From Pre-Revolutionary Legal Thought to the Soviet Model: On the Separation of the General Theory of Law and the General Theory of the State

The article examines the historical and methodological trajectory of Russian legal scholarship, arguing that the fusion of law and the state into a single “general theory of state and law” emerged not from the discipline’s internal development but under external political and ideological pressures of the Soviet period. Pre-revolutionary scholarship maintained a distinction between the general theory of law and the general theory of the state, whereas Soviet legal science, grounded in legal etatism and a positivist orientation, institutionalized their joint study, thereby subordinating state studies to legal dogmatics and replacing the analysis of law with the study of statute as an instrument of authority. Through key debates and authors (from early Marxist readings to subsequent ideologization), the paper substantiates the need to restore separate inquiries into law and the state, to reassess the achievements of Soviet doctrinal work in contemporary socio-cultural conditions, and to engage more closely with comparative and international scholarship. It concludes that reviving autonomous courses in the general theory of law and the general theory of the state is essential for overcoming narrow positivism and for strengthening the methodology of legal science.