The transformations of some classical principles in socialist Hungarian civil law : the metamorphosis of 'bona fides' and 'boni mores' in the Hungarian Civil Code of 1959 / András Földi -- We few, we happy few? Legal history in the GDR / Martin Otto -- Roman law studies in the USSR : an abiding debate on slaves, economy and the process of history / Anton Rudokvas and Ville Erkkilä -- Strategies of covert resistance : teaching and studying legal history at the University of Tartu in the Soviet era / Marju Luts-Sootak -- The Western legal tradition and Soviet Russia : the genesis of H. J. Berman's Law and Revolution / Adolfo Giuliani -- Juliusz Bardach and the agenda of socialist history of law in Poland / Marta Bucholc -- Valdemārs Kalniņš (1907-1981) : the founder of Soviet legal history in Latvia / Sanita Osipova -- Getaway into the Middle Ages? : on topics, methods and results of 'socialist' legal historiography at the University of Jena / Adrian Schmidt-Recla and Zara Luisa Gries -- Roman law and socialism : life and work of a Hungarian scholar, Elemér Pólay / Éva Jakab.

"This book focuses on the way in which legal historians and legal scientists used the past to legitimize, challenge, explain and familiarize the socialist legal orders, which were backed by dictatorial governments. The volume studies legal historians and legal histories written in Eastern European countries during the socialist era after the Second World War. The book investigates whether there was a unified form of socialist legal historiography, and if so, what can be said of its common features. The individual chapters of this volume concentrate on the regimes that situate between the Russian, and later Soviet, legal culture and the area covered by the German Civil Code. Hence, the geographical focus of the book is on East Germany, Russia, the Baltic states, Poland and Hungary. The approach is transnational, focusing on the interaction and intertwinement of the then hegemonic communist ideology and the ideas of law and justice, as they appeared in the writings of legal historians of the socialist legal orders. Such an angle enables concentration on the dynamics between politics and law as well as identities and legal history"-- Provided by publisher.

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