POLITICS AND JUSTICE IN RUSSIA: MAJOR TRIALS OF THE POST-STALIN ERA by Yuri Feofanov and Donald D. Barry.  Armonk, New York, and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, 345 pp. $23.95 Paper. ISBN 1-56324-345-8.

Reviewed by William Kitchin, Department of Political Science, Loyola College, Baltimore.
 

Yuri Feofanov was from 1956 until the present the major legal correspondent of ISVESTIA--which essentially means that during the Soviet days, he was the star among Soviet legal journalists. This book is largely a collection of his impressions and feelings about a number of the trials which he covered, certain trials of the Stalin period, and the "rehabilitation" of the victims of the Communist illegalities of the Soviet period. The "co-author," Donald Barry, is a political scientist who had the "pleasure" of living in the Soviet Union for a year during the early sixties and whose research and publishing contributions in Russian law are well known to American readers. Professor Barry’s contribution to the book is primarily introducing the various sections of the book and offering a seven page concluding chapter.

THE CONTENT OF THE BOOK 

The book is organized into eight substantive sections in which Feofanov, often with disapproval, describes certain trials and legal events which illustrate various aspects of Soviet law. Feofanov personally covered most of these trials for ISVESTIA, and this familiarity in addition to his considerable journalistic talents make for some interesting reading.

In the first section, entitled "The Khrushchev Period," Feofanov offers the trial of Ian Rokotov, a currency black marketeer, who was sentenced to death for his ill-fated dealings. There had been some speculation at the beginning of the Khrushchev period that perhaps some version of legality might make its way into post-Stalinist Soviet law, but such speculation was the property of the naive and the baselessly hopeful. The Rokotov trial confirmed that economic crimes would be treated as capital crimes by the Party (which, of course, was synonymous with the State), that even capital punishment laws would be applied ex post facto, and that Khrushchev himself emotionally screamed (literally) for death for currency speculators. Indeed, Feofanov relates, Khrushchev, on seeing the mountain of KGB evidence prepared for the trial, exclaimed, "They need to be shot for this." Feofanov relates how his own boss, Khrushchev’s son-in-law Aleksei Adzhubei, argued with no avail with Khrushchev not to create a legacy of illegality. Khrushchev just ranted and raved. Rokotov and his colleague, Faibishenko, were, at aged twenty-two, shot just like the Communist Party leader wanted them to be. Though some legal experts objected to the severity and the retroactive nature of the sentence, the public response was voracious approval.

Feofanov details only one case from "The Brezhnev Years," but it is a stark reminder of the oppressive legal stagnation which afflicted the Soviet Union before perestroika. The trial of Andrei Siniavsky and Yuli Daniel was for their writing and exporting to the West rather mild satirical treatments of the pathetic public psychology created by the Soviet system. For this, the two criminals were sentenced to seven and five years in prison. Feofanov makes passing reference to another case he covered in which the defendants were sentenced to fifteen years for simply contemplating leaving the Soviet Union. Most of the trials during the Brezhnev years were managed and staged by the KGB, but eventually the Party avoided open trials, or trials at all for that matter, and instead just administratively imprisoned its prey in "psychiatric institutions." Feofanov’s discussion of the Siniavsky-Daniel case makes for interesting reading and his personal feelings about the case, about which I comment more generally below, are offered with clarity and perhaps some anguish.

In the chapters collected under the heading, "Transition Years: Economic Crimes," Feofanov discusses several trials which occurred during the interim between Brezhnev and Gorbachev. Feofanov relates the telling story of the Mirkin brothers who transformed a run-down house into a satisfactory dwelling. That alone created an ideological presumption of their guilt, a presumption that these two citizens were trying to be "unequal." Voluminous documents were compiled in this case from a plethora of experts and authorities who repeatedly measured, examined, and inspected the living spaces of the house. Eventually the brothers were convicted of "unauthorized construction" and their house was confiscated by the State. "The brothers tearfully pleaded for time to return the house to its previous dilapidated condition, to remove the verandas and make an attic of the loft. But this was disallowed, for rather novel reasons. The experts said that in practical terms it was impossible to restore the home to its original condition without tearing it down. Once it has been done, to undo it was not allowed." (58).

This case illuminates two features of Soviet legal culture. First, the notion of material equality was applied so as to prohibit material improvement; material improvement was considered a threat to the socialist dogma of equality and an affront to other persons. Second, the prevailing attitudes of the time (and perhaps to some extent among some today) with incongruent with material self-improvement. Such dangerous actions called for legal and material punishment. Feofanov opines that this "distorted legal consciousness of the people" (62) is what makes meaningful legal change in Russia so difficult today.

In his discussion of the "Gorbachev Period," Feofanov gives detailed treatment to the case of Brezhnev’s son-in-law, Colonel General Yuri Churbanov. Churbanov was clearly guilty of official corruption ,theft, receiving bribes, etc. Feofanov uses this case to demonstrate that Soviet criminal law had no respect for "proper" pre-trial procedures, worshiped the confession, and often used whatever means necessary to procure the all-valuable confession. Feofanov discusses another case of this period, that of Akhmadzhon Adylov, a corrupt and brutal "boss" in Uzbekistan, to demonstrate additional abuses of pre-trial proprieties of the Soviet criminal system. In this case, the defendant was held eight years before being brought to trial!

Some of Feofanov’s most interesting material is in the section entitled "Political Rehabilitation and Political Justice." After the collapse of the Soviet system, the Russian Supreme Court took on itself the task of reviewing the legal atrocities of the Stalin years and actually reviewed the "trials" of many of the people murdered by Stalin’s courts and judges (who, of course, followed "socialist legality"). Following these reviews, the unfortunate victims were "rehabilitated," that is, their "good names" were restored. Feofanov’s discussion of the effects of the rehabilitation process on the surviving relatives is personal and moving, often gripping. (Indeed, Feofanov’s discussion of the insulting myth of so-called "socialist legality" reminded me of the time in the middle 1980's when I gave a paper at a political science gathering in which I made the quite unremarkable assertion that socialist legality, more specifically the presumption of innocence in Soviet criminal law, was a complete sham, only to have an American (!) political scientist smugly explain that I really did not understand Soviet criminal practice to even hint at making such an inaccurate assessment of a complex legal system such as socialist law.)

Feofanov covers other trials, too numerous to be discussed individually in this review. One of his objectives is to illustrate various aspects of Soviet civil and criminal law. For the uninitiated, this book will provide a sound, introductory sampling of Soviet law. For today’s students who increasingly did not "experience" the Soviet era, this book will provide an accurate, accessible reminder of just what that system was like. Indeed, this book, written with far greater flair than any comparable book of which I am aware, could well become the definitive introduction to the general operations of the Soviet legal system.

Though that is good for the student needing an accurate introduction to the subject, the more advanced reader will not be satisfied with this book since it contains a paucity of new legal material. All of the points of law are well explained and adequately illustrated in other papers, articles, and books in the field of Soviet law, though Feofanov’s personal presentation and journalistic skills make this book much more readable than most others in the field. Professor Barry deserves credit for his translation which kept the peculiar European-Russian personal style of Feofanov.

ISSUES RAISED BY THE BOOK

Two issues disturb me about this otherwise serviceable and valuable book. First, Feofanov’s own analysis is surprisingly, even startlingly, thin. How could the various trials and occurrences (indeed the entire Soviet nightmare) have happened? Feofanov’s answer is that in the thirties, a "mob syndrome" prevailed in which people were triggered into action. In the decades that followed, a similar though less frenzied mob mentality underlay public and legal events; many among the Soviet people actually believed that the defendants in the cases described in this book were indeed guilty and deserved severe punishment.

The "mob syndrome" notion, while vastly incomplete, is consistent with explanations focusing on obedience and control which can be drawn from biopolitics and political psychology. For example, Milgram and others have conclusively demonstrated the apparently inherent tendency we humans have to obey. What happened in the Soviet Union in the thirties through the fifties is perhaps better explained by a combination of humans’ innate tendency to obey authority and the depth and breadth of authoritarian control over the people of the Soviet Union until the years of glasnost’ and perestroika. Indeed, the lesson of this book and of the Soviet decades is just how easy it is to control humans, to eliminate any hint of freedom, and to use all social and cultural dimensions, including law, to maintain that control. Obviously the authoritarian political culture of pre-1917 Russia intensifies both the obedience and controls sides of the equation.

If pre-1917 Russian legal and political culture made Russians especially obedient and control especially easy, what does the political and cultural experience from 1917 until 1990 forecast for the future? Or, in turns of Feofanov’s book, is the arbitrary justice of the Soviet days a thing of the past? The books offers no answer other than the observations that the Russian public still does not respect courts, and that judicial independence will be indispensable to the building of a law-governed state. Such surface analysis advances no one’s understanding.

The other disturbing aspect of this book relates to the question raised above (how could the legal outrages have occurred?) but is somewhat different: what part did Feofanov play in the maintenance of the structure of illegality and why? He was an active member of the Communist system which deserves full credit for the injuries and abominations which were inflicted on the people of the Soviet Union from 1917 until 1991. He relates in this book that he was aware of the fact that innocent persons were being murdered and destroyed by the Soviet legal system. He knew but stayed quiet. Why? Having played an ignoble role, can he be excused?

The answer is testimony to the iron grip which the Party had on the people. If Feofanov had dissented, dared to get published anything resembling criticism of "the system," he simply would not have survived. Feofanov does not belabor the point and really does not make a very convincing case that his silence was required for him to survive. A convincing case can be made, however, and Feofanov of all people is in a position to make that case and to bring that issue alive. His failure to make the detailed and convincing case is a major disappointment of this book.

Feofanov’s case could start by recognizing that survival is the political, even the biological, heart of totalitarian control. First, the crude copiers and reproducing machines of the fifties through the early eighties were strictly controlled and watched and the pages copied (or reproduced) were closely checked. Second, if Feofanov had succeeded in publishing a critical piece, he would have lost his job, his privileges, including his propiska (Moscow residence permit); his relatives would probably have lost their jobs and perhaps their permits, and would have been required to indicate in their "autobiographies" (analogous to today’s resumes) that their close relative (Feofanov) was in prison. It is also just as likely that Feofanov would have been severely beaten, imprisoned in a psychiatric institution, sent into hard labor, or like many of those victims he describes in this book, killed.

Does a person who rises to a certain level of influence assume an obligation to fight against oppression? One can certainly make that argument, and Sakharov comes to mind. However, Sakharov was a world famous physicist, and to simply institutionalize him or send him to the hard labor camps could likely have entailed unacceptable costs to the Communist Party. Feofanov was hardly as famous as Sakharov and probably no more well known than the noted actor and politician, Mikhoels, whom the Party did not hesitate to murder when it perceived that he was less than completely obedient. Most likely the reader of this review has never heard of Mikhoels, and that is the point. Feofanov can hardly be blamed for merely surviving.

Nevertheless, one may justifiably be disturbed that so many in the Soviet Union were actively and knowingly part of a abhorrent system of oppression and did more than just survive. For example, instead of merely surviving and settling for lower level positions in which they would be substantially removed from the system’s sacrificing of others, many indeed took full advantage of serving in higher level positions of privilege and actually prospered at the expense of Rokotov, Faibishenko, Siniavsky, Daniel, the Mirkin brothers, and hundreds of thousands of others consumed by the hideous and hungry engine of Soviet Communism.

Feofanov describes this engine well. His regrets are apparent, but I detect no sense of grief or anguish. Thus, this book will leave many readers slightly more enlightened but a good deal more troubled, not only about the Feofanovs and others trapped in those Soviet years, but about humans beings in general. This book tells us what we are capable of.