Textbook оf Soviet State Law under Rev. A.Ya. Vyshinsky 1938
The article is devoted to the analysis of the first textbook on Soviet state law, published in 1938, prepared by a team of authors from the Institute of Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences, edited by A. Ya. Vyshinsky. Its appearance is directly related to repression of Soviet authorities towards scholars that took place over different years. The textbook is a fundamental work, of a sufficiently high theoretical level. It has a pronounced class character of the period of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country. It is based on the thesis proclaimed by Stalin about the intensification of the class struggle in the conditions of socialism and, proceeding from this, the strengthening of the punitive activity of the state. The positive qualities of work include appeal, the study of bourgeois state law, the works of well-known state scholars of the West, an appeal to the works of well-known domestic pre-revolutionary legal scholars. For the first time in the Soviet period, comparative, historical methods were actively used in legal science. In the textbook, a special chapter one is highlighted under the title "Introduction". It presents an in-depth analysis of issues related mainly to the theory of the state, i.e. as it was in the pre-revolutionary, domestic textbook on state (constitutional) law. Naturally, the emphasis is on the socialist state, which is reflected in the most chosen theme - the role of the October Revolution of 1917 in the creation of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat; the demolition of the bourgeois state machine, etc. The introduction also analyzes the problematics of the subject, the methodology of Soviet state law. The main part of the textbook (9 out of 10 chapters) is directly devoted to Soviet state law and its specific institutions. The central place is occupied by the Constitution of the USSR of 1936, to the new that it introduced in comparison with the previous Soviet fundamental laws. In particular, we will point out that for the first time in the world it has sufficiently widely consolidated the provisions concerning the economy, and, first of all, the economic system. This, from our point of view, became the specificity of all subsequent Soviet fundamental laws, Soviet constitutionalism, and found its expression in the future in the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1993. The textbook focuses on the fact that the Basic Law of the USSR in 1936 consolidated the place and role of the Communist Party in the Soviet state and society. At the same time, it was emphasized that not a single bourgeois constitution speaks of parties, thus trying to obscure the class essence of the bourgeois state. It shall be noted that a number of theoretical approaches, positions contained in the textbook remain relevant in our time for state legal theory, practice and teaching state law. These are, for example, parliamentary democracy, interpretation of laws and recall of a deputy. This work is objectively assessed in the modern domestic scientific legal literature. He gained fame abroad already in the 40s of the last centuries