Russia's criminal legislation of the 19th - first half of the 20th centuries on organized criminal groups

Russian criminal law has long been aware of complicity. However, a more concrete and legally perfect definition of complicity was described in the Penal Code and Criminal Correction Act of 1845. The Penal Code describes two types of collaborative commitment of a crime: the crime was committed by several people with prior agreement or without it. A prior agreement to commit a crime was seen as the basis for increasing the severity of the guilt and, thus, increasing the criminal penalty. Certain standards described in the special part of the Penal Code of 1845 are analyzed as well. This part takes into account certain joint criminal activity that occurred outside the frames of the institution of complicity, but, at the same time, assumes responsibility for the criminal acts of several people: revolt en masse, conspiracy, organization of secret societies, and so on. The author devotes special attention to the norm that establishes responsibility for organization of gangs and gang crimes, considering this form of participation in crimes to be the essence of modern organized groups. Through this precise lens the author analyzed gangs as a form of joint criminal activity described in the wording of the Criminal Law of 1903. The author notes that the development of the Soviet criminal law happened quite actively. In this context he analyzed documents having to do with the early years of Soviet rule and noticed that, ignoring their large quantity, the starting point of the development of the Soviet criminal law and the institution of complicity are the "Guiding Principles of Criminal Law in the RSFSR" of December 12th, 1919. This document is then analyzed quite extensively. The law analyzes the institutional norms of joint criminal activity described in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1922, the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1926, and other such documents that in one way or the next touch upon this topic, whether it is joint criminal activity in general or participation in criminal activity as part of an organized group.

Keywords

Authors

References