Specifying Legal Regulation of Crime Prevention in the Field of Cooperation in the 1920s
Novikova Yu.O. Specifying legal regulation of crime prevention in the field of cooperation in the 1920s. Penitentiary Science, 2026, vol. 20, no. 2 (74), pp. 133–141. doi 10.46741/2713- 2811.2026.74.2.003.
the article considers a range of issues related to the development of legal regulation
of cooperation during the implementation of the New Economic Policy and measures to counteract
those illegal acts that were caused by the growth of the cooperative movement. The measures of
financial support for the cooperative movement implemented by the state in the stated historical
period could not but attract criminals’ attention, and therefore the state was forced to supplement
criminal legislation with a new corpus delicti. Purpose: to specify legal regulation of crime
prevention in the field of cooperation in the 1920s by analyzing the dynamics of legal regulation,
stages of criminalization of pseudo-cooperatives’ activities, determining elements of an illegal act,
formulating and justifying factors that contributed to the growth of crime in the field under study.
Research methods: formal legal analysis of the norms of legislation and subordinate normative legal
acts, empirical research method. Certain aspects of the issue under consideration are studied using
the methodology of chronodiscret monogeographic comparative jurisprudence. Results: during the
period of the implementation of the New Economic Policy, with the democratization of activities of
cooperative associations and the involvement of the poor in cooperative activities in order to form
the middle peasantry, the state authorities attempted at the legislative level to combat not so much
financial fraud as small business and private capital. At the same time, the list of elements of pseudocooperatives
was formulated in a fairly streamlined manner, which gave authorities the opportunity
to make decisions based on the discretion of the law enforcement officer, even in the absence of
clear evidence of illegal activity on the part of representatives of the relevant cooperative.
Keywords: legal regulation of cooperation; history of legal regulation; pseudo-cooperative; elements of a pseudo-cooperative; the 1926 Criminal Code of the RSFSR; crimes in the field of cooperation.
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