In the thesis based on the identification and critical analysis of historiographical and documentary base, as well as the application of new conceptual and methodological approaches the problem of the formation and activities of comradely courts during the «khrushchev's thaw» in the Ukrainian SSR is investigated.
The liberalization of social and political life, changes in management style, the reformation of socio-economic sphere, weakening of ideological pressure contributed to the improvement of the general atmosphere of the Soviet environment of the mid-1950s – the first half of the 1960s. The restoration and strengthening of elementary foundations of law and order have become an important element of positive changes of the «thaw» era. At that time, various forms of public involvement in the implementation of justice, comradely courts being one of them, were activated. It should be noted that this institution has become an indispensable component of the Soviet everyday life. The main purpose of comradely courts was to prevent infringements of the law and actions that harmed society, to educate citizens through persuasion and public pressure, to create conditions for intolerance to any antisocial behavior.
In the dissertation legal and organizational foundations for the functioning of comradely courts are analyzed, the issues of peopleware to ensure their activities are described, the competence of public courts of the Ukrainian SSR is determined, the most typical violations and offenses, considered by comradely courts in 1958–1964, are analyzed, positive and negative aspects of public involvement in the implementation of the proceedings are identified. The work has improved and expanded the conceptual-categorical apparatus and methodological tools of research, in particular, used the method of retrospective analysis to highlight the problem of judicial system liberalization in the Ukrainian SSR through the activities of comradely courts. The author has clarified the issue of the forms and methods of comradely courts impact on the perpetrators of the offense, their effectiveness.
Trial by peers a spokesman of public opinion, one would think should have been successful in a place with a weak administration and uncalled-for criminal repression.
The strength of this administration was not in punitive means but in the collective judgment of the perpetrator and in the peer’s criticism. It would be worth to mention that sentencing in the form of deprivation of liberty for lesser crimes had negative impact on soviet society because it caused the mass imprisoning of population. An alternative to such punishment was the use of public responsibility.
The seventy years of Soviet ideology revival and the abandonment of the right to independently determine one’s own behavior and one’s own internal relations about use and disposal of common property, education, raising kinds, care about disabled family members, work and leisure, insert, maintain, and develop connections with other people etc. made a great impact on juristic culture of Ukrainian society today.
Although comradely courts of the liberalization era were naturally associated with the general trends of the Soviet society development in the second half of the twentieth century, in fact they became a type of alternative justice, widely known in foreign justice. Despite the fact that today these social and legal technologies are not widely used in Ukraine, alternative criminal-administrative practices and legal procedures have many significant advantages in a democratic society and are promising for further improvement of administrative-legal and judicial systems.
