The vicissitudes of the transformation of university legal education in the first years of Soviet power (1917-1920s)

Abstract

The subject. The article examines the history of the formation of university legal education in a very difficult period of the first years of Soviet power (1917-1930), in which it was subjected to great trials.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the causes, forms and confrontational nature of the relationship between the Soviet government and the university community in the first time after the October Revolution.

Methodology. A series of structural experiments is analyzed, some of them are illustrated on materials, including archival ones, of Petrograd (Leningrad) University, which was at that time one of the largest universities in the country.

Main results. The difficulties of transformation in 1918-1919 of law faculties of universities into legal departments of a new organizational form – faculties of social sciences are shown. Legal departments structurally included, as a rule, two cycles: judicial and administrative. The term of study was reduced to 3 years. Legal departments were created with the aim of forming new legal personnel for "socialist construction". The conditions of admission and the content of students' education are changing. In the beginning, absolutely everyone could study at universities, regardless of citizenship and gender, who had reached the age of 16. Entrance exams were canceled, even documents on secondary education were optional. The status of teachers has changed significantly. Lectures and seminars were mostly replaced by the "brigade-laboratory method" of teaching: the teaching material was studied by teams of a dozen students led by a foreman; the tasks involved independent study of literature and analysis of practical incidents; the teacher was involved in the process only if students had difficulties. Another innovation was the practice of students in justice institutions organized since 1922. However, the faculties of social sciences did not meet the expectations of the Soviet government and in the mid-1920s they were closed. Instead, faculties of Soviet law were opened at universities with two departments – judicial and economic and administrative. They were also closed in 1930-1931. Instead, specialized legal institutions were created under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Justice.

Conclusions. Despite all the government search experiments with their mistakes and failures, the liquidation of university law faculties in the 1930s and early 1940s, since the 1940s, the training of lawyers at universities has nevertheless been resumed, continuing the traditions of the centuries-old domestic law school to provide the country with highly qualified legal personnel.