Appropriation entrusted property according to the Soviet Criminal Code of 1918

The study of history of legislation providing for criminal liability for appropriation or embezzlement of entrusted property shows that there is no true picture of the list of criminal law sources of the XX century in the official historiography of criminal law. Thus, it is necessary to clarify this question. Decrees and resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars of RSFSR are considered the first sources of criminal legislation in the Soviet state. However, the researchers of Russian criminal legislation often shun the fact that at the beginning of 1918 the People's Commissariat of Justice adopted "The corpus of laws of the Russian revolution. Part five. Criminal Code". "It is still unknown whether the Code of 1918 came into legal force, but it was not put into practice. Soviet lawyers and politicians spoke about that legislative act negatively. Probably, such an assessment was given because left Socialists- Revolutionaries composed the membership of the People's Commissariat of Justice, and the Code of 1918 was developed on the basis of the Criminal Code of 1903 and was meant to provide continuity in law and the Bolsheviks could not do otherwise but apprehended it critically. However, despite the fact that the Criminal Code of 1918 (and Criminal Code of 1903 in particular) was based on the idea of continuity of law, the norms on responsibility for appropriation of property underwent a number of changes. For the first time the Code formulated general characteristics of appropriation of entrusted property made by the person using his official position, "brought" out of the concept "appropriation" illegal actions in the relation to unknown belongings, as well as the terms "deduction", "embezzlement" and brought it closer to the concept "stealing". Nevertheless, that legislative act was not appreciated by a new government; the criminal legislation of 1918-1922 was submitted by separate decrees, resolutions and provisions devoted to the relative and private questions demanding criminal and legal regulation. The Criminal Code of 1922 also disregarded those approaches to definition of signs of appropriation of entrusted property that were stated in the Code of 1918. The first Soviet Criminal Code widely defined them, having used the terms "embezzlement", "retention of a thing" in the description of the objective aspect of crime. On the contrary, the characteristics of an "official appropriation" were limited by a crime subject - money or other values. Thus, the ideas of politically objectionable Code of 1918 were not realized in legislative practice of 1920s-era.

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