Поход Алексея Сидорцева против советского суда: свидетельства, аргументы и поиск материальной истины

Soviet and Post Soviet Review. 2022. Т. 49. № 2. С. 115–149.

Maria Starun

This article explores a repertoire of interactions between Alexei Sidortsev, a tenacious

Soviet worker defending his rights, and the Soviet legal bureaucracy up to the

Supreme Court. Using the Sidortsev case as an example, I plan to demonstrate the

judicial logic of interpreting the parties’ various arguments and evidence. This case

allows us to describe and analyze the range of rights and legal opportunities available

to the Soviet worker under interwar law. I also focus on the rhetorical transformations

of Sidortsev’s arguments, changing from ideological to pragmatically bureaucratic.

Although Sidortsev was skilled in ideologized Soviet language, it was the material argument

that was decisive in courts interpretations of the facts of the case. On this basis,

I argue that material truth in the socialist legal consciousness is not determined by the

discursive political language of denunciation that we have come to regard as defining

in the Soviet system.

Keywords: идеология, Stalinism, сталинизм, ideology, гражданское и трудовое право, court, civil law and labor law, советский суд