Legacy of M. S. Strogovich and Modern Problems of Functional-Legal Construction of Criminal Pre-Trial Proceedings

In November 2019, the world legal community widely celebrated the 125th anniversary of Professor M. S. Strogovich, who, according to his scientific colleagues and students, was a scientist who was “ahead of time”.

This article provides a retrospective and comparative analysis of the positions of M. S. Strogovich and his colleagues on certain problems of domestic criminal proceedings, in particular its pre-trial phase, in the context of the direct influence of the scientist's scientific heritage on the development of modern criminal procedure law. The Author of the article particularly interesting views of the scientist and his participation in discussions related to defining the essence and purpose of the preliminary investigation, the implementation of the functions of preliminary investigation in relation to criminal prosecution, the problems of implementation of the principles of presumption of innocence and the adversarial nature of pre-trial proceedings in criminal cases, and, finally, the General Manager of the “investigative case” in modern Russia.

M. S. Strogovich consistently adhered to the idea of the need to develop and strengthen procedural guarantees of individual rights, guarantees of justice, and this can be seen in this article. Thus, defining the essence of the criminal process as a system of actions of the relevant officials and the procedural legal relations that arise in connection with them, which in itself was a serious “scientific courage” of those years, M. S. Strogovich particularly defended the position that all participants in criminal proceedings are subjects of the rights granted to them and the duties assigned to them, and they should not be considered objects of unilateral power of officials. This idea has become widespread and generally accepted as the basic definition of domestic (Soviet and Russian) criminal proceedings.

The article analyzes M. S. Strogovich’s scientific steps on the conceptual turn from revolutionary-radical ideas about the construction of criminal proceedings to its classical canons and traditions of the Russian criminal process, On the basis of which the conclusion is made about the indispensable use of the scientist's legacy in modernьRussian procedural studies.

The research of M. S. Strogovich’s legacy carried out in the article will fully allow to rethink the modern system of criminal proceedings in a new way, can be used as a kind of key to finding solutions to law-making and law enforcement problems, for the further development of the national science of criminal procedure law.

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