Law and Legality II: Concepts and Narratives of Soviet Legality

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

From the 1950s to the 1980s, questions of legality became a bellwether of Soviet society’s confrontation with its checkered past and present. Reforms aimed to limit the judiciary’s powers by liberalizing civil and criminal law and procedure, reining in the security apparatus and systematizing the court system. Yet these reforms coexisted with the entrenchment of social control through comrades’ courts, volunteer militias and anti-parasite legislation. Against this backdrop, a debate on legality unfolded in both sanctioned and unsanctioned channels, often bridging the two spheres. In courtrooms, the press and samizdat, jurists, journalists and activists campaigned against indifference, corruption, criminality and the abuse of human rights. Rhetoric and aesthetics themselves became subjects of debate as citizens contested the meaning of legal concepts and turned to literature for genres through which to frame their legal narratives. This panel is part of a themed series on Law and Legality.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Yoram Gorlizki, U of Manchester (UK)

Papers

• The Legal Sketch: Journalism as Justice in Literaturnaia Gazeta - Rebecca Reich, U of Cambridge (UK)

• Fish Rot from the Head Down: Narratives of Late Soviet Corruption - Rhiannon Dowling, CUNY Lehman College

• Human Rights Discourse within the Human Rights Movement: Disputes over Terms - Olga Rosenblum, Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (Germany)

Discussant

• Lauren Kaminsky, Harvard U