Legal Features of the Liquidation of Immigrant Communes in Soviet Russia in the 1920s (by the Example of the Commune “California”)

Introduction. The study elucidates the legal features of the process of immigrant communes’ liquidation in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. The scientific problem raised envisages the analysis of legal procedures on liquidation of immigrant communes by the example of the commune “California” that had failed to build an efficient farming enterprise and had come to its dissolution. The significance of the article in the contemporary scholarly context lies in the study of the unpublished archival sources to establish the relationship between the liquidation procedures and the legal acts regulating the activity of Soviet agricultural associations. The problem of juridical establishment of the internal structure of immigrant communes and their legal status in comparison with the local collective farms remains unstudied. The aim of the article is to identify the legal features of the dissolution of immigrant collective farms in Soviet Russia in the 1920s by the example of the commune “California” based on the study of the unpublished archival documents.
Materials and Methods. The research was based on the archival documents stored in the State Archive of the Rostov Region (SARR), as well as various normative legal acts regulating the activity of agricultural communes in the USSR in the 1920s. General scientific and specific scientific methods were used within the research: historical-genetic, historicallegal, formal-legal (dogmatic), and content analysis methods.
Results. The article has conceptualized the Soviet agrarian legislation on the activity of immigrant communes. It has analysed the liquidation of the immigrant commune “California”, which took place in late 1926 — the first half of 1927. The process has been evaluated from perspective of legal and regulatory framework being in effect at that time. It has been ascertained that the commune “California” was liquidated at the initiative of its members due to the inability to pay off debts to the state creditors and former members of the commune except for through commune dissolution. It has been demonstrated that Regional land use authorities had supervised the commune liquidation, as their primary objective was to ensure the observation of the state creditors’ interests, while the interests of the commune members mattered at the second place. As a result, the liquidation committee, which included the representatives of the authorities, managed to sell the major part of the commune assets and settle all the debts.
Discussion and Conclusion. The conducted research is significant for the contemporary Russian juridical science due to the introduction into the scientific discourse of the new precedents that expand our understanding of the legal features of immigrant communes’ liquidation in the 1920s. The study presents a detailed analysis of the procedure of commune “California” liquidation, and can serve a starting point for the research on legal regulation of the activity of agricultural communes in the USSR in the 1920s.

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