Law-making work in agricultural communes of the Irkutsk region in the 1920s.

Introduction. The article examines the issues of the law-making initiative of the population in the creation of agricultural communes in the Irkutsk region. The peasants' law-making was aimed at developing and adopting commune charters that consolidate the organizational and legal activities of collectives. It is noted that initially this process was of an amateur nature, and then it began to be regulated by the Soviet authorities. The provisions of the charters on the admission and right of peasants to leave collectives, on the rights and obligations of communards, which have undergone changes with the development of agricultural cooperation, are analyzed. The article considers the legal basis for the creation and operation of communal management bodies, which had the features of democratic centralism. There is an insufficient level of legal development of issues related to the organization of production activities and the distribution of material benefits in the communes. Materials and Methods. Scientific publications, archival documents, periodicals, and Soviet cooperative legislation were used as materials. The methodological basis of the work was the dialectical method of scientific cognition. The use of inductive and deductive methods made it possible to analyze the norms of local lawmaking. The system-structural approach has helped to examine the structure of the charters of communes, to identify the relationship between its provisions. Within the framework of the comparative legal method, the main patterns and features of various forms of agricultural cooperation have been identified. The Results of the Study. The experience of local law-making is studied on the example of the charters of agricultural communes of Irkutsk province in the 1920s. The organizational and legal bases of the registration of collective farms, the rights and obligations of their members, the creation and functioning of the governing bodies of communes are revealed. The changes in certain provisions of the charters in the conditions of the New Economic Policy concerning the organization of economic activity, the transition from an equalizing method of distribution of material benefits to the distribution according to the quantity and quality of labor expended are noted. The evolution of state policy towards agricultural communes is traced from the independence and voluntariness of their formation to state control over the economic and financial spheres of their activities, up to the liquidation of collectives. Findings and Conclusions. The conducted research testifies to the massive processes of law-making initiative in the early years of Soviet power, emanating from the masses of the people. The charters of the agricultural communes of Irkutsk province are an example of the direct participation of the peasantry in the creation of new legal norms for economic activity and lifestyle. In the initial period of agricultural cooperation, law-making processes on the ground were widespread and were of an amateur nature. However, over time, local lawmaking came into conflict with state legislation and lost its significance.