The Legal Regulation of the Activity of the Soviet Armed Forces’ Bodies of Enquiry During the Great Patriotic War

The article traces the evolution of the legal regulation of the bodies of enquiry in the Red Army and the Navy of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. The author concludes that there are a number of differences in this process in the Navy and the Red Army. For example, such a form as “administrative investigation” was preserved for the navy enquiry bodies. In the Red Army it was eliminated. In the instructions there is a discrepancy on the following issues: terms of appointment of inquirers, the list of offences for which the enquiry was conducted, tasks and rules of appointment of the enquiry, rules of termination of the enquiry. The nature of departmental instructions to bodies of enquiry differed. In the author’s opinion, the Instruction on conducting inquests in the USSR Navy was milder than the Instruction to the Red Army inquest authorities. The general trends in the evolution of the legal regulation of the bodies of enquiry in the Red Army and the Navy were: expansion of the competence of the bodies of enquiry in a combat situation, levelling of the distinction between enquiry and investigation, expansion of the rights of the unit commander, reduction of the duties of the inquirer and expansion of his rights and competence. There is a legitimisation of deviations from a number of requirements of departmental instructions in a combat situation, i.e. a return to the practice of “simplification”. There is an expansion of interpretation of certain norms of criminal law.