Judicial authorities of the Khakass autonomous region in the postwar years (1945-1953)

The article is devoted to the activity of judicial authorities of the Khakass Autonomous Region as a part of the Krasnoyarsk Region in the postwar period. Cooperation between the Khakass regional court and people''s courts of the region is analyzed on the basis of documents got from local archives. On the average a regional court canceled 25% of decisions of people''s courts. That was connected with the low qualification of representatives of the judiciary corpus: no one of people’s judges in Khakassia had higher legal education, most of them were young people not having any experience in litigation. The most widespread type of crimes heard by judicial authorities of the region was thefts. That was connected with an extremely low standard of living in the country in the studied period. To combat property crimes on the 4th of June 1947 the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR «About criminal responsibility for theft of state and public property» was signed, criminal cases brought under this Decree amounted to a significant percentage in the judicial practice of judicial authorities of Khakassia. The case of civil proceedings was even worse. In the first half of 1946 alone the regional court canceled almost half of decisions of people’s courts in civil cases. The author comes to the conclusion that the activity of judicial authorities of the region was determined by many factors, including changes in legislation taken place in the postwar period and specificity of the region.