Functioning of a District Prosecutor’s Office of a Soviet Autonomous Republic in the 1960s-1980s: the case of the Momsky District Prosecutor’s Office of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Abstract

This article is devoted to the current problem of the peculiarities of the implementation of Soviet procuratorial supervision in times of “stagnation” at lowest levels, using the case of Momsky District, one of the typical reindeer herding districts of the Far North in the Yakut ASSR. The research first analyzed archival documents of the Prosecutor’s Office of Momsky District from 1966 to 1991. On the example of a small district prosecutor’s office, the following features of functioning were revealed, characteristic for the whole USSR: the dictate of the Communist Party bodies over decisions to be made by law enforcement agencies; ineffective fight against alcoholism and hooliganism; punitive policy of the Prosecutor’s Office and the court; inequality before the law; total supervision of compliance with the labour rights of citizens; formation of mistrust in the prosecution and law enforcement agencies, as well as in the Communist Party and the state as a whole in the late 1980s, and eventually the collapse of the USSR. Based on the study, the author proposes to take into account the experience of the previous years in order to prevent mistakes of the Soviet time.