Judicial Activism in the USSR

Abstract

The editor of this volume has defined ‘activist courts’ as those that exercise power over governmental institutions. Soviet history has seen radical shifts in judicial activism. Lenin established power over the Russian government through military might and ‘Red terror.’ Terror involved both non-judicial repression and quasi-judicial revolutionary tribunals directed against persons, including numerous government officials, suspected of anti-Bolshevik leanings. In the late 1920s, there was a temporary restoration of legalism. Courts for a brief period took an active role in deciding issues of the authority of government agencies. Under Stalin, the judiciary exercised great power over government institutions. The Courts were powerful instruments of terror directed at the officials of those institutions. From Stalin’s death through Gorbachev’s first few years, the courts exercised very little power over governmental institutions. By the end of the 1980s, Gorbachev was trying to increase the power of the courts over governmental institutions as part of his announced intention to make the Soviet Union a ‘state governed by law.’ It remains to be seen if he will succeed.