Institute of people's assessors in the Soviet court in the period of New Economic Policy

The article is devoted to the analysis of mechanisms of community engagement in the administration of justice in the period of new economic policy. The author reveals the variety of forms of participation of working people in court proceedings. Some of them were born in the previous period, while others - in this period. Some of them (for example, people’ assessors) have stood the test of time and have come through the entire Soviet period. Party affiliation and worker-peasant origin were the main requirements to the selection of people’s assessors in the Soviet era. The questions of education and professional skills were secondary. The author both analyzes the regulations, defining the requirements to people’s assessors, and considers the implementation of principles of personnel policy of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, based on a significant archive material. This approach allows tracing the changes in the panel of people’s assessors in courts of different levels in the dynamics and in the comparison to the data of the Ural region with All-Union's data. The author clearly demonstrates the role of the institution of people’s assessors in the administration of justice as a definite deterrent of arbitrariness in the court.