Formal return to recognition of the importance of law: "revolutionary legality" of the Constitution of 1936

The article raises the question of the ideological «transformation» of the traditional meaning of the concept of «legality» that took place in the USSR in the 1930s, accompanied by the addition of new connotations to the previously widespread idea of law and law from the position of tightening party control and subordinating any legal decisions to the criteria of «revolutionary expediency». The author uses the methodology of the «history of concepts» (J. Pocock, K. Skinner, R. Kozellek), examines the process of changing the approach to legal issues since the formulation of V. I. Lenin’s ideas on this issue until the adoption of the “Stalinist” Constitution of 1936.