The development of Soviet penal prohibitions during the Great Patriotic war

Abstract

The paper covers the study of criminal law regulation during the Great Patriotic War in the historical and legal context. The purpose of the work is to form scientifically substantiated knowledge about the features of the development of the system of penal prohibitions in Soviet law during the Great Patriotic War. Based on the constructivist paradigm, the authors study the process of transformation of penal prohibitions in wartime, highlighting the role of not only legislative but also executive and judicial bodies in this process. The conducted study allowed concluding that the transformation of criminal law regulation equally affected the general and special parts of this branch of law. However, the changes were caused both by the needs of martial law and by the transformation of criminal law shortly before the war, which was associated with the proclaimed by the Constitution of the USSR of 1936 transition to regulating this branch of law not at the republican, but at the all-Union level. In the legal doctrine and the general part of criminal law, the changes concerned primarily the criminalization of civil and labor relations, the expansion of the limits of criminal law regulation, in particular the emergence of new objects of criminal defense, and the clarification of the list of special subjects of criminal law for whom increased measures of criminal liability were established. With regard to the special part of criminal law, the changes were more specific in nature due to the need to mobilize all material and human resources to defeat the enemy and ensure law and order and public safety.