Abstract
Ethics is a system of values according to which man can determine what is good and just in human relations and in social life. Social life, especially national life, cannot be organized without some stable leading principles and ideas concerning the good and bad in human behavior.
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References
A. Vyshinskii, Teoria sudebnykh dokazatelstv v Sovetskom prave (Moscow, 1946), pp. 125–127.
A. I. Denisov, Sovetskoe gosudarstvennoe pravo (Moscow: lurid. Izd-vo Minist, lust. S.S.S.R., 1947), pp. 27–28;
A. J. Zis’, O Kommunisticheskoi morali (Moscow: Izdat, Pravda, 1948), p. 8. Ethical relativism and the pragmatic approach to the problems of law are characteristic not only of the Marxist philosophy. Soviet writers avoid, however, the reference to Bentham and Mill as well as modern philosophers supporting similar ideas. Some extremes of the Soviet interpretation of ethical principles are anyhow original and make it possible to emphasize the contrasts between them and the ethical traditions of the western world and to present a background for a better understanding of the essential peculiarities of Soviet law.
Based on incorrect premises about the dependence of all moral principles on economic conditions, Marxism generalizes what may be the characteristics of morality of certain social groups in certain historical conditions. Marxists never have succeeded in proving that there are no moral principles which could be universally adopted, and especially that all moral principles have a class character. See below, note 28.
J. Stalin, ‘On Socialist Competition and the Stakhanovist Movement,’ Problems of Leninism, pp. 548–549.
Lenin, See above Introduction, note 2.
Lenin, The State and Revolution, Ch. V, 2 and Ch. V, 4. See the edition of the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1949, p. 124 and p. 138. In the same work, Lenin quotes Engels’ letter to Bebel: ‘... The proletariat uses the state not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries...’
Lenin, Sochinenia, Vol. XXIX (1950 ed.), p. 358.
Cf. V. M. Chkhikvadze, ‘Voprosy prava i gosudarstva v 29-m tome sochinenii Lenina,’ Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 11, 1950, p. 26.
The class enemy does not sleep. Therefore the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat is a class struggle of the victorious proletarians, holding political power, against the bourgeoisie, defeated but still not exterminated, still on the scene, resisting and even strengthening its resistance.’ (Lenin, Ibid., pp. 350, 351).
A. Vyshinskii, Sovetskoe gosudarstvennoe pravo (Moscow: U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Law Institute, 1938), p. 582. English edition, p. 645.
M. Kareva, ‘Rol sovetskogo pravá v vospitanii kommunisticheskogo soznaniia,’ Bolshevik, 1947, No. 4, p. 50.
Kareva, op. cit., pp. 47–58;
S. Kovalev, ‘Kommunisticheskoe vospitanie trudiashchikhsia i preodolenie perezhitkov kapitalizma v soznanii liudei,’ Bolshevik, 1947, No. 5, pp. 9–22;
G. Vasetsky, ‘Razvitie i ukreplenie moralno-politicheskogo edinstva sovetskogo obshchestva,’ Bolshevik, 1947, No. 9, pp. 11–26.
Kareva, op. cit., pp. 48–49.
Zis’, op. cit., p. 17.
A. Vyshinskii, ‘The XVIIIth Congress of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. and the Tasks of the Theory of Socialist Law,’ Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, 1939, No. 3, pp. 8–9.
Zis’, op. cit., pp. 33, 38.
Denisov, op. cit., p. 357.
‘Soviet morals are formed under the leadership and influence of Bolshevist policy.’ ‘Bolshevist policy has a decisive significance for raising the morals of the Soviet people.’ ‘Soviet morality is not neutral, insofar as policy is concerned. In the Soviet state, morals are openly subordinated to policy.’ Zis’, op. cit., pp. 18, 20, 22.
Ibid., p. 23.
J. Stalin, Ö velikoi otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow: Gospolitizdat. 1946), pp. 160–161.
Zis’, op. cit., pp. 25–26.
‘Unconditional devotion to the Communist ideal, deep love of the Soviet fatherland, which is a geniune mother for all builders of Communism—these great moral forces of the Soviet people have brightly flourished in the process of building a new socialist society under the leadership of the Bolshevist Party.’ A. Vyshinskii, ‘Sovets-kii patriotizm i ego velikaia sila,’ Bolshevik, No. 14, 1947, p. 26. See also the editorial in the same issue, ‘Vospitanie sovetskogo patriotizma vazhneishaia zadacha ideolo-gicheskogo fronta.’
M. Kareva, op. cit., p. 52;
S. Kovalev, op. cit., p. 13;
Zis’, op. cit., pp. 33–36;
Denisov, op. cit., p. 356.
Bolshevik, No. 12, 1947. Cf. M. Kareva, op. cit., pp. 52–54; S. Kovalev, pp. 19–22; Denisov, p. 357.8
Denisov, op. cit., pp. 356, 360.
M. Shaginian, Po dorogam piatiletok (Izd. V.Ts.S.P.S., 1947), pp. 305–446.
Correspondingly the Soviets organize and encourage scientific team work. Cf. ‘The Triumph of Organized Research,’ by T. Swann Harding, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, April 1948.
Examples of successful team work by Russian academicians are given by William M. Mandel in A Guide to the Soviet Union, (New York: The Dial Press, 1946), pp. 295–296.
Shaginian, op. cit., p. 445.
Cf. Zis’, op. cit., pp. 17–18.
V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, Ch. V, 2, p. 124. There is an obvious contradiction between the Marxist dogma on the class character of morals and its place as a superstructure of a given economic order, and the quotation from Lenin’s work, which speaks about ‘elementary rules ... repeated for thousands of years,’ and about ‘simple, fundamental rules of human intercourse,’ evidently common to all of mankind, independent of any economic structure and reflecting moral principles equally acknowledged by feudalists, capitalists, slaveowners and, finally, the classless society of toilers.
Ibid., pp. 144–145 (Ch. V, 4, at the end).
Exceptions are not excluded, but they will be rare and, according to Lenin, ‘will probably be accompanied by ... swift and severe punishments (for the armed workers are practical men and not sentimental intellectuals, and they will scarcely allow any one to trifle with them).’ Ibid., p. 144.
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© 1954 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Guins, G.C. (1954). Soviet Ethics. In: Soviet Law and Soviet Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0869-8_3
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