Special Collegium Activities on Certain Categories of Cases (1934–1938)

Special collegiums operated in 1934–1938 as part of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the supreme courts of the Union republics, regional and regional courts, and the main courts of the autonomous republics. Their creation can be considered as an experiment in transferring cases of state crimes from non-curial to judicial authorities. The special collegiums activities were provided by the NKVD, special departments of the prosecutor’s office and the sector of special courts of the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR. Their personnel consisted of former NKVD officers and nominees of local justice authorities. All this makes it possible to characterize them as bodies of special justice. The most notable cases considered by special collegiums were cases of anti-Soviet agitation (Article 58–10 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), cases under the decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR dated August 07, 1932 («The Law on Three Spikelets») and cases of banditry (Article 59-3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). All of them were considered within the framework of the campaign justice model. It was characterized by an expansion and narrowing of the interpretation of the norms of substantive law. This allowed ordinary crimes and administrative offenses to be considered as state crimes. The penalties were regulated. This led to unstable judicial practice. The methods of «simplification», i.e., deviations from the norms of substantive and procedural law, were actively used. Obviously, by the middle of 1938, the experiment of depriving non-judicial bodies of judicial functions was considered unsuccessful and the special collegiums were liquidated.