ABSTRACT
It cannot be denied that Russian modern legal thinking still has traces of its Soviet heritage. Legal culture spreads over several generations (or more) at a time, and it is this part of the public consciousness that is never rapidly transformed, but also the basis of all social events. Consequently, it wields inevitable influence. This chapter is aimed at gaining insights into Soviet legal science and the peculiarities of legal thinking, particularly through the works of Soviet lawyers whose writings were not widely studied in international legal scholarship due to a lack of translation of their texts from Russian. The chapter offers a historical narrative from the very first days of establishing Soviet rule with the overview of certain legal concepts from Soviet lawyers and their theories of law, followed by an analysis of the continuity in theoretical doctrinal development between past and present. The chapter finds that Russian understanding of law is special, and it has a unique legal culture which is not exactly western in its essence. An important aim of the chapter is to highlight the emptiness in historical legal study of Soviet law, which has together with academic interest, an important impact on understanding human rights in modern Russia.
