The article is devoted to the study of the formation and development of military tribunals in Soviet Russia in the period from 1917 to the early 1920s and their role in the formation of the Soviet military criminal system. The relevance of this work is determined by the fact that studying the evolution of military tribunals allows us to trace the transition from pre-revolutionary legal institutions to the Soviet legal system, to understand the mechanisms for ensuring victory in the Civil War through the prism of state policy and the activities of the tribunals, and to explore the transformation of legal norms and principles of justice in the context of revolutionary changes. The purpose of the article is to draw the attention of researchers to a number of specifics of the formation and development of military tribunals in the period from 1917 to the early 1920s, which have not been analyzed until now, and to determine the stages of their formation and development. The novelty of the study lies in the introduction of new sources into scientific circulation and the analysis of the specifics of the formation of military tribunals, through the prism of the departmentalism concept.
The work, based on published sources and archival materials, reconstructs the chronology of key events: the spontaneous emergence of tribunals in the period from late 1917 to the early 1918; the streamlining of the system by order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the RSFSR No. 94 of October 14, 1918; the adoption of regulations consolidating the system. The authors identify the following stages in the development of the Soviet military justice: 1) October 1917 to October 1918: the period of spontaneous emergence and disorderly activity of military justice authorities; 2) October 1918 to November 1919: the “departmental” period of existence and activity of military tribunals; 3) November 1919 to June 1921: the liquidation of the departmental nature of military tribunals, the creation of a centralized branch of military justice while continuing being autonomous from the general judicial system and dependence on the military leadership. From January 1923 to August 1926, the military justice system was reformed into a judicial authority of union subordination. The authors of the article emphasize that the experience of the military tribunals of the period from 1917 the early 1920s laid the foundations for the subsequent development of military criminal law in the USSR.