The first Criminal Code of Soviet Russia and the responsibility of professional criminals

Abstract

In 2022, 100 years have passed since the adoption of the first Criminal Code of Soviet Russia — a fundamentally new codified act in the history of Russian legislation. The objectives of this study: to identify and analyze the provisions of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1922 aimed at combating professional crime; to assess their validity, novelty and consistency in the context of the criminal-political tasks that were set before the legislative bodies, as well as their conditionality of the socio-economic and criminological situation that was developing at that time; to create prerequisites for further research on the extent to which the approaches of the legislator to the criminal-legal fight against professional crime were embodied and developed in the subsequent criminal legislation. The article analyzes the main and qualified elements of crimes containing such signs as engaging in crimes of a certain type as a profession and committing a crime in the form of fishing. The rules of sentencing professional criminals and the application of other social protection measures to them, in addition to punishment, are considered. The prescriptions of the criminal law are set out in combination with the characteristics of the socio-economic and criminogenic situation of the early 20s of the twentieth century, the views of domestic lawyers of that time on the problems of criminal professionalism, assessment of the bases of legislative decisions, their gaps and shortcomings.