People's Commissariat of Justice, Guiding Principles of Criminal Law in the RSFSR. December 12, 1919

Order of the People's Commissariat of Justice

Original Source: Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii raboche-krestian'skogo pravitel'stva, No. 66, 18 December 1919.

Introduction

Having taken power in the October revolution, the proletariat broke up the bourgeois governmental apparatus, which had the aim of oppressing workers through all of its agencies, its army, its police, its courts, and its church. It is self-evident that such an aim was also served by all codes of bourgeois law, as systems of norms (rules, formulae) of organized force to establish a stability of interests among social classes designed to serve the ruling classes (the bourgeoisie and the landowners). But just as the proletariat could not immediately transform the bourgeois state machine to serve its own ends, and smash it, as it should have, into pieces, creating in its place its own state apparatus, so it also could not adapt for its own aims the bourgeois legal codes of past epochs, and consign them, as it should have, to the archives of history. An armed people tries to cope with its oppressors without special rules, without codes. In the course of struggling with class enemies, the proletariat adopts various forceful measures, applying them at first without a special system, randomly, from case to case. The experience of struggle, however, trains the proletariat to follow general rules, leads it to systematization, creates, in other words, a new law. Almost two years of such struggle has now given us the ability to develop concrete formulations of proletarian law and to draw appropriate generalizations. In the interest of economic might and in accordance with the centralization of various activities, the proletariat must work out rules to keep its class enemies in check, develop methods to struggle with its enemies, and govern them. And first of all, this must be done by means of criminal law, the task of which is to struggle with those who violate the conditions laid down by the new social order in the transitional period of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Only when the resistance of the deposed bourgeois and propertied classes has finally been broken, and a communist order established, will the proletariat be able to do away with the state as organized force and law, as a function of the state. To assist in this task by aiding the organs of Soviet justice fulfill their historic mission in the area of struggling with class enemies of the proletariat, the People's Commissariat of Justice issues the following guiding principles of criminal law for the R. S. F. S. R.

I. Criminal Law

1) Law is a system (order) of social relations corresponding to the interests of the ruling class, and secured by the organized power of that class.

2) Criminal law has as its content legal norms and other legal measures by which the system of social relations of a given class society protects itself from violations (crimes) by means of repression (punishments).

3) Soviet criminal law has the task, by means of repression, of protecting the system of social relations corresponding to the interests of the laboring masses, organized into the ruling class under the dictatorship of the proletariat in the transitional period from capitalism to communism.

II. Criminal Justice

4) Soviet criminal law in the RSFSR is carried out by organs of Soviet Justice (People's Courts and Revolutionary Tribunals).

III. Crime and Punishment

5) Crime is a violation of the order of social relations protected by criminal law.

6) A crime is an act of commission or omission dangerous for the given system of social relations, and makes struggle by governmental power necessary against the person (criminal) who perpetrates such acts or allows them to occur as a result of a failure to act.

7) Punishment consists of those compulsory measures by which the government protects a given order of social relations against the actions of those who violate its rule (criminals).

8) The purpose of punishment is to protect the social order from those who commit crimes or attempt to commit them, and from future possible crimes of these or other individuals.

9) To protect the social order from future criminal acts by persons attempting to commit crimes, a person can either be socialized into the given social order, or isolated, if that person refuses socialization, or, in exceptional circumstances, physically eliminated.

10) In selecting a punishment it should be kept in mind what crime in a class-based society means in terms of the order of social relationships in which the criminal has lived. Punishment is not retribution for blame, nor atonement of guilt. It is only a defensive measure which should be expedient, and at the same time lack any traces of martyrdom, and it should not cause the criminal useless and extraneous suffering.

11) In determining the measures to be applied against those who commit crimes, the court must evaluate the degree and character (nature) of the danger for society of both the criminal himself and the act. To these ends the court must first, conduct an unrestricted investigation of all circumstances surrounding the commission of the crime; clarify the personality of the criminal insofar as it will help explain the commission of the crime and its motives, and insofar as it will help explain the crime on the basis of the criminal's life and past; and second, establish how much that act, in the given conditions of time and place, violated the bases of social security.

12) In determining the measures of punishment in each instance it is necessary to distinguish a) whether the crime was committed by a person belonging to the propertied classes in the interests of restoring, saving, or obtaining some kind of privilege linked with the rights of ownership, or by an unpropertied person, in hungry or needy circumstances; b) whether the act was committed in the interests of restoring power to the deposed class, or in the personal interests of the person committing the act; c) whether the act was committed consciously, or in ignorance and unconsciousness; d) whether the act was committed by a professional criminal (recidivist) or by a first offender; e) whether the act was committed by a group, gang, band, or by a single person; f) whether the act involved bodily harm-, g) whether the act involved premeditated intent, cruelty, maliciousness, cowardice, or was committed in a burst of passion as a result of ignorance or a lack of thought.

13) Minors under 14 years of age are not subject to the courts and their punishment. Rehabilitative measures are to be used for them. Such measures are also to be used against those in the transitional ages of 14 to 18 who act unconsciously.

14) Judgment and punishment are not to be applied against persons who have committed crimes in a state of chronic mental illness, or who are in such mental straits that in committing the crime, they are not aware of their own actions, or who, although in their right senses at the time of the act, are, at the time of sentencing, mentally deranged. To such persons, only medical and preventative measures can be applied.

15) Punishments shall not be applied when the acts were committed in order to prevent a danger which in the circumstances could not have been prevented by any other means, provided that the harm caused does not exceed the limits of necessary defense.

16) If conditions have changed such that an act or the person who committed it is no longer a danger to the established order, punishment shall not be applied.

IV. Stages in the Commission of a Crime

17) A crime is considered to have taken place completely when an intentionally committed criminal act is perpetuated in its entirety.

18) An attempt to commit a crime shall be considered equivalent to a crime when the criminal has done everything considered necessary for the perpetration of the crime, but failed due to circumstances beyond his control.

19) Criminal intent is the search for, acquisition of, or adaptation of tools, weapons, etc. needed for the completion of a crime by a person preparing to commit it.

20) The stage of commission of an intended crime shall not by itself influence the measures of repression, which are to be determined by the degree of danger posed by the criminal.

V. Complicity

21) In the case of an act committed jointly by a group of persons (gang, band, crowd), the perpetrators as well as the initiators and accomplices shall be punished. Their punishment shall depend not upon the degree of their participation, but upon the degree of danger represented by the criminal and the act committed.

22) Perpetrators shall be considered those who take part in the implementation of a criminal act however it turns out.

23) Initiators shall be considered those who incite crimes.

24) Accomplices shall be considered those who, while not taking direct part in the completion of a criminal act, assist in its completion by word or deed, by advice, the elimination of obstacles, concealing the criminal or the traces of the crime, or by acquiescence, that is, by not hindering the accomplishment of a crime.

VI. Types of Punishment

25) In accordance with the task of protecting the social order from being violated, and considering the necessity of reducing as much as possible the personal suffering of the criminal, punishment should vary in accordance with the particular characteristics of the situation and the personality of the criminal.

Examples of types of punishment: a) reprimand b) social censure c) compulsory activities, without physical hardship d) boycott e) temporary or permanent exclusion from an association f) restitution, or, if this is impossible, indemnity g) suspension of duties h) restrictions on filling a post, or doing other kinds of work i) confiscation of all belongings j) deprivation of political rights k) being declared an enemy of the revolution or of the people 1) compulsory labor without imprisonment m) imprisonment for a set period or for an unspecified period until the occurrence of certain events n) being declared outside the law o) execution by firing squad p) combination of the above forms of punishment.

Annotation: People's Courts, may not apply the death penalty.

VII. Conditional Sentences

26) When a court has ordered imprisonment for a crime committed (a) as a first offense; (b) under exceptionally difficult personal circumstances; (c) when the convicted person poses no danger to those around him sufficient to require immediate isolation, the court may substitute a conditional sentence, that is, issue a suspended sentence for a period corresponding to the conviction or appropriate to the crime. On repetition of such an act, the suspended sentence loses its conditional character and the primary sentence immediately takes effect.

VIII. Territory Covered by Criminal Law

27) The criminal law of the RSFSR applies to the whole territory of the Republic, both in terms of the action of its citizens and also those of foreigners who commit crimes on its territory, and likewise shall affect citizens of the RSFSR and foreigners who commit crimes on the territory of another government, but avoid judicial punishment in the location where the crime was committed, and subsequently are found within the boundaries of the RSFSR

12 December 1919.
Signed: Deputy Commissar of People's Justice, P. Stuchka

Source: William G. Rosenberg, ed., Bolshevik Visions: First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984), pp. 229-233.