Evgeny Pashukanis

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Evgeny Bronislavovich Pashukanis (February 23, 1891[1] – 1937) was a Soviet legal scholar, best known for his work The General Theory of Law and Marxism.

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[edit] Early life and October Revolution

Pashukanis was born in Staritsa, in the Tver Oblast in the Russian Empire. Influenced by his family, particularly his uncle, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSLDP) in Saint Petersburg at the age of 17. In 1909, he started studying jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg. As a result of his socialist activism, the Czarist police threatened Pashukanis with banishment, so he left Russia for Germany in 1910. He continued his studies in Munich. During World War I, he returned to his native Russia. In 1914, he helped draft the RSLDP resolution opposing the Great War. He joined the Russian Communist Party, the Bolshevik wing of the RSLDP, right after its founding in 1918. In August 1918, he became a judge in Moscow. Meanwhile, he launched his career as a legal scholar. He also had a post in the ministry of foreign affairs and was an adviser to the Soviet embassy in Berlin, helping draft the Rapallo Treaty of 1922 in this function. In 1924 he was transferred to full-time academic duties as a member of the Communist Academy.[2]

[edit] The General Theory of Law and Marxism

1924 also saw Pashukanis publish his seminal work The General Theory of Law and Marxism. He is famous for his "Commodity Exchange Theory of Law." This theory was built on two pillars of Marxist thought: (1) in the organization of society the economic factor is paramount; legal and moral principles and institutions therefore constitute a kind of "superstructure" reflecting the economic organization of society and (2) in the finally achieved state of communism, law and the state will wither away. If communism is achieved, morality as it is typically understood will cease to perform any function.

[edit] Latter years

From 1925 to 1927, Pyotr Stuchka, another Soviet legal scholar, and Pashukanis compiled an Encyclopedia of State and Law and started a journal named Revolution of Law. In 1927, he was elected a full member of the Communist Academy, eventually becoming its vice-president. Stuchka and he started a section for the General Theory of State and Law at the Academy. However, Pashukanis soon came under pressure from the government. In 1930, for example, Nikolai Bukharin was attacked by Stalin, because he insisted that the state must wither away to bring forth communism, as Marx had advocated, and thus stripped of all his political posts. As a result of this pressure, Pashukanis started to revise his theory of state. He stopped working with his friend Stuchka. It is unclear, whether Pashukanis's transformation was simply the result of him fearing for his safety or he actually changed his mind. He was awarded by being made director of the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law in 1931. In 1936, he was nominated Deputy Commissar of Justice of the USSR and was proposed for membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences.[3]

He, like Nikolai Krylenko and others, was denounced as part of a "band of enemies" by Andrey Vyshinsky, the Prosecutor General of the USSR and mastermind of Stalin's Great Purge. The philosopher Pyotr Yudin was also active in attacking Pashukanis. In 1937, Pashukanis was arrested and Vyshinsky replaced him at the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law. Alfred Krishianovich Stalgevich, a longtime critic of Pashukanis, took over his courses at the Moscow Juridical Institute.[4]

Pashukanis, after publishing many 'self-criticisms', was eventually denounced as a "trotskyite saboteur" in 1937, and executed.[5]

The cousin of Pashukanis, Vikentiy Pashukanis (1879-1920) was a publisher of contemporary Russian poets (symbolists, futurists), a founder of (“Pashukanis’s publishing”); after Russian Revolution (1917) he was an organizer of museums.

[edit] Legacy

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ This date is based on the Gregorian calendar. At the time, the Julian calendar was in use in Russia; according to this calendar, he was born on February 10. Kamenka, Eugene; Tay, Alice Erh-soon (January/February 1970). "The Life and Afterlife of a Bolshevik Jurist". Problems of Communism 19 (1): 72–79. Washington, D.C.: International Information Administration. ISSN 0032-941X. OCLC 1762908.  Pg. 74.
  2. ^ Kamenka/Tay 1970, pg. 72; Harms, Andreas (2002). "Eugen Paschukanis und sein Hauptwerk", Warenform und Rechtsform: Zur Rechtstheorie von Eugen Paschukanis (in German). Freiburg: ça ira Verlag. ISBN 3-924627-80-0. 
  3. ^ Kamenka/Tay 1970, pg. 73 and Harms 2002.
  4. ^ Kamenka/Tay 1970, pg. 73.
  5. ^ Head, Michael. The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Jurist: Evgeny Pashukanis and Stalinism Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 269-94, July 2004.

[edit] External links