ABSTRACT
The formulation "judges are independent and subject only to the law" was enshrined in the 1936 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Constitution and repeated in the 1977 Constitution. During the first half-century of its existence, however, this solemn declaration, unbuttressed by mechanisms to assure genuine judicial independence, did nothing to protect the courts from a variety of forms of interference. The openness of the discussion led inevitably to the raising of a related issue, one that had no doubt been on the minds of numerous advocates of a pravovoe gosudarstvo for some time: the payment of damages for the wrongful repression of persons during the Stalin period. The decline of Communist Party influence and the diffusion of political authority mean that courts are less likely to be subjected to the highly concentrated channels of influence that characterized the system in the past.
