Law between Revolution and Tradition: Russian and Finnish Revolutionary Legal Acts, 1917–18

The article "Law between Revolution and Tradition: Russian and Finnish Revolutionary Legal Acts, 1917–18" by Tatiana Borisova (co-authored with Jukka Siro), an Associate Professor of the Faculty of History, was published in Comparative Legal History which is the leading peer-reviewed international journal of legal history. 

Abstract: 
This article compares the legislative practices of two socialist revolutions in Russia (the Bolshevik revolution) and Finland in late 1917 and in 1918. Notwithstanding the considerable differences in the social, political and economic conditions in Finland and Russia, the revolutionaries in both countries had similar legislative strategies. The revolutionary legislative policies had the same ends: to secure the success of the revolutions, and, even- tually, to build a new and better society. This article seeks to demonstrate the history of revolutionary law-making as a juncture of two main tendencies: the emergence of new ‘revolutionary’ features of legislative politics and the preservation of pre-revolutionary law. We argue that the pre-revolutionary practices of law-making on which the revolu- tionaries relied shaped their strategies and, to some extent, the criteria by which they judged the ultimate success of their revolutions. We argue that the performative effect of revolutionary slogans should be perceived, at least in part, as a continuity of pre-revo- lutionary legal and administrative practices. Our comparative analysis of revolutionary law-making provides a more complex understanding of the role of revolutions in modern state empowerment.