google Scholar

63. Wyle, “Soviet Lawyer” at 215–17 (cited in note 16).Google Scholar

64. Malone, Albert C. Jr., “The Soviet Bar,” 46 Cornell L Rev. 268–70 (1961).Google Scholar

65. Feifer, , Justice 245 (cited in note 22).Google Scholar

66. Cameron, George Dana III, The Soviet Lawyer and His System: A Historical and Bibliographical Study (Ann Arbor: Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan, 1978) (“Cameron, Soviet Lawyer”).Google Scholar

67. Millar, James R. & Donahue, Peter, “Life, Work, and Politics in Soviet Cities—First Findings of the Soviet Interview Project,”Problems of Communism, Jan.-Feb. 1987, at 46–55. By other measures in the full report, however, their position is rather less favorable and rather more ambiguous. These findings are all the more remarkable in view of the fact that 46% of the advocatura are women. Huskey, 28 Columb. J. Transnt'l L. at 109 (cited in note 20).Google Scholar

68. Swafford, Michael, “Perceptions of Social Status in the USSR,” in James R. Milk, ed., Politics, Work and Daily Life: A Survey of Former Soviet Citizens (Cambridge, 1987).Google Scholar

69. Pipko, & Pipko, , 21 Int'l law. at 854–55 (cited in note 29).Google Scholar

70. If Party membership provides any guide to status position, advocates would appear to have staged a modest recovery. During the NEP it has been estimated that only about 10% of advocates were Party members. In the late Stalinist period the proportion had risen to about 30%, while in the 1960s and more recently, the proportion has been approximately 50%—still, however, below the rate for engineers and fellow jurists on the bench and in the procuracy. Huskey, 34 Soviet Stud at 202 (cited in note 19).Google Scholar

71. “Enhancing the Role of the Defense Lawyer in Providing Legal Assistance to Citizens, On the Social Status of the Defense Lawyer: His Prestige and Popularity,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo 1985. no. 3, reprinted in Soviet L. & Gov't, Winter 1985–86.Google Scholar

72. Petrukhin, I. L., “Justice and Legality,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo 1987, no. 6, reprinted in Soviet L. & Gov't, Winter 1988–89.Google Scholar

73. He was referring to the once-standard method of basing reports of the success, for example, of the judiciary on the low proportion of cases reversed on appeal and of the procuracy on the high rate of convictions. In 1983, for example, the present minister of justice, after reporting that the number of sentences altered or rescinded on appeal was down to 3.3 percent, put the case for a legal system in which no cases were overturned on appeal and wrote: “instances in which courts impose unjust sentences, judging citizens illegally or without foundation, must be eliminated. Every such case must be the object of immediate and exacting examination in boards and operations meetings, and those who are guilty must be made responsible in the strictest terms possible.” By 1988, however, what had been the object of censure had become a source of pride. In response to an interviewer who complained that sentences are often a carbon copy of the indictment drawn up by the investigators and approved by the procurator, he observed: “The courts of the union republics now order reinvestigation of more than 80,000 cases a year, while up to 3000 defendents are acquitted and many cases are dismissed. We regard this as a real sign that the courts have begun to view the results of the preliminary investigation much more critically.” See Terebilov, V., “Immediate Tasks Before the Organs of Justice and the Courts in Light of the Decisions of the November 1982 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee,”Sotsialistichestkaia zakaonnost 1983, no, 4, reprinted in Soviet L. & Gov't, Summer 1983, and Terebilov, V., “May Justice Be Done!”New Times, Oct. 1988, at 187; see also Wrobel, Glasnost 187 (cited in note 44).Google Scholar

74. For confirmation of the informant's view that acquittals and successful appeals were much more common under Stalin, see Kulikov, V. V., “The Supreme Court of the USSR: The Highest Link in the Soviet Judicial System,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo 1987, no. 11, reprinted in Soviet L. & Gov't, Fall 1978.Google Scholar

75. Whether they were right to do so is not certain, since their own college prepared a report of some two dozen successful appeals in the years 1981–83. See “Documents: Criminal Appeal Practice and the Soviet Advocate.” introduced, annotated, and translated by W. E. Butler, in W. E. Butler, Socialist Legal Systems 357–85 (New York: Transnational, 1987).Google Scholar

76. Cameron, , Soviet Lawyer 179 (cited in note 66).Google Scholar

77. On hearing this, another informant added: “sometimes … very seldom”.Google Scholar

78. An academic informant thought that to many the investigator was the hero, not the advocates who defended Churbanov and the other accused. The procurator himself later claimed in public that the trial aimed “to discredit the investigators and deflect attention away from all those responsible, especially at the centre … to blunt the struggle against organized crime, and neutralize the efforts of our country's leadership to create a state truly governed by law.” A meeting was later held at the Central Actors Club “to protest the decision” of the court. It was attended by the procurator, Sboyev, and the two investigators who were the target of censure by General Marov. During it, the impartiality of General Marov was questioned and doubts were expressed about the verdict itself, views that were greeted with audience applause. The chief investigator, Telman Gdlyan, later ran as a candidate for a district of Moscow to the Congress of People's Deputies, campaigned as a crusading district attorney who had been stymied by smart lawyers, and was elected by a landslide second only to that of Boris Yeltsin. One wonders whether due process in such cases of high-level corruption will elicit much popular support in the Soviet Union. The deputy investigator, Nicolai Ivanov, was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies for Leningrad. At the end of May 1989 a criminal investigation was initiated by the Prokuratura of the USSR into the activities of the group of investigators these two headed. No legal action, however, has yet been taken against them. See reports in Independent, 15 Feb. 1989; Moscow Times, 19 Feb. 1989; Rupert Cornwell, “The Yeltsin Mistakes Are Repeating Themselves,” Independent, 23 Feb. 1990 at 6; “The ‘Uzbek’ Affair or the ‘Gdlyan’ Affair,” in Oleg Glebov &. John Crowfoot, eds., The Soviet Empire: Its Nations Speak Out 152–54 (London: Harwood, 1989).Google Scholar

79. White, Albert Beebe, Self-Government at the King's Command: A Study in the Beginnings of English Democracy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1933).Google Scholar

80. Dahl, Robert, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy: Autonomy vs Control (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

81. Suleiman, Ezra N., Private Power and Centralization in France: The Notaries and the State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

82. To cite a recent example, no fewer than 51 associations made representations to the 1989 inquiry headed by Maitre Dominique Saint-Pierre on the reform of the French legal professions Annexe III, Mission d'Etude sur l'Europe et les professions du Droit (Lyon, 1989).Google Scholar

83. Her celebrated trial and acquittal are described in Kucherov, Courts 214–25 (cited in note 7). One informant hotly contested this observation: “Zasulich's case was not an exception—it was an excellent example of the character of our courts and juries after 1864”.Google Scholar

84. Pipes, Old Regime (cited in note 12).Google Scholar

85. See note 58.Google Scholar

86. See notes 42 and 45.Google Scholar

87. Sovetskoe gosudarrtvo i pravv, 1978, No. 11 (cited in note 41).Google Scholar

88. Superbly documented in Richard S. Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). In 1982, Hazard suggested: “there is reason to think that the eighties will see the end of flexibility in the law” but gave no specific reason for his prediction other than that “jurists” have been seeking “stability” for six decades. Hazard, “Legal Trends” (cited in note 32).Google Scholar

89. Wallace, D. Mackenzie, Russia (London, 1881); see also Kucherov, Courts (cited in note 7).Google Scholar