TRADE UNIONS AND COMRADIANT COURTS IN THE CONTEXT OF POST-WAR POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS (1951–1964)

Abstract

The problem of political activities of comradiant courts managed by trade unions in the period of the early 50s–early 60s of the past century is investigated. The purpose of the article is to express and analyze the political aspects of the activities of the comradiant courts that operated within the Ukrainian SSR in the chronological range of the early 1950s– early 1960s, as well as to outline the political tasks of the trade unions under which leadership they were. The choice of chronological boundaries is dictated by the need to compare Stalin’s approaches to the functioning of these public entities with the actions of the “thaw” figures. The author sees the reasons for their revival, firstly, in the dominance of liberal tendencies in the post-war world, which the leaders of the USSR at that time could not avoid. Another low motive for the resumption of the work of public courts was, on the one hand, the urgent need to abandon rigid methods of regulating industrial relations, and on the other, the need to maintain an appropriate level of labor discipline. The low level of the latter is explained by the alienation of workers and collective farmers from the means of production and, as a consequence, their lack of motivation to work. The researcher considers the comradiant courts not to be a judicial, but rather an educational construction of the Soviet structure. The author also sees the political side of the issue in the fact that the comradiant courts, by diverting the majority of cases of violations of labor discipline, thereby prevented their consideration at the level of district courts, thereby keeping the Soviet judicial statistics within the acceptable political limits. A detailed study of their fundamental documents allows stating their significant evolution: from an ordinary tool for influencing the state of labor discipline to their transformation into an important mechanism for forming first the moral and then the ideological guidelines of society. The indispensable role of trade unions in the massive development of comradiant courts is noted. Without their participation, it would hardly be possible to form a single and integral system of action of these bodies influencing on society. At the same time, being under the direct leadership of the ruling party, they brought into their activities the tasks and principles that it required.