ABSTRACT
Soviet law lies well-buried under the wreckage of the Soviet state, which seals it like the Chernobyl sarcophagus. Any proposal to disinter it must come as a surprise to the many readers who are only dimly aware that it ever lived and breathed. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), after all, was the land of the Plan and the Gulag: of the monolithic state control of everything and the ruthless state repression of everybody. he march of Five-Year Plans and the infamous decree criminalising unexcused tardiness at work,1 1930s show trials and 1960s dissident trials; these about sum up anything worth noting about Soviet law: a fig leaf for the unconstrained exercise of totalitarian authority in every sphere of life and a minor, bizarre and regrettable footnote to twentieth-century legal history. In this view, Socialist law in the USSR was only marginally less scandalous than National Socialist law in Germany.
