A common citizen and Soviet justice: on the use of political demagogy in daily communication with the authorities (Kursk province, 1920's)

This article examines some obscure facts from archival documents about the relationship between rank-and-file citizens and judicial authorities during the first decade of the Soviet power. It focuses on all sorts of demagogy and revolutionary slogans used by the inhabitants of the Kursk province as an instrument to achieve their private purposes in communication with the local government. The conclusion goes that in the early 1920s the revolutionary slogans that would be imposed on the masses caused “the effect of a boomerang”: the citizens took to revolutionary demagogy when dealing with central and local Soviet bodies, particularly with judicial authorities. It turned out to be a means for the justification of their selfish and illegal actions being presented as if complying with appropriate Bolshevist ideas.