Privilege as a Type of Legal Advantage in the Early Years of the Soviet State

Abstract

Currently, there is a significant increase in research interest in the Soviet heritage – this is caused by the need to focus on their own unique historical experience. Special attention should be paid to the processes of legal consolidation of preferences for certain categories of the population, designed to solve the key tasks facing the state in different periods of time – such mechanisms have not lost their relevance in modern times. Legal advantages were included in the sphere of scientific interests of many Russian scientists. However, in the works devoted to this problem, the Soviet period remains out of the field of view of the authors, it is only indirectly affected. Despite the concept of building an extra–class, egalitarian society, characteristic of Soviet ideology, in fact, privileges existed – both indirectly and quite legally. The purpose of the study is a comprehensive analysis of the features of the consolidation of the category of «privilege» in Soviet law in the first years after the Bolsheviks came to power, as well as the definition of the features of the formation of the mechanism for granting privileges, the subject composition of such legal relations. The results of the study suggest that the forms of privileges that developed in the early years of Soviet power are united by a common feature that fundamentally distinguishes them from the category of exemptions – they provide additional advantages, endow the bearer of the privilege with «superpowers» that are inaccessible to other categories, motivate and stimulate. Exemptions in general are aimed, first of all, at easing the situation of the subject, replenishing its material base. The analysis of normative acts carried out within the framework of this article empirically confirms the position on the need to distinguish between the concepts of «privilege» and «exemptions».