Aftermath and Reconstruction

Abstract

The chapter examines the connection between legal reform and the halt of the mass operations between 1938 and 1941, exploring its significance for the professional ethos of the Soviet procuracy. Focusing on the legal professionalization campaign that carefully embraced the renunciation of the practices of mass repression, the chapter traces how investigations into the Great Terror triggered and shaped the professional rebirth, the ‘perestroika’, of the criminal justice system. It shows further how prosecutors felt confident to articulate and test these professional beliefs against the NKVD in practice, when reassessing open and closed political cases together with the police. This cooperation exemplifies how the aftermath of the Great Terror fuelled institutional and personal rivalries between procuracy and police, cementing a professional antagonism that over the years increasingly shaped the framework of state repression.