ABSTRACT
The bibliography of Harold J. Berman's published writings discloses that Soviet/Russian law dominates the first two decades of his scholarly output. Justice in Russia was the title of Harold Berman's first major contribution to legal scholarship. Justice in Russia emphasized that, despite the pervasive terror, law was not absent or incidental in Stalin's Russia–it was a vital means of understanding the Soviet social system and of appreciating both the meaning and the limitations of its socioeconomic revolution. Attention was given to issues of human rights, constitutional reform, and other areas of Soviet legal development. Russia remains committed under its amended constitution to the creation of a "rule-of-law" state, a "pravovoe gosudarstvo" as the Russian language expresses the concept. Berman's accent on the Russianness of Soviet law is a reminder that those who hope to "marketise" Russia through law reform will fail unless they adapt Western rules and institutions to Russian legal concepts, style, terminology, and practices.
