Philosophy of law in the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies

Abstract

The fate of Marxism in the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies as the former’s extension owing to post-WWII occupation was from the beginning sealed by Bolshevism, that is, the politico-ideological domination and use of the scholarly domain as well, made to self-close in a merely justificatory role. There may have been attempts at opening, even if only conceivable within—i.e. preserving at the same time—this framework function. In the present conspectus, the limiting positions are occupied by the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic, completed by after-1968 Czechoslovakia, as well as Yugoslavia and pre-1968 Czechoslovakia, representing the substitute-to-religion dogmatic side, exclusively politically motivated in the former and subordinated to a humanising tendency in the latter case, on the one hand, and Poland, dedicated to a purely analytical approach, in which Marxism has simply no relevance, on the other. Hungary, treated in an earlier paper by the author, was in-between, taking Marx...