Genesis of the Criminal Legislation of Ukraine on Liability for Open Theft of Another’s Property (Robbery)

Abstract

The main features of the modern concept of «robbery» as an open theft of another’s property were formed for the first time in Soviet law in the Criminal Code of the USSR in 1922 (until January 30, 1937 – the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic). There were periods when the concept of robbery in general dissolved into such crimes as theft and robbery (decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 4, 1947 «On criminal liability for theft of state and public property», «On strengthening the protection of personal property»). At the same time, the legislator, guided by the objective need to humanize punishment in post-Soviet countries, reduces the sanction for this type of crime and focuses on those who committed the crime for the first time without aggravating circumstances, so that they can be corrected and not recidivist. However, practice has shown that robbery has always been considered one of the most serious crimes, as defined in the current legislation of Ukraine. The urgent problem needs to be solved also at the scientific level. In view of this, the purpose of the article is to historically explain the doctrinal norms of the crime of robbery in different state periods of time, from the legislative origins of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1922 to the present. Formulation on the basis of this quantitative and qualitative features of the actual concept of «robbery» and its legal construction at different times. The methodological basis of scientific research are modern postulates of the theory of cognition. A set of interrelated general scientific and historical-legal methods was used, namely: chronological – to restore the historical conditions that contributed to the development of criminal law in general and the specific composition of the crime (robbery); comparative legal analysis – a comparative approach to Soviet and modern legislation, which establishes liability for robbery; psychological and legal modeling - on the formulation of proposals to improve Art. 186 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and elaboration of the methodology of investigation of robberies; structural – functional – the implementation of psychological and legal assessment of the object and the objective side of the robbery and analysis of the psychological characteristics of the subject and the subjective side of the robbery. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is that in this article for the first time the preconditions of origin, historical conditions of development and the traced way of development of socially dangerous crime of robbery, from its entering into other types of corpus delicti to legislative formation of each legal structure of robbery as a whole, which gave grounds to single out the robbery and structure it into a separate article. Thus, our initial conclusion about the high level of improvement of national legislation on criminal liability for theft of another’s property, including in an open manner, was confirmed in the course of our study. It seems that the experience gained can be successfully used to improve national criminal law as a whole.

Keywords: robbery; abduction; theft; someone else’s property; misappropriation of violence; recidivist; stealing; state property; public property; occupation; personal property of citizens.