Organizational and legal basis for the formation of the prosecutor’s office in Soviet Russia and the formation of the Simbirsk provincial prosecutor’s office in 1917 - 1924

The authors consider the organizational and legal foundations of the formation of the Soviet prosecutor’s office using the example of the Simbirsk provincial prosecutor’s office. The study is based on the materials of the State Archive of Ulyanovsk Oblast, the State Archive of Contemporary History of Ulyanovsk Oblast, and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, which are being presented to the scientific world for the first time. The authors reveal the prerequisites for the formation of the Soviet prosecutor’s office in the law enforcement system of the Soviet state, determine the organizational and legal basis for the formation of the Soviet prosecutor’s office, study the process of formation of the prosecutor’s office and identify problems of its activities in the Simbirsk province. The authors came to the conclusion that the Bolsheviks, taking into account the attitude of citizens towards the pre-revolutionary prosecutor’s office and the factor of prosecutors’ loyalty to the regime of the Russian Empire in the first years of Soviet power, deliberately abandoned the idea of its formation in the Soviet law enforcement system. The function of overseeing compliance with the rule of law became the prerogative of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, the People’s Commissariat of Justice and its structural units in the provincial executive committees, as well as in a number of cases of the Cheka bodies. After the outcome of the Civil War became obvious, the Bolsheviks reconsidered their decision and set about organizing the prosecutor’s office. In the Simbirsk province, the activities of the prosecutor’s office were initially hampered by the low level of material and technical support and the shortage of personnel specialists.