ABSTRACT
The Nuremberg Trial (1945-46) pronounced sentence on fascism and, more specifically, on national socialism. Regrettably, communism has never been the object of similar legal proceedings. However, a picture has emerged largely due to the publication of various books and materials, in particular those from formerly inaccessible archives. Even the carefully concealed crimes of bolshevik communism, like the mass execution of Poles in Katyn', have come to be known, though only quite recently. In essence, the sentence on world communism has already been pronounced and especially so on its Russian version, which is best referred to as bolshevik communism. This sentence is borne out by A I Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, 191856 and by numerous other books, among which I would like to emphasize the Rossiya XX Vek [Twentieth Century Russia] a book series edited by A N Yakovlev as well as the books written by A N Yakovlev himself ( Omut Pamyati [The Whirl of Memory]-the most recent of them-was published in 2000). However, as far as I know, evidence of bolshevik communism crimes in the juridical sense of the word is still insufficient to make the picture complete for legal proceedings. We are concerned with an analysis of the bolshevist judiciary and of the judicial and extrajudicial practice of repression in the USSR performed by jurists. Such a book has finally emerged. The case in point is Politicheskaya Yustitsiya v SSSR [Political Justice in the USSR] by V Kudryavtsev and A Trusov (Moscow: Nauka, 2000).
