Procuracy

   In the Soviet Union, the prosecutor’s office was known as the procuracy. During the years of Joseph Stalin, the procuracy’s powers were severely limited in favor of the security services. The Cheka during the civil war and the NKVD in the late 1930s had the right to arrest, try, and execute political prisoners. Following Stalin’s death, Soviet law was reformed to give the procuracy far greater authority, along with the ability to conduct semi-independent investigations in some criminal cases. But the Soviet procuracy never had the degree of independence held by British or American prosecution attorneys. Sentences were often dictated by the KGB or Communist Party leaders. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian prosecutors have reexamined their juridical roots. Russian law now recognizes—as tsarist law did—that the procuracy needs to have considerable independence in presenting cases and selecting prosecutions. The new Russian offices have also come under tremendous pressure from Russian organized crime, and several prosecutors and members of their staffs have been assassinated.