First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The essays in this volume reassess pre-revolutionary Russian legal culture, the debates of the 1920s over the role of law under socialism, and the abrupt and bloody termination of the debate which took place in the 1930s.

The essays in this volume reassess pre-revolutionary Russian legal culture, the debates of the 1920s over the role of law under socialism, and the abrupt and bloody termination of the debate which took place in the 1930s.

The Latvian-born legal theorist P.I. Stuchka (1865-1932), generally recognized as one of the principal architects of modern Soviet legal theory and the Soviet legal system itself, was a prodigious author and editor. Twenty essays by Stuchka written between 1917 and 1931 were selected for translation

This volume examines the elements of formalism and decisionism in Russian legal thinking and, also, the impact of conservatism on the interplay of these elements. This combination leads to internal contradictions in theorizing about law and rights in Russian legal culture.

This book is an unconventional reappraisal of Soviet law: a field that is ripe for re-evaluation, now that it is clear of Cold War cobwebs; and, as this book shows, one that is surprisingly topical and newly compelling. Scott Newton argues here that the Soviet order was a work of law. Drawing on a wide range of sources – including Russian-language Soviet statues and regulations, jurisprudence, legal theory, and English-language ‘legal Kremlinology’ – this book analyses the central significance of law in the design and operation of Soviet economic, political, and social institutions. In arguing that it was an exemplary, rather than aberrant, case of the uses to which law was put in twentieth-century industrialised societies, Law and the Making of the Soviet World: The Red Demiurge provides an insightful account of both the significance of modern law in the Soviet case and the significance of the Soviet case for modern law.

Part I The imperial heritage. Part II The Soviet legacy. Part III Towards a rule-of-law state. Part IV Russia and world public order.