Features of the organization and activities of the military college of the supreme court of the USSR during World War II

Without pretending to be exhaustive, the authors aim to focus on the organizational features of the functioning of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court (MCSC) of the USSR during the Second World War and the specifics of its punitive practice in the specified period in the western regions of Ukraine. The purpose of the task is to clarify the powers, the circumstances of the struggle for the strengthening of the monopoly in the control of military tribunals (MT) between the MCSC and the People's Commissariat of Justice (PCJ) of the USSR, highlighting the role of the Military Board in passing judgments, the implementation of absentee justice, as well as the details of the preparation and conducting field sessions in the west of Ukraine. The research methodology combines the tools of historical and legal analysis and social anthropology. The scientific novelty consists in posing and revealing the problem of conceptualization and practical implementation of the punitive policy of the Soviet state with the participation of the highest military judicial institution. The material introduced into scientific circulation makes it possible to focus research optics on the issues of interaction and parallelism, the struggle between various departments for control over special courts, to create a more complete picture of the arbitrariness that unfolded in the last war and post-war years in the western Ukrainian lands. It was established that the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR was an integral part of the political terror implemented both in the armed forces and against the civilian population. Created in 1939, the parallelism in the control of the VT by the People's Commissariat of Justice and the MCSC caused a confrontation between these bodies. The top of the USSR used this in their interests to maintain their own undivided control over the judiciary. The content and methods/forms of the punitive practice of this institution (customary nature, absentee justice, etc.) remained intact since the Great Terror and were fully controlled by the highest political leadership of the USSR. This was clearly confirmed during the work of field sessions in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR.