1992 Reports

Soviet Law Takes a Fresh Breath

Hazard, John N.

A decrepit nineteenth-century locomotive sitting on the rails of a discarded roadbed provided the 1991 cover story for the Russian Republic’s Sovetskaya Yustitstya. The editors seemed to be symbolizing the end of an era dominated by “Soviet Law.” The wheel had turned full circle. That electrifying 1917 moment when a nine-year-old boy carried his father’s morning paper to the table was relived. There were pictures of Lenin and Trotsky on the front page. The Russian Empire had ended and the Russian Revolution was beginning. Papers in 1992 similarly announce. the end of an era, but today it marks the end of Bolshevism and the dismemberment of the USSR. Jurists in Moscow are taking a fresh breath.