Özet:

Socialist legal theorists claimed they introduced a new paradigm of (criminal) law. To verify or  falsify this claim, the article is searching for specificities of socialist criminal law. Out of numerous  East-European countries, Czechoslovakia was taken as an example here. There, the new regime in  1948 had already simplified the entire criminal justice system. Other major changes, still  influencing the legal system in Slovakia (a descendant of Czechoslovakia) nowadays, include the  introduction of: lay judges, protective measures as new forms of sanctions, material understanding (dangerousness) of the criminal offense, and the increased role of public prosecution. On the other hand, since the 1960s, the formalistic approach to (criminal) law was adopted in Czechoslovakia, becoming a characteristic feature of criminal law in the whole Eastern Bloc, just  like in Western Europe. Therefore, it seems that despite some minor differences between socialist and capitalist criminal law, these do not actually represent contradictory paradigms of criminal law. Should any paradigm shift in its proper (Kuhnian/Foucaultian) meaning be seen in  the socialist countries, rather a more general paradigm shift might be proposed: the socialist  society could namely be seen as a potential precursor to a post-modern “control society” (replacing the previous “disciplinary society”), due to the omnipresent control by Communist Party structures.

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