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Law and The Constitution of Soviet Society: The Case of Comrade Lenin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Piers Beirne  and
Alan Hunt
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Abstract

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In this paper we investigate a largely unrecognized but nevertheless important chapter in the legal and political history of Soviet Marxism: the simultaneously coherent and contradictory theoretical tendencies in Lenin's pronouncements about law, legality, and delegalization (“the withering away of law”) during the socialist transition. We identify and discuss these tendencies as they unfold against the historical background of the Russian Revolution. We argue that Lenin's political and theoretical objections to legal formalism greatly contributed to the tragic neglect of constitutional mechanisms needed to secure the radical democratic motives of the revolutionary process.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , 1988 , pp. 575 - 615
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

For their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper the authors wish to thank Eugene Huskey, Robert Kidder, and an anonymous reviewer of this journal. Generous assistance with referencing was provided by Martha Lippa.

References

References

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