Procurator’s office

Procurator’s office (прокуратура; prokuratura). The state body that investigates crimes, prosecutes criminals, and oversees the execution of sentences. The procurators (usually called public prosecutors in English) emerged in Western Europe in the 18th century as a result of liberal demands to ensure the procedural rights (see Procedural law) of the accused. The inquisitorial process, in which the court conducted the investigation, trial, and punishment, gave way in the British system to the separation of the prosecutorial and judicial functions. The near equality of the prosecutor with the attorney for the accused was eventually established, as a legal principle throughout Western Europe, as well as in Ukrainian territories under Austrian, Russian, and Polish rule, before their annexation by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic.

The procurator’s office in the Ukrainian SSR differed in some ways from its counterparts in other countries. Abolished immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power, the institution was re-established in 1922. In the 1980s the office functioned according to the Law on the Procurator’s Office of the USSR (1979) and articles 162–5 of the Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was part of a centralized, all-Union system that was headed by the general procurator of the USSR, appointed for seven years by the USSR Supreme Soviet. He appointed republican procurators for five-year terms; these procurators were responsible to the general procurator. Thus, unlike the court system, Ukraine’s procuracy was a Union, not a republican, institution. The major responsibility of the procurator’s office was to ‘oversee the precise implementation of law’ and to practice ‘socialist legality.’ Because the meaning of ‘socialist legality’ was relative and dependent upon the current policy of the Communist Party and state, the procurator’s interpretation of the law had a decisive influence on the courts, especially in political cases.

In a broad sense, the procurator’s office in the Ukrainian SSR combined the functions of a Western district attorney, inspector of prisons, attorney general, and ombudsman. It supervised criminal investigations, authorized arrests, prosecuted offenders, and oversaw prisons. To ensure that all government institutions, as well as individuals, adhered, to the law, the procurator’s office reviewed the laws, decrees, and orders of the administrative organs (except the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the USSR Council of Ministers) and even the decisions of public and co-operative organizations. The office could appeal verdicts to higher courts; it could even appeal to the Supreme Court of the USSR, while the defendant could appeal only to the republican supreme court, such as the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR. The office could also interfere in civil cases, supporting one side against the other, if it believed that doing so would serve the public interest. An individual who had been wronged or libeled by an official or administrative organ could turn to the procurator’s office for redress. Such cases were decided by the procurator in secret, and the decision was not subject to appeal. Thus, Soviet citizens could not defend their rights themselves but were dependent on the procurator’s protection.

Yurii Starosolsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]