Calculation of damages in the Soviet civil law

Introduction: as it is well known, the problem of damages recovery and, in particular, the difficulties of damages assessment is the subject of numerous works of the pre-revolutionary, Soviet and contemporary civil law researchers. From the beginning of the 1930s, during the transition to a planned economy, there were new approaches to recover damages that cannot be accurately counted, the formation of new conceptions, together with the development of special and universal methods of damages calculation. However, under the current market conditions, the problem does not lose its relevance because of the difficulties in proving the required components as well as the lack of a universal method to calculate the amount of required recovery. Purpose: to give a review of the Soviet civil law experience in calculating the amount of damages that cannot be an accurately counted. Methods: general scientific (dialectical), universal (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, comparison, abstraction, formal-logical, systematic and structural) and specific legal (comparative legal, systematic interpretation) methods of scientific research have been used. Results: the idea of liquidated damages, which are widespread in countries of Anglo-Saxon law, is reflected in the statutory damages conception, in the conceptions of damages as non-reducible damages (indemnity bond), and also in the development of various methods for preliminary calculation of the amount of damages. Conclusions: the results of the analysis of the concept of statutory damages developed in the Soviet era allow us to detect similarities with the concept of the liquidated damages. Moreover, the idea of liquidated damages is found in considering the forfeit as non-reducible damages, whose recovery is a kind of a guarantee of compensation. In the Soviet Union the appropriate methodological framework for the calculation offuture damages was formed.