For long years Russia’s legal history has intrigued the scholars of Eastern Europe, and some in the West, but little attention has been devoted in English to the most ancient sources, those to be found in the chronicles and the Russkaia Pravda. Although Russian legal history offers little of the continuity of institutions to be found in Anglo-Saxon law, its earliest documents are matters of concern even to Soviet legal historians in an effort to understand a heritage that has left its impact upon contemporary developments. In order to sketch a part of that heritage conveniently for English-language readers, this brief article has been prepared.

In 1955 the present writer examined the struggle being waged against the peasantry by the Communist Party in the USSR and came to the conclusion that the liquidation of the Soviet peasantry as a class is inescapable.

Since then, significant new legislation has been passed in the field of agriculture in the USSR.

All these new measures have the same tendency of bringing the peasant class in the USSR a few steps nearer to eradication and the kolkhozes nearer to the status of sovkhozes.

Two Kinds of Socialist Property: The Soviet Constitution (Section 5) recognizes two kinds of property: state property and cooperative property. Both are qualified as “socialist.”

Count M. M. Speranskij, undoubtedly one of the most brilliant statesmen tsarist Russia has ever produced, wrote in the Introduction to the Code of Laws of 1809, that the “Russian constitution will owe its existence not to the excitement of passions and the exigency of circumstances, but to the blessed inspiration of the Supreme Power…”. He was wrong. The “blessed” Supreme Power granted reforms to the Russian people only reluctantly and, with few exceptions, always under pressure of revolutionary impact.