Defining the ‘Political’ Crime: Revolutionary Tribunals in Early Soviet Russia

Matthew Rendle

Europe-Asia Studies, 2013, vol. 65, issue 9, 1771-1788

Abstract: After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks established revolutionary tribunals to judge ‘counter-revolutionary’ and ‘political’ crimes. Amid conflicting reports from contemporaries on the effectiveness of these new courts, this essay examines their development over the first year of their existence. It argues that whilst tribunals were initially too inefficient for the regime, forcing greater central control over them, they played an important role in defining what constituted counter-revolution. In doing so, they promoted the regime's ideology, imparted an image of legality to the regime's actions, and helped the Bolsheviks to exert their control over a fragmented and diverse political landscape.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09668136.2013.840117 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ceasxx:v:65:y:2013:i:9:p:1771-1788

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ceas20

DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2013.840117

Access Statistics for this article

Europe-Asia Studies is currently edited by Terry Cox

More articles in Europe-Asia Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().