THE SOVIET STATE IN THE WAR FOR THE FATHERLAND
Andrei Y. Vyshinsky
Everyone knows that Lenin did not succeed in writing the second part of his State and Revolution – death prevented his carrying this task to completion. However, what Lenin did not succeed in doing, Stalin did. Sustained by the Marx-Lenin methodology and by the experience of building the Soviet state, Stalin illuminated and resolved a succession of the most important state-law problems which had theretofore remained without solution. Such is Stalin's doctrine regarding the functions of the state – internal and external – showing the sources of different state measures and facilitating the understanding of the true moving forces behind the great historical events in the life of peoples and of countries. Such is Stalin's doctrine as to the phases of the development of the Soviet state – showing the inevitability of the bond between the separate stages of the state's development, and the community of certain features of these stages – notwithstanding the difference of their nature, their tasks, and the methods of their activity. In speaking of the building of the new socialist state, Stalin notes that certain functions of the old state will inevitably be preserved therein – of course in changed form, in accordance with the changing of social conditions and requirements of the proletarian state.
From the foregoing, Stalin likewise draws the inference that the forms of our state are changing – and will change – as our country develops and the external setting changes. He names two functions of the Soviet state as inherent therein during its second phase: (1) the function of military defense of the country from attacks from without, and (2) the function of the work of state organs in economic organization and cultural education. He said that “as regards our army, punitive organs and reconnaissance, their sharpness is turned against external foes – outside the country – and no longer against foes within the country.”
These words were spoken in 1939: that is to say, two years prior to the present war – where the part played by our army and reconnaissance needs no particular explanation. But already – long prior thereto – the party and the government under the guidance of Stalin had directed particular attention to the extraordinarily important significance of these functions of the Soviet state. In accordance therewith, the entire policy of the Soviet state – internal and external – was constructed. It is specifically by that understanding of the problems and the objectives of the Soviet state that the content of its activity was defined.
SOVIET LEGAL PHILOSOPHY, edited by John N. Hazard, translated by Hugh W. Babb. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.