The Code of Laws of the USSR and the Codes of Laws of the Union Republics in Ensuring the Legislative Unity of the USSR (mid-1970s - 1980s)

Kodan Sergei Vladimirovich Doctor of Law Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation; Chief Scientific Associate, Department of Scientific Research Governance; Professor, Department of Theory of State and Law, Ural State Law University 620137, Russia, Sverdlvskaya oblast', g. Ekaterinburg, ul. Komsomol'skaya, 21, of. 210 svk2005@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

A new stage in ensuring the unity of the legislative space in the USSR was the creation and publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the Code of Laws of the Union Republics in the second half of the 1970s - 1980s. These acts of systematization of legislation completed the process of centralization of the system of legislation of the USSR. Within the framework of this article, we will focus on the history of the creation, place and role of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics as a political and legal instrument in ensuring the harmonization of the legal space and ensuring the unity of the legislative system in the conditions of a complexly organized federal state, which was the USSR.

The prerequisites for the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics in the mid-1970s – 1980s should be considered within the framework of the processes of centralization of the legislative space of the Union state. This period of systematization of the laws of the USSR became a logical continuation of the previous stages of building a unified system of legislation in the USSR.

In the first place among the prerequisites for the creation of codes of laws in the USSR, the authorities, like the early periods of the existence of a federal state, had a common and static task - to ensure the unity of the USSR. Its solution was part of the three-pronged goal of the Soviet state - to ensure the political, state and legislative integrity of the USSR. In the second half of the 1950s, this problem began to be solved using the means of codification of legislation - the preparation and publication of the sectoral Foundations of the legislation of the USSR and the Union Republics and republican codes. By the mid-1970s, the codification of the Union and republican legislation as a whole was completed and the transition to a new level of formation of a unified legislative space in the USSR was determined in legal policy - the coordination and unification of the entire current legislative array of the country by creating the Union and republican acts of its official systematization in the form of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics. The choice of this form of regularization of legalizations was not accidental – as the historical experience of the development of law in the Russian Empire, the RSFSR and the USSR showed, it was the code of laws that could ensure the unity of the legislative system by combining the regulatory legal acts in force in the country into a single comprehensive legal document with a clearly defined structure and the creation of tools for the prompt search for legal information by various state structures and citizens ^{[5, pp. 388, 398-399; 17]}. The codes of laws could also solve the problem of "streamlining the current legal system" ^{[17, p. 30]}.

In terms of the prerequisites for the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics, it is necessary to take into account the experience of systematization work in the RSFSR and the USSR in the history of the former development of Soviet law, since the idea of creating a code of laws for the Soviet state was not new. To a certain extent, it was rooted in the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, created in the second half of the 1820s - early 1830s and operated in the Russian Empire until 1917. ^[4] Already in the early years of Soviet power, the issue of publishing the "Code of Laws of the Russian Revolution" in the conditions of the "revolution of law" was set as one of the central tasks for the centralization of the legislative space and ensuring the rule of law in the RSFSR. In January 1918 The Codification Department of the People's Commissariat of Justice of the RSFSR initiated the preparation of a set of republican laws and with varying degrees of intensity these works took place until the 1920s. With the formation of the USSR, practical steps were also taken to create a Code of laws of the USSR. But in December 1930, in connection with the officially proclaimed "victory of socialism" and the need in this regard to introduce new changes to Soviet legislation, the publication of the already prepared Code of Laws of the USSR was deemed inappropriate. Nevertheless, it was this experience of theoretical and practical study of the creation of a consolidated act of systematization of legalizations in the 1918-1930s that was of interest and studied by scientists participating in the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR in the 1970s. These were information about the activities of previously functioning systematization institutions, about theoretical, methodological, technical and legal developments in the field of systematization of Soviet law, approaches to determining the general structure of the code of laws, its categorization and distribution of its legislative material into structural sections - volumes and books, developed principles and methods of selecting legalizations for inclusion in the code, rules drawing up a consolidated act, etc. ^{[20, p. 162-189]}

To create the Code of Laws of the USSR, the development of legal science and practice in the second half of the 1950s - 1960s was crucial as one of the main prerequisites for carrying out systematization work. In Soviet jurisprudence, in the post-Stalin period of its development - during the "Khrushchev thaw" - a galaxy of outstanding Soviet jurists was formed, which went beyond praising the successes of the "Stalinist transformations of state and law" and began to comprehend the experience of the development of not only Soviet, but also pre-revolutionary statehood and law. With the general preservation of the ideological orientation and partisanship of legal science, a layer of historical, theoretical and sectoral research in the field of systematization of legislation appeared in the Soviet legal sciences, summarizing the previous domestic and foreign experience of ordering legalizations and, especially   codification of Soviet law in the second half of the 1950s - 1960s. On this basis, legal science and practice were ready for a new stage of systematization of legislation at the level of creating codes of laws.

Practical work on the creation and publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union Republics in the second half of the 1970s - 1980s included a set of measures, including the adoption of political and legal decisions, the publication of regulations and methodological materials for the preparation of these acts of systematization of legislation, as well as practical work on their preparation. This process included the following interrelated stages of the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR.

The political decision to create a Code of laws of the USSR and the Union Republics was announced at the XXV Congress of the CPSU (Moscow, February 24 - March 5, 1976) – it sounded the thesis that "it is time to publish a code of laws of the Soviet state. This will contribute to increasing the stability of our entire law and order. This will make our laws more accessible to all Soviet citizens" (Materials of the XXV Congress of the CPSU. M., 1976. p. 82.). The implementation of the decision and the general management of the activities of state structures for the creation of the Union and republican codes of laws was carried out by the Central Committee of the CPSU, and the direct work was carried out by the relevant state structures.

The legal basis for the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR was determined by joint Resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On the preparation and publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR dated September 2, 1976. (Vedomosti of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. 1976. No. 37. St. 515) and "Issues of the Code of Laws of the USSR" dated March 23, 1978. (Vedomosti of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. 1978. No. 15. St. 239). "No more legally significant acts could have been issued during this period, i.e. for the first time such activity was sanctioned by the party and state leadership of the country and was defined as an important direction of state legal policy," emphasizes T. F. Yaschuk ^{[20, p.191]}. It was these party-state documents, according to the practice established since the 1930s, that translated the decisions of the CPSU to the level of regulatory regulation and became the basis for the preparation of codes ^{[6; 7]}. Organizational and technical issues of keeping the code up to date were established by a joint Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "Issues of updating the Code of Laws of the USSR" dated January 9, 1986. (Vedomosti of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. 1986. No. 4. St. 35). The resolution "On the preparation and publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR" dated September 2, 1976 as a party-state legal act had mainly political and organizational significance in identifying the problem and in "launching" systematization works.

It drew attention to the fact that since "the XXV Congress of the CPSU recognized the publication of the Code of Laws of the Soviet State as necessary," "the fulfillment of this task will further strengthen the rule of law, public discipline and law and order." The resolution noted that "the improvement of socialist statehood, the further development of democracy, the strengthening of the legal basis of state and public life, the increased activity of workers in state administration, in economic and cultural construction are inextricably linked with the further improvement of Soviet legislation, ensuring its stability and accessibility for all Soviet citizens." It was also emphasized that "a lot of work has been done in recent years to bring legislation into line with the new level achieved by socialist society. The Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics, their presidium, the Government of the USSR and the governments of the Union Republics adopted important legislative acts on many of the main problems of the life of the Soviet people, which are of great socio-political importance"

At the same time, the resolution laid down general approaches to understanding and procedure for creating a Set of laws of the USSR, which in its orientation was to become an act of official incorporation of regulatory material and in which it was supposed to "include legislative acts and the most important joint resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR and resolutions of the Government of the USSR of a general normative nature" and preliminarily "create codification and other consolidated acts, as well as acts necessary to eliminate gaps in the legislation."

The resolution defined the general organizational scheme of work. The Ministry of Justice of the USSR was supposed to be at the head of the activity, which was charged with "preparing draft acts to be included in the Code of Laws of the USSR" with the participation of "relevant ministries and departments, and in cases where this is related to the solution of issues of improving legislation in the relevant branch of management, - ministries and departments of the USSR together with the Ministry of Justice of the USSR". Accordingly, "The Ministry of Justice of the USSR forms the materials of the Code of Laws of the USSR and is responsible for the quality of the preparation of the Code of Laws of the USSR and for the completeness of the legal acts placed in this Code."

Direct work was assigned to a specially created interdepartmental state institution - the Commission for the publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR "consisting of the Minister of Justice of the USSR (Chairman), the Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Managing Director of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Prosecutor General of the USSR, the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR, the Minister of Finance of the USSR, the Chairman of the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on Labor and Social issues, First Deputy Chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee and Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences". The Commission was instructed to submit by July 1, 1977 to the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "proposals on the scheme of the Code of Laws of the USSR, the basic principles of the formation of its materials and the procedure for submitting prepared sections of the Code for consideration", "a plan for the preparation and publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR, providing in it the timing of the publication of sections of the Code and tasks for the development of draft acts to be included in the Code" and "proposals on financial and other issues related to ensuring the preparation and publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR".

The preparation of the Code of Laws of the USSR was instructed to be carried out "taking into account the proposals of ministries and departments", which were to "ensure the fulfillment of the tasks provided for in the plan for the preparation and publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR to participate in the development of draft acts to be included in the Code, the allocation of specialists to consider issues arising during the formation of the materials of the Code, and the submission of conclusions to the Ministry of Justice of the USSR according to the sections of the Code and other necessary materials." At the same time, it was emphasized that the leadership of the Ministry of Justice of the USSR, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education of the USSR, the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR should "ensure the active participation of subordinate scientific institutions in the preparation of materials of the Code of Laws of the USSR." The functions of coordinating "the activities of scientific institutions related to the preparation of the Code of Laws of the USSR" were assigned to the All-Union Research Institute of Soviet Legislation (VNIISZ) Ministry of Justice of the USSR.

The resolution of the "Code of Laws of the USSR" dated March 23, 1978 significantly clarified and detailed the organization of work. It did not fail to recall that in 1977 a new Constitution of the USSR was adopted and, accordingly, "the preparation of the Code of Laws of the USSR should be carried out on the basis of the Constitution of the USSR and contribute to further improvement of Soviet legislation, strengthening the protection of the interests of society, the rights and freedoms of Soviet citizens, strengthening the legal basis of state and public life."

This document clarified the powers of the Commission for the publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR. First of all, the order of the final works was determined – "The prepared sections of the Code of Laws of the USSR, on the proposal of the Ministry of Justice of the USSR, are considered by the Commission for the Publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR and submitted by it for approval to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Council of Ministers of the USSR." The commission itself had the right: "to make clarifications to the scheme of the Code of Laws of the USSR and to the list of acts to be developed and included in the Code of Laws of the USSR"; "to give ministries, state committees and departments instructions to prepare proposals for additions and amendments to the acts of current legislation placed in the Code of Laws of the USSR, and if necessary — and to prepare drafts of new acts"; "to create working groups of specialists from ministries, state committees and departments of the USSR and the Union republics and research organizations for the development of individual draft acts to be included in the Code of Laws of the USSR, with the release of them from performing other official duties for the duration of their work in these groups with the consent of the relevant managers".

Of particular importance for the organization of work were the "Basic principles of the formation of the materials of the Code of Laws of the USSR", defined by the specified resolution. They contained general political, legal, technical and technological provisions regarding the content of the code. First of all, it was emphasized that "The formation of materials and the entire preparation of the Code of Laws of the USSR should be based on the Constitution of the USSR, the need to disclose, concretize and develop its provisions in other legislative acts in accordance with the decisions of the XXV Congress of the CPSU in the field of state, economic and socio-cultural construction." Particular attention was paid to the fact that "the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR should help strengthen the legal basis of state and public life, ensure greater stability and accessibility of legislation for all Soviet citizens, further strengthen socialist legality, strengthen the protection of law and order, the interests of society, the rights and freedoms of citizens." Thus, it was indicated that the publication of the code is carried out "for the further development and improvement of legislation in accordance with the Constitution of the USSR and the tasks set by the XXV Congress of the CPSU" (paragraphs 1, 3).

The Code of laws of the USSR was to include "legislative acts and the most important joint resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR and resolutions of the Government of the USSR of a general normative nature." It was also determined that "the materials of the Code of Laws of the USSR are formed from both published and unpublished acts in official sources." and "if it is necessary to include in the Code of Laws of the USSR acts not previously published in official sources and issued with the appropriate stamps, their placement in the Code is carried out in compliance with the established procedure for issuing permits for publication of such acts". Accordingly, their list with the distribution by sections of the code was determined by the Commission for the publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR. The latter also had to approve the Rules for the preparation of the Code of Laws of the USSR, guided by the "principles of the formation of its materials" defined in the resolution. The Scientific Center for Legal Information at VNIISZ was also involved in the work on the creation of the code.

The resolution established restrictions on the inclusion of certain documents in the Code of Laws of the USSR and prescribed that it "does not include acts of a temporary nature, acts concerning individual enterprises, organizations, institutions, and other acts of no general significance, acts relating to the level of wholesale and retail prices and tariffs for services, on the size of procurement prices for agricultural products, wages of workers and employees, other acts on which, due to the very nature of the issue, legal regulation is often subject to changes, etc." It was also specifically stipulated that "the Code of Laws of the USSR also does not include acts on issues whose resolution is subsequently attributed to the competence of the legislative bodies and governments of the Union republics, ministries, state committees and departments of the USSR".

In order to eliminate the multiplicity of acts on similar issues and fill gaps in legal regulation, the resolution provided that "in the process of preparing the Code of Laws of the USSR, draft codification and other consolidated acts and draft new acts are developed and submitted for approval in the prescribed manner, as well as "draft decrees are being prepared for improvement of the existing legislation placed in the Code of Acts by sections of the Code The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the resolutions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on amendments and additions to these acts. The drafts provide for proposals: on bringing the acts into line with the provisions of the Constitution of the USSR; on making amendments and additions to the acts in connection with later legislation; on combining disparate norms; on recognizing as invalid certain articles and paragraphs that have lost their meaning."

The construction of the Code of Laws of the USSR provided that in it "acts of legislation are arranged on a subject basis in accordance with the approved scheme, which provides for sections and chapters. Also, depending on the content and volume of materials, it is allowed to divide chapters into smaller structural units, which are given names and assigned ordinal numbers." Accordingly, "the acts included in the Code of Laws of the USSR are placed in the part of the Code to which they relate in their main content." Special attention was paid to the need to observe the hierarchy of the location of acts according to their significance – "In sections, chapters and other structural divisions of the Code of Laws of the USSR, acts are arranged according to a system that ensures consistent development of the topic, highlighting the basics and other fundamental acts of legislation." At the same time, when the acts were included in the code, "data on the initial publication in official sources placed in it" should have been provided. At the same time, for ease of use, it was also envisaged to provide the code with a scientific reference apparatus – "chronological lists of included acts, alphabetical subject indexes", etc. Also, in connection with the prohibition to distribute separate parts of the acts according to the volumes of the code – "extracts from the acts included in the Code of Laws of the USSR are not placed in other parts of it" and "appropriate references to the acts" were provided.

The resolution proposed a mechanism for keeping the code up-to-date and determined that since "the formation of the Code of Laws of the USSR should be carried out taking into account the fact that as the legislation continues to develop and improve, the Code should be systematically supplemented with new acts." Accordingly, the publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR was to be carried out on "detachable notebooks" and placed in special bindings with "locks mounted in them", which allowed replacing the acts placed in the code with their new editions and withdrawing from them the acts that had lost their force. For that time, in the absence of electronic means of creating legal databases, this was an interesting solution for the practical use of the code. It is characteristic that such a practice of supplementing editions of laws has been applied and justified itself in many countries.

It was planned to publish the Code of Laws of the USSR in 1981-1985 "as an official publication of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Council of Ministers of the USSR." The institution responsible for the publication of the code was the publishing house "Izvestiya Soviets of People's Deputies of the USSR" and the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR for Publishing, Printing and Book Trade, the latter was also charged with "distributing the Code of Laws of the USSR by subscription of organizations and citizens." The logistical support of the latter was entrusted to the USSR State Security Council.

Of particular importance for the organization of work was the approval by the said resolution of the "Scheme of the Code of Laws of the USSR", which unified and set the centralized system of legislation of both the USSR as a whole and the Union republics. The code of laws of the USSR was built according to the following scheme.

SCHEME OF THE CODE OF LAWS OF THE USSRSection I.

Legislation on publicand the state system

Chapter 1. The Constitution of the USSR

Chapter 2. The national-state structure of the USSR

Chapter 3. The electoral system. People's Deputy

Chapter 4. Supreme bodies of state power and management

Chapter 5. Local public authorities and management

Chapter 6. Citizenship

Chapter 7. Labor collectives. Public organizations. Voluntary societies and unions

Chapter 8. The State emblem. The national flag. The national anthem. Holidays. Memorable days. Anniversaries

Chapter 9. The highest degrees of distinction. Orders, medals and honorary titles. Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR

Chapter 10. Other issues

Section II. Legislation on social development and culture.socio-economic rights of citizens

Chapter 1. Civil legislation

Chapter 2. Marriage and family

Chapter 3. Labor

Chapter 4. Social security

Chapter 5. Healthcare. Physical education and sports

Chapter 6. Public education

Chapter 7. Science

Chapter 8. Culture

Chapter 9. Foreign citizens and stateless persons

Section III. Legislation on rational useand protection of natural resources

Chapter 1. General questions

Chapter 2. Land legislation

Chapter 3. Legislation on subsoil

Chapter 4. Water legislation

Chapter 5. Forest legislation

Chapter 6. Protection of atmospheric air

Chapter 7. Protection and use of wildlife

Section IV. Legislation on the national economyChapter 1. State planning, logistics and other general issues of the national economy

Chapter 2. Finance and Credit

Chapter 3. Capital construction

Chapter 4. Industry

Chapter 5. Agriculture and harvesting of agricultural products

Chapter 6. Transport and communications

Chapter 7. Trade and public catering

Chapter 8. Housing 

Section V. Legislation on international relationsand foreign economic relations

Chapter 1. International relations

Chapter 2. Foreign trade and other types of foreign economic activity 

Section VI. National defense legislationand the protection of state borders

Chapter 1. General questions

Chapter 2. Protection of state borders

Chapter 3. Military service

Chapter 4. Military ranks. Military insignia

Chapter 5. Military banners and flags

Chapter 6. Issues of employment and material and household support of servicemen dismissed from the Armed Forces of the USSR 

Section VII. Legislation on justice,prosecutor's supervision and law enforcement

Chapter 1. General questions

Chapter 2. Judicial system

Chapter 3. Prosecutor's Office

Chapter 4. Bodies of justice. Advocacy. Notary public. Legal work in the national economy

Chapter 5. Civil proceedings. Arbitration

Chapter 6. Internal affairs bodies

Chapter 7. General issues of administrative responsibility

Chapter 8. Criminal law

Chapter 9. Criminal proceedings

Chapter 10. Correctional labor legislation.

The established structure of the Code of Laws of the USSR defined the system of legislation of the USSR and the structure of this act of incorporation of Union legislation as the first and your level of codes of laws in the USSR. Accordingly, the republican codes of laws acted as the second level, and for them, the structure of the union code acted already for the scheme of their construction.

The resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "Issues of updating the Code of Laws of the USSR" dated January 9, 1986 was the final legal act regarding the creation and publication of the Union code. It, being issued after the publication of the code, defined the provisions regarding the maintenance of the issued act in an up-to-date state "in connection with the further development of legislation." In accordance with this document, the Commission for the publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR was supposed to "guide the work on updating the Code of Laws of the USSR" and establish rules for this. The starting point for making changes to the Code of Laws of the USSR was determined on January 1, 1986, with its addition at least once a half-year in the period 1987-1988. Accordingly, the publishing house "Izvestiya Soviets of People's Deputies of the USSR" was entrusted with printing updates "on split sheets" with their distribution by subscription of organizations and citizens by the USSR State Committee for Publishing, Printing and Book Trade. It was also determined to solve the issues of financing and technical equipment of the publishing house and the Scientific Center for Legal Information at VNIISZ.

The work on the creation and publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the Union Republics in the second half of 1976 – 1980s was carried out on the basis of these party-state acts. The creation of the code was carried out mainly within the framework of the activities of the Commission for the publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR. She was engaged in the general organization and controlled the progress of work, considered theoretical and practical approaches to carrying out systematization work, determined the list of acts to be included in the code, initiated the preparation of draft legislative acts to fill in gaps and eliminate conflicts in legal regulation, dealt with the issues of bringing by-laws in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the USSR and the laws of the USSR and the abolition of the provisions of the the importance of legalizations, considered the prepared materials and other current problems. This work was carried out in direct cooperation with the staff of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the union bodies of state power and management, research institutes and universities of the country. All this made it possible to ensure the creation of a set of theoretical and methodological developments and translate the work into a practical course ^{[20, pp. 190-208]}.

Of particular importance in the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR were the theoretical developments of the staff of the All-Union Research Institute of Soviet Legislation under the Ministry of Justice of the USSR (VNIISZ) under the leadership of its director, Doctor of Law I. S. Samoshchenko – the author of a number of general conceptual approaches to the creation of the code. Scientists took an active part in the work on the creation of the code  Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, as well as scientists of the leading legal universities of the country. In November 1976 and March 1977 at the meetings of the Academic Councils of the Institute of State and Law and VNIISZ with the participation of representatives  The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Ministry of Justice of the USSR and leading legal scientists - V. N. Kudryavtsev, K. P. Gorshenin, S. N. Bratusya, A.V. Mickiewicz, A. F. Shebanov, A.M. Vasiliev, etc. - fundamentally important theoretical problems of preparing the code were discussed: understanding and the legal nature of the codes of laws, the prerequisites for their preparation and publication, the principles of selection of normative acts for placement in the code, the relationship of the system of Soviet law legislation with the scheme of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics, the importance of codes for the further development of Soviet law and legislation, the procedure for revision legislation in the process of preparing codes, methods of preparing codes and mechanisms for maintaining them in working order, etc. The "Methodological guidelines for the preparation of the Code of Laws of the USSR" published in 1981 were of great importance in the preparatory work ^{[20, pp. 204-205]}

It is also characteristic that the theory and practice of preparing the Code of Laws of the USSR and the Union Republics was based on domestic and foreign experience in creating this type of acts of systematization of legislation ^{[2; 4]}. At the same time, the work itself on the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union contributed to the development of legal science, since the process of their preparation actualized historical and theoretical research in the field of jurisprudence. The layer of scientific and applied research deposited in the legal historiography of the 1970s - 1980s provides interesting material for studying the cross-section of the history of Soviet legal science of this period in the thematic and content plan of studying the processes of systematization of legalizations in the USSR. Scientific publications related to the preparation of codes of laws and their publication are a valuable source for studying the history of the development of the USSR and Soviet law ^{[8; 9; 11; 13; 14; 16; 19]}. These developments were the basis for the project of creating a Code of Laws of the Russian Federation in the 1990s - an unrealized attempt to streamline the legislation of the Russian federal legislation and legalizations of the subjects of the federation ^[12]. At the same time, we note that modern works on the systematization of legislation are largely based on theoretical and historical developments of the nominal Soviet period of the development of jurisprudence ^[18].

The publication of the Code of Laws of the USSR followed in 1980-1985 . It included 11 volumes, of which 10 volumes included legislative acts. The latter were distributed among volumes in accordance with the approved scheme of the code on a subject basis, divided into sections, chapters and paragraphs. Each legislative act had the official details of the initial publication – the name, an indication of the state body that issued it, the date and number. Each volume was accompanied by a "Chronological list of acts placed in the volume" with a distribution by year and a "Subject index to the acts placed in the volume". Volume 11 had a general reference character to the entire code and contained a consolidated "Chronological list of acts placed in the Code of Laws" and the "Content of the Code of Laws" common to all volumes, as well as a "Scheme of the Code of Laws". The total volume of the vault was more than 7.5 thousand pages of magazine-format text on removable notebooks in one binding with a special attachment. Subsequently, in the period 1986-1989, in order to keep the code up to date, 8 supplements to its volumes were also printed in the form of separate "notebooks" containing tests of changes to existing or new legalizations that were supposed to replace the relevant materials in earlier editions.

The preparation and publication of the codes of laws of the Union republics was carried out according to the organizational and substantive models of the preparation of the Code of Laws of the USSR. They adopted the relevant regulatory legal acts and commissions were established under the republican Ministries of Justice to prepare a code of laws of the relevant Union Republic. For example, in the RSFSR, this work was carried out on the basis of joint resolutions of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR - "On the preparation and publication of the Code of Laws of the RSFSR" dated November 3, 1976, "Issues of the Code of Laws of the RSFSR" dated February 13, 1979 and "Issues of updating the Code of Laws of the RSFSR" dated August 5, 1987 G. Their names and provisions were based on the basis of single acts of union. Accordingly, the organizational foundations of the work, the structure, the methodology of creation, the organization of publication and the ways of keeping the republican codes up to date were similar. At the same time, the leading role in the creation of republican codes was assigned to the union state structures, research and leading educational institutions, but the corresponding state and human resources of the Union republics were actively used for the conduct of the work. In the period from 1983 to 1988, all the Union republics issued their own codes of laws ^{[20, pp. 209-217]}.

The legal nature of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union Republics in the context of the centralization of the legislative space of the USSR characterizes their essential characteristics – political and legal orientation, place and role in ensuring the unity of the system of the Union-republican legislation, features and positioning of the codes as acts of systematization of legislation. This makes it possible, in theoretical and historical terms, to focus attention on the following main features of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics as acts of systematization of the current legislation in the USSR. 

The Code of laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics were issued on constitutional grounds, since the Constitution of the USSR of 1977, in paragraph 4 of Article 73, included among the prerogatives of the USSR "ensuring the unity of legislative regulation throughout the USSR". From this provision came the understanding in jurisprudence of the correlation of the Constitution of the USSR and the Code of Laws of the USSR ^[15]. A. S. Pigolkina and G. T. Chernobel emphasize on this occasion - "The Constitution of the USSR is an act that has the widest possible scope in comparison with other legislative acts, the initial legal basis for current legislation. All this allows it to act as an "active center""exercising a kind of management of the entire system of Soviet legislation, the main link in the hierarchical structure of the Code of Laws of the USSR." Accordingly, "the ideas and principles of the Constitution should permeate all the constituent parts of the Code, all its provisions" ^{[10, p. 26]}.

The Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics were acts of official systematic incorporation of the laws in force on the territory of the USSR. In this regard, S. S. Alekseev emphasizes – "The Code is distinguished by an increased level of formality: proceeding from the highest authorities and management, it is not only an official publication and not only has a high legal and socio-political authority." He also points out that the Code of Laws, as part of the implementation of the policy in the state-legal sphere, is designed to "contribute to strengthening the legal basis of state and public life, ensure the greatest stability and accessibility of legislation for all Soviet citizens, further strengthen socialist legality, strengthen the protection of law and order, the interests of society, the rights and freedoms of citizens" ^{[1, c. 264]}.

The Code of laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics at the official level fixed the system of legislation of the USSR and thereby fixed "the classification of normative material by subject and target criteria – a classification, in principle, of the same type as that used in codification", S. S. Alekseev notes ^{[1, p. 264]}. Thus, a kind of "bundle" of the established constitutional foundations of the construction of the USSR, the system of legislation and acts of systematization of legalizations was built in as a vertical-horizontal structure according to the scheme:  "Constitution of the USSR – Constitutions of the Union Republics"; "Fundamentals of legislation of the USSR – Codes of the Union Republics"; "Code of Laws of the USSR Codes of laws of the Union Republics". It was this triune vertical of building legalizations that ensured the legislative unity of the USSR in the USSR.

The Code of laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics represented a single carrier of legislative information within the framework of the USSR in their unity formed an integral "source of current legislation" distributed across two levels of codes of laws - the Union and republican acts of incorporation of legalizations.At the same time, each of the sets of laws was simultaneously an act of official publication of legislative acts with the possibility of reference in legal practices to the corresponding set of laws. Accordingly, the code "should be a "working" legal document that gives accurate information to all officials and individual citizens about the current regulatory requirements, be quite accessible to perception, reliable and convenient for practical use," A. S. Pigolkina and G. T. Chernobel note ^{[10, p. 29]}.

The Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics acted as a tool for improving the system of law and legislation, since their publication should contribute to "further improvement of Soviet legislation, strengthening the legal basis of state and public life, strengthening guarantees of citizens' rights and freedoms" and "this grandiose project of systematization of normative acts, carried out on the basis of The Constitution of the USSR, represents not only the ordering of the content of Soviet legislation, but also a significant improvement in the quality of its form, its legal and technical parameters. This, in particular, should be done by developing and approving draft codification and other consolidated acts in order to eliminate their multiplicity on the same issues," S. L. Zivs notes ^{[3, p. 6]}.

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So, the creation of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of laws of the Union republics in ensuring the unity of the legislative space of the USSR became the final stage in the centralization and coordination of the system of legislation at the level of the Union state and its constituent republics. The analysis of the legal nature of the Code of Laws of the USSR and the codes of the Union Republics shows that the complex of theoretical studies carried out, the development of methods and technical and legal techniques for creating these acts made it possible to work out and practically implement the political-legal and theoretical-technological design, which was designed to ensure the unity of the legislative space of the USSR. At the same time, it should be noted that the preparation and publication of codes of laws contributed to the development of the system of law and legislation and their branches – the identification of gaps in legal regulation, the harmonization of the content of union and republican normative legal acts, the improvement of legal techniques and technologies of systematization of legalizations. At the same time, these processes contributed to the development of legal science and practice.