Powers of the Prosecutor in Preparing for Trial in the Legislation of Judicial Reform in the XIX and XX Centuries in Russia [

The subject of the study is the powers of the prosecutor at the stage of preparation for trials, which occupies an intermediate position between the stage of a preliminary investigation and a trial. The authors analyze the legal norms contained in the Statute of Criminal Proceedings of 1864 and related to the powers of the prosecutor at the stage of a trial. It is concluded that the prosecutor had broad powers during the period under review, which was the result of the transition from the investigative to the adversarial form of the process, and the complex procedure of bringing the accused to a trial was aimed at preventing unjustified bringing of the person to a trial. It is indicated that such a decision of the legislator of the XIX century and the powers of the prosecutor at this stage were differently evaluated by contemporaries of the judicial reform of 1864, and are ambiguously evaluated at the present time. The analysis of the Soviet legislation (the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR of 1922, the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR of 1923 and Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR of 1960), the comparison of the approaches of the previous stage to understanding the role and powers of the prosecutor in the trial stage are carried out. The authors pay attention to the fact that the Soviet legislator retained both the stage itself and its name, but changed the powers in the direction of their reduction, and in comparison with the subsequent stage, the reduction in the powers of the prosecutor was not so significant. It is indicated that initially the Russian legislator, when formulating the provisions of the concept of judicial reform in 1991, sought to abandon the Soviet experience and return to the experience of the Russian Empire, but this did not happen. It is noted that the adopted Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation of 2001 and the subsequent changes in the criminal procedure legislation were aimed at changing not only the name and content of the stage under consideration, but also reducing the powers of the prosecutor, which are currently mainly implemented during the preliminary hearing.