The Comrades & Their Courts

One of Communism's proudest boasts is that Soviet law has eliminated the inequalities of Western-style jurisprudence and established a fairer system of justice. Evidence to corroborate the claim is almost nonexistent. What the visitor to a Soviet courtroom finds, says a lanky young American visitor named George Feifer, is not fairness but blatantly biased procedures that stack the deck against a criminal defendant.

A Harvard graduate ('56) who learned Russian as a naval officer, Feifer spent 1962 as a law student at Moscow State University. Making firsthand observations, from neighborhood courts to the appellate level, he sat in on scores of trials; he talked with dozens of judges, lawyers and prosecutors. In a well-documented book, Justice in Moscow (Simon and Schuster, $5.95), he delivers an uncomplimentary verdict on the administration of Soviet justice.

Defeated Defendants. The kingpin of the Soviet system, Feifer explains, is the procurator. Set up as the state's No. 1 law enforcer, he conducts investigations, makes arrests, keeps an eye on the courts for irregularities, supervises the execution of sentences, and acts as prosecuting attorney. The defendant is always at the mercy of the procurator, who is technically collecting only objective facts while he conducts his investigations. Since no Soviet citizen has the right to withhold objective facts, the defendant is thus required to help build the case against himself. The man who is brought to trial is as good as convicted.

The defendant knows this. As a result, his first and last words in court are almost always a confession of guilt and a plea for mercy. After he has been formally charged, a defendant may hire a lawyer, and many do, though the courts generally look down on defense counsel. Nor is a defendant's morale helped by the fact that his head is shaved like a convict's as soon as he is jailed for investigation.

Gibes from the Judge. Most cases are heard in People's Courts, which correspond roughly to American county or federal district courts. There, the judge is flanked by two "lay assessors" --workers from factories who are elected by their fellows for four weeks' court service. Theoretically, the workers compose the majority, but, in reality, Feifer found, the court is always dominated by the judge. He is no impartial umpire, as he is in the U.S. The Soviet judge is a protagonist, calling all the witnesses, asking most of the questions, and often browbeating the defendant.

What the defendant has done to improve Soviet society is a major consideration in sentencing, and the most important witnesses at the trial are those sent from factory or collective farm by the defendant's fellow workers. If they testify favorably and the offense is nothing more serious than drunkenness or hooliganism, the defendant may get off with a job demotion and a fine of up to 20% of his salary for one year. But if his job record is bad, his sentence is certain to be severe: two years in prison camp is standard punishment for petty larceny, ten years for grand larceny, and the firing squad for brutal murderers.

Unpleasant Surprises. Feifer was surprised by the large number of persons convicted on charges that would not even be crimes in the U.S. The Soviet legal code outlaws a whole range of economic activities, such as conducting a private business, acquiring foreign currency, and delivering inferior goods for sale on the Soviet market. Such economic crimes are punished particularly severely. Soviet judges, Feifer observed, were extremely rough when they got the word Sverkhu (from up stairs) that the party wanted to make spectacles of certain types of crime.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the rundown condition of Moscow court houses. But a Soviet judge had a disarming explanation. Since Communism would soon eradicate all crime, he told his American visitor, it would have "a retarding effect psychologically" to build new courthouses.

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