reestablished the Procuracy to serve as the “eyes of the state,” insuring full and complete cooperation in executing the policies of the state and the Communist Party.
During the Stalin era the Procuracy, under the leadership of Procurator-General Andrei Vyshin-sky, aggressively pursued suspected opponents of Stalin’s regime and secured their speedy imprisonment or execution. The Procuracy’s jurisdiction was also extended to non-legal matters, such as overseeing the successful implementation of industrialization and collectivization.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, the Procuracy shifted its emphasis from coercion and repression to prosecuting ordinary criminals and supervising legality in the operations of various governmental agencies. The Procuracy grew in power and prestige during the post-Stalin period. By the 1980s it employed more than 18,000 lawyers and supervised an additional 18,000 criminal investigators; together they comprised more than one-quarter of the Soviet Union’s legal profession.
Prosecutors were slow in responding to Gorbachev’s reforms, viewing them as a threat to their wide-ranging authority. The Procuracy managed to defend its privileged position in the Russian legal system even after the demise of the USSR. A new “Law on the Procuracy of the Russian Federation” was enacted in 1995. The law enshrined the Procuracy as a single, unified, and centralized institution charged with “supervising the implementation of laws by local legislative and executive bodies, administrative control organs, legal entities, public organizations, and officials, as well as the lawfulness of their acts.” While the Procuracy’s jurisdiction remained broad, it lost power to supervise the operation of the courts, which was transferred to the Ministry of Justice.
The powers of the Procuracy have been further restricted by the new criminal procedure code, which was enacted in July 2002. According to the code, prosecutors may no longer issue search warrants or order suspects to be detained. In addition, prosecutors must appear in court to present the state’s case, rather than rely on an extensive dossier compiled during the preliminary investigation. These and other restrictions were undertaken to limit the Procuracy’s privileged status in criminal prosecutions, engender a more adversarial process, and elevate the status and independence of the courts. See also: LEGAL SYSTEMS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mikhailovskaya, Inga. (1999). “The Procuracy and Its Problems.” East European Constitutional Review 11:1-2. Smith, Gordon B. (1978). The Soviet Procuracy and the Supervision of Administration. Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands: Sijthoff amp; Noordhoff. Smith, Gordon B. (1996). Reforming the Russian Legal System. New York: Cambridge University Press.
“Food Tax.”
The word prodnalog comes from the nouns “food” (prodovolstvie) and “tax” (nalog). It is translated as “food tax,” or “tax in kind.” The food tax was an instrument of state policy to collect food and was used twice during the Soviet period. The first introduction of the food tax was in 1921, during the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP). During the period of war communism (1918-1921), the Soviet state used forced requisitions to confis1232
cate food from peasant households. As a result of forced requisitions, peasants reduced the acreage they cultivated and the volume of food they produced. The food they produced was often hidden from the state, so the net result was national famine and starvation in the cities, which in turn led to massive de-urbanization from 1918 to 1920.
In March 1921, with the introduction of the New Economic Plan (NEP), the Communist Party changed its strategy toward the peasantry and adopted a food tax, replacing food requisitions. The food tax specified target quotas of food that were to be delivered to the state. After the delivery quota was met, any food grown by the peasantry could be used as desired-for sale through legalized private channels, for livestock, or for consumption. Delivery quotas for the food tax were established well below the levels of forced confiscation, thereby lessening the burden on peasants, providing them stability in their calculations, and giving them incentives to produce as much as they could. The result was a rebound in agricultural production by the mid-1920s. In 1924 the food tax was replaced by a monetary tax on peasant households.
The second usage of the food tax occurred in 1991. Once again, the stimulus was the state’s inability to obtain sufficient food for the urban population. In 1991 the government of the Russian Republic adopted a food tax that was to be fulfilled in addition to the state order (goszakaz). The size of the state order averaged around 30 percent of production, and the food tax added another 40 percent. The tax was assessed on state and collective farms and other agricultural enterprises. Newly created peasant farms were exempt from the food tax. In order to enforce this tax, penalties for non-compliance consisted of monetary fines, or the withholding of fuel, machinery, and other needed inputs. However, as Communist Party strength diminished in the countryside and throughout society in 1991, penalties for noncompliance were often absent, and the food tax was not successful. It was abolished in 1992. See also: AGRICULTURE; NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; PRO-DRAZVERSTKA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carr, Edward Hallet. (1952). A History of Soviet Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, vol. 2. New York: Macmillan. Medvedev, Zhores A. (1987). Soviet Agriculture. New York: W. W. Norton. Nove, Alec. (1982). An Economic History of the USSR. New York: Penguin.
Grain requisitions from peasant households by the Soviet state during the period of war communism (1918- 1921). These grain requisitions were compulsory, although official policy stated that food deliveries were to come from peasant surpluses of food. In reality, state policy took two main forms: very low prices paid to peasants for their grain, so that the requisition essentially amounted to confiscation; or outright confiscation of all the grain possessed by the peasantry, with no payment. The policy of grain requisition was used as an instrument of class warfare in the countryside, setting poor and middle peasants against rich peasants, the so-called kulaks. The policy of prodrazverstka was bitterly opposed by the vast majority of peasants and led to widespread violence in the countryside against the committees of poor peasants (kombedy) that worked for the Soviet state to seize grain that was being hoarded by peasant households. In response to the confiscation of their grain, peasant households drastically reduced the acreage cultivated and the amount of grain produced, which led to mass starvation and famine throughout the nation.
Grain requisitions were replaced with a food tax during the period of the New Economic Policy (1921-1928). However, prodrazverstka was rein-troduced during the collectivization drive of the 1930s and expanded to include not only grains but other food commodities as well. The policy of food requisitions became an integral part of the planned economy, evolving into a system of state orders (goszakazy) in which state and collective farms were required to sell defined volumes of their production to state procurement agents, such as state-owned food processors, at state-regulated prices. State orders remained in effect until the end of the Soviet Union. See also: AGRICULTURE; PEASANTRY; PRODNALOG
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carr, Edward Hallet. (1952). A History of Soviet Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, vol. 2. New York: Macmillan.
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Medvedev, Zhores A. (1987). Soviet Agriculture. New York: Norton. Nove, Alec. (1982). An Economic History of the USSR. New York: Penguin.
A Production Sharing Agreement is made between two or more independent enterprises and/or government agencies that specifies the way in which and for what period of time the signatories will share in the output of a particular commodity.
