The form of state in the historical and legal research of the Soviet period
Authors: Yashchuk T. F. 
Published: October 2021

The subject of the article is the application of the concept of the form of state in the Soviet historical and legal science.

The purpose of the research is to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that the understanding of the form of the state in the Soviet history of law was not discrete, it changed under the influence of political transformations and had a significant impact on the modern theory of the state.

The methodology. The method of periodization was used to highlight the Soviet period of historical and legal science, the chronological method was used to determine the upper and lower boundaries of the Soviet period. The narrative method made it possible to describe the historiographic process. The historical-comparative method was required to compare individual concepts.

Results, scope of application. The concept of the form of the state that was used in the historical and legal science of the Soviet period has been determined. The form of the state in Soviet science included two elements initially: the form of government and the form of statehood. The third element has been added since the 1960s – the political regime. The institutionalization of the history of state and law as a science took place by the end of the 1940s. While historians of the old school were working, the main topics included the early stages of the development of the state. Then after the change of generations the priority place was taken by the problems of the Soviet state. By the end of the Soviet period a more harmonious allocation of topics had developed. In Soviet historical and legal science the form of the state of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods was considered separately. The form of government of the Russian state in the pre-revolutionary period was defined as a monarchy. Several types of monarchy were distinguished: early feudal, estate-representative, absolute. The republican form of government was recognized for the Soviet state. Its class and social essence changed with the development of socialism. Organizational forms changed accordingly. When studying the polity, the main attention was paid to the federation. Its complex origin was noted, because the Russian Federation (RSFSR) was part of the federation of the USSR. The Soviet federations were built according to the nationalterritorial principle. The issue of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation remained debatable. Most researchers considered the RSFSR a state with autonomous entities. The development of the territory of the state as a whole has hardly been studied. Major administrative-territorial reforms carried out in the 1920s-1930s were considered in isolation from national-territorial construction. Generalized works on the territorial development of the state appeared only at the end of the Soviet period. Issues of the political regime of the feudal and bourgeois state were addressed in the study of direct democracy in the ancient Russian state, estate representative bodies, state power during the period of absolutism. Political liberalization was noted during the bourgeois reforms of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The democratic nature of the Soviet political regime was not questioned, therefore, the problems indicating trouble, crisis phenomena in the Soviet state were not identified.

Conclusions. The understanding of elements of form of the state in the Soviet history of law was expanding. It changed in accordance with the changes in the Soviet governance. The main approaches to understanding the form of the state are accepted by contemporary Russian science.