Bookvica

[A SAMMELBAND OF FIVE EARLY SOVIET LEGAL PUBLICATIONS ON PROPERTY, HOUSING, CRIMINAL, AND LAND LAW]

Item #2416

Moscow, 1922–1923. Text in Russian. Owner’s cloth. Binding worn, occasional soiling, the stamp of the “Library of N. A. Slobodchikoff San Francisco California” on all five title pages, all
but the first title page with the private library stamp of “Prisyazhnyy poverennyy Aleksandr Yakovlevich Slobodchikov” [i.e. Attorney at Law Alexander Yakovlevich Slobodchikov].

Provenance: The book belonged to Alexander Slobodchikov (1875–1945), a hereditary nobleman from Samara and a sworn attorney. After fleeing Russia in 1918, he settled in Shanghai and resumed legal work, later moving to San Francisco, where he left this book to his son.

From the library of Nikolay Slobodchikov (1911–1991), an electromechanical engineer and museum director. Born to a lawyer active in the White movement in Eastern Russia, Slobodchikov fled with his family through Vladivostok to Harbin, where he graduated from the F.M. Dostoevsky Gymnasium. He later studied engineering in Liège, Belgium, and at Hilds Engineering College in San Francisco. After working at Pacific Gas and Electric and the California Public Utilities Commission, he retired in 1976. A member of several American engineering and Russian émigré organizations, he co-founded the museum at the Russian Center in San Francisco and served as its director from 1966 to 1991. Under his leadership, the museum developed extensive collections on the Russian diaspora, the Civil War, and pre-revolutionary Russia.

A rare assemblage of early-post-Revolutionary legal handbooks and codices, reflecting the formative legal landscape of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) during
the early 1920s. These publications, issued by the state publishing arms Znanie and the Legal Publishing House of the People’s Commissariat of Justice (Narkomjust), were aimed at educating party members, legal professionals, and the broader Soviet citizenry on the foundations of emerging socialist jurisprudence. With the wave of Russian émigrés fleeing the Civil War, such publications often found their way to China in the early 1920s. In exile hubs like Harbin and Shanghai, where many refugeesё struggled to grasp the new Soviet legal and social order, these manuals served as rare windows into a country they could no longer access. Given that Slobodchikov himself fled to Harbin, it is likely he obtained the booklets there. The modest cloth binding is probably of Chinese origin, suggesting local rebinding efforts by émigrés seeking to preserve these fragile, politically charged texts.

The edition contains the following texts:

1) Barsegyants, O. Imushchestvennyye prava grazhdan po dekretam i rasporyazheniyam R.S.F.S.R [i.e. Property Rights of Citizens according to Decrees and Orders of the RSFSR]. Moscow: Znanie, 1922. 120 pp.
A digest of decrees concerning private property rights recognized by the RSFSR and structured around the landmark VTsIK decree of May 22, 1922. The book outlines the new legal distinctions between personal and private property—categories that had no equivalent in the Tsarist Civil Code. While the Imperial Russian legal system enshrined private property as a cornerstone of civil rights, the Soviet regime reconceived property relations as a function of class policy. Personal property (e.g., everyday household items, clothing, modest savings) was permitted, but private property— especially productive assets like land, factories, or rental housing— was delegitimized or placed under strict regulation. Barsegyants, a legal consultant to the Moscow Soviet, organizes the decrees thematically. Topics include the status of expropriated real estate, inheritance under Soviet law, cooperative property, and citizens’ limited rights to own or lease small-scale tools or plots.

Worldcat shows copies of the edition at the University of Cambridge, University College London, The George Washington University Law Library, Ohio State University Library, and
Stanford University.

2) Barsegyants, O. Zhilishchnyy vopros po zakonodatel’stvu R.S.F.S.R. [i.e. Housing Issue according to the Legislation of the RSFSR]. Moscow: Znanie, 1922. 76, II, III pp.
This second volume by Barsegyants addresses one of the most acute issues of early Soviet life: housing redistribution. Unlike the tsarist legal system, which treated residential property
as an absolute private right, the RSFSR’s housing policy introduced municipalization and densification, whereby tenants could be forcibly settled in under-occupied private dwellings. The 1918 decree on municipalization placed most urban housing stock under the control of local soviets, effectively abolishing private ownership of apartment buildings and larger homes. The publication reflects the shift toward collectivized urban space and the idea of housing as a function of social equity rather than personal wealth.

Worldcat shows copies of the edition at Harvard University, Columbia University Law School, Library of Congress, Ohio State University Libraries, and Stanford University.

3) Estrin, A. Ugolovnoye pravo RSFSR: V szhatom i populyarnom izlozhenii dlya sovpartshkol, sudebnykh rabotnikov i samoobrazovaniya [i.e. Criminal Law of the RSFSR: In a Condensed and Popular Presentation for Soviet Party Schools, Judicial Workers and Self-Education]. Moscow: Yuryd. yzd-vo Narkomyusta, 1922. 94, [2] pp.
A popularized and abridged guide to RSFSR criminal law aimed at legal workers, party schools, and self-learners. Compiled by Alexander Estrin (1889–1938), a legal scholar and later
director of the Institute for the Study of Crime. Like many of his contemporaries, Estrin was arrested during the Great Purge and executed.

Estrin’s guidebook explains the basic principles of early Soviet criminal law, shaped by the RSFSR Criminal Code of 1922. The tsarist criminal code had emphasized formal legality,
precedent, and judicial independence. In contrast, the new Bolshevik system prioritized social danger as the basis for defining crimes, emphasizing class struggle and ideological motivation. Unlike the pre-revolutionary law, where workers’ strikes were often criminalized, the Soviet code explicitly did not consider strikes or walkouts aimed at improving workers’ material conditions to be criminal offenses. On the contrary, crimes now included employers’ violations of collective agreements concluded with trade unions, charging workers and employees rent above fixed limits, and failure to fulfill obligations under contracts with state institutions or enterprises. The book presents typical offences—including speculation, sabotage, and counter-revolutionary agitation—ё and introduces new categories such as “enemies of labor” and “bourgeois elements.” Estrin also addresses revolutionary tribunals’
role and judges’ discretionary authority under “revolutionary legal consciousness.”

Worldcat shows 2 copies of the edition at Columbia University Law School and National Library of Israel.

4 ) Ugolovno-protsessual’nyy kodeks RSFSR [i.e. Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR]. Moscow: Yuryd. yzd-vo Narkomyusta, 1923. 112 pp.
A revised and expanded edition of the Criminal Procedure Code, issued following the directives of the IV Session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VtsIK) of the 9th convocation. This codification helped entrench the legal foundations of Soviet criminal justice in the early years of the RSFSR. In stark contrast to the tsarist criminal procedure, which upheld due process, presumption of innocence, and a formal adversarial structure, the Soviet code reoriented the judicial process toward class-based justice and revolutionary expediency.
It framed the legal system as a weapon of the proletarian state in the struggle against class enemies and “socially dangerous elements.” The prosecutorial and investigatory functions were fused, reducing the independence of defense counsel and minimizing the role of jury trials. The principle of social defense supplanted individual legal rights, allowing courts to impose penalties based not only on guilt for specific acts but also on perceived class origin or ideological threat. The Code legalized the use of revolutionary tribunals and institutionalized a system
where procedural norms were subordinate to political utility. It also introduced simplified proceedings for “counterrevolutionary” offenses and permitted the broad use of preventive detention. This legal transformation marked the consolidation of a punitive and preventive model of justice that prioritized the security of the socialist state over the legal protection of the individual.

Worldcat shows copies of the edition at Columbia University Law School, University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago Library, University of Missouri, University of Washington Gallagher
Law Library, University of California Berkeley, Universität Passau, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, National Library of Israel, and Library of Congress.

5) Zemel’nyy kodeks RSFSR [i.e. Land Code of the RSFSR]. Moscow: Yuryd. yzd-vo Narkomyusta, 1923. 40, XXXII pp.
The 1922 Land Code marked the first formal codification of Bolshevik agrarian policy and a definitive legal break with the tsarist landholding system. Under Imperial law, land was legally treated as hereditary private property, with vast estates concentrated in the hands of the nobility, Church, and large landowners. Following the October Revolution, Bolshevik decrees abolished private land ownership entirely, redistributing land to peasants on the principle of use rather than ownership (sobstvennost’).
The Code enshrined this transformation in law, stipulating that land was the property of the state and could not be bought, sold, mortgaged, or alienated. Instead, land was to be distributed equitably
for labor-based use, either by individuals or collectives, with clear priority given to the working peasantry. The Code regulated categories of land tenure—communal, individual, and state-managed—and laid out mechanisms for land use planning, dispute arbitration, and supervision by local Soviets and land committees. While couched in legal language, the Code also functioned as a tool of class
policy, aiming to eliminate landlordism and promote socialist land relations. It institutionalized state oversight of rural life and helped set the stage for future collectivization efforts.
This edition includes a detailed thematic index to facilitate practical use by local authorities, peasants, and land redistribution committees navigating the rapid legal and social upheavals in the countryside.

Worldcat shows 2 copies of the edition at the Illinois University Library and the British Library.

Price: $950.00