GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC GOVERNMENT IN THE SOVIET LEGAL SCIENCE

Abstract

The research aim is to reveal and analyze stages of inception and development of public government conceptual provisions in the science of public law and Soviet construction in the 1918-1991 period. Throughout the given historical period, the leading representatives of the Soviet law school identified its significant characteristics, organizational specifics and competence of local Soviets and their interaction with higher bodies of Soviet power. To achieve this goal, the authors used the method of historical and legal analysis of regulatory legal acts and scientific sources, as well as the comparative legal method in the study of legal and party doctrinal documents. Results and scientific novelty: following the research results, it was identified that significant contradictions were inherent in public government from the moment it was established: the basic principle of its organization was democratic centralism and subordination to a higher state power, with independence in the implementation of the competence of local Councils, not always having clear regulatory limits. The process of public government development in the framework of the Soviet socialist state development featured the successive periods of centralization and decentralization in organization and activities of the local Soviets. Moreover, the Soviet legal science revealed and characterized certain distinctive aspects of public government. They were: moderate decentralization of a single hierarchical Soviet system; expanded competence of local Councils in terms of socio-economic authorities in certain areas of national economy; development of the own financial and material basis of local Councils; creation and development of the normative framework providing the local Councils’ activities regulation. As the key period, determining the fate of public government, the development and adoption of the USSR Constitution of 1977 is noted. Three approaches to determining the future of public government in the latest Constitution of the Soviet Union development and adoption are identified and characterized.