It is a pleasure to write this foreword to Dana Neacșu’s learned and meticulously documented book, Socialism: the 100-Year-Old Misnomer. Rich with extensive footnotes, the book features visuals, literary analysis, and close readings of political, economic, and legal texts. It is intended to spark curiosity in both readers with established views on socialism and those open to rethinking their understanding, inviting deeper engagement with socialist theory and practice.
More than an endorsement of the book, this foreword is also personal. Like Dana, I was shaped by that alternative, otherworldly space—the former Soviet Union—first as an advokat (lawyer), and later, culturally, through my deep devotion to the ballet. More to the point of a foreword, however, this book—through its close reading of journalism, personal testimony, scholarly analysis, and historical reportage—invites a reevaluation of what common sense tells us about socialism. My reflections aim to offer one more layer of insight to that evolving understanding. So, here it goes.
I was born in 1939 to immigrant parents in Chicago, Illinois. This means my childhood was spent under the threat of Hitler’s war against both East and West—against both capitalists and Soviet communists. Hitler’s notorious antisemitism and his regime’s genocide of six million Jews, along with millions of Roma and anyone perceived as opponents of the Third Reich, are well-known. I mention the Holocaust against the Jews because the Nazis blamed them for being both capitalists and true communists. And, to be sure, there were many Jewish devotees of both. Karl Marx, a secular Jew, was as much a communist as the Rothschild banking family were capitalists.
In prosecuting the war, Hitler made the classic mistake of repeating Bonaparte’s disastrous invasion of Mother Russia in the winter. I always found it curious that Russians referred to their enormous stretch of land— spanning over nine time zones from Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) to Vladivostok—as the Motherland, while Germans thought of their home territory as the Fatherland. I will leave it to the reader to ponder whether there is a deeper meaning latent here.
My earliest political memory, apart from the death of FDR on April 12, 1945, was my mother’s work for Russian war relief, an experience that later led her to run an organization called Shelters for Israel, which I will discuss later. I mention this because, as Neacșu makes clear, there is socialist theory and belief, communist theory and belief—and then there is ersatz theory.
In high school, I studied German, which proved invaluable in my career as a devotee of legal theory and philosophy. At Cornell University, I turned to Russian, and had the good fortune of becoming personally acquainted with Vladimir Nabokov, who at that time rode the buses of Ithaca to study the idioms of teenagers in preparation for writing Lolita (1955). The few of us who took the advanced Russian course all went on to significant careers, mostly shaped by our knowledge of the language. As it turns out, I was the only one who went on to law school.
At the University of Chicago, I fell under the influence of Professor Max Rheinstein, one of the many Jewish academics who fled Germany for the West and greatly enriched our understanding of comparative law. At the time, I was still interested in Marxist ideology and the supposed withering away of the state, coupled with the paradoxical idea—as Neacșu points out—of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In law school, I wrote a research paper on comrades’ courts—local lay tribunals established to handle disturbances in apartment buildings and other small communities. They represented a potential model for criminal justice functioning independently of the formal state apparatus. I read every Soviet journal I could find at the University of Chicago and Northwestern libraries and concluded that, in fact, these courts functioned more like bullies targeting the least popular members of the community. Professor Rheinstein gave me a low grade. When I asked him why, he replied, “Any hack in the State Department could have written this.” That was the moment I understood the importance of creative thinking in academic work—even, one might add, for researchers in the State Department.
After graduating from law school, I studied German law in Freiburg and came under the influence of three teachers who changed my life: Hans Heinrich Jescheck in criminal law, Ernst von Caemmerer in advanced private law, and Erik Wolf in legal history. Each helped me grasp the essential difference between common law and civil law thinking. It is important to note that the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia function as civil law systems, as Neacșu also clarifies—despite the perception that Soviet law was fundamentally different. Many scholars believe the difference lies in the reliance on case law (common law) versus statutes and codes (civil law). This is a misconception. I believe the essential difference lies in the role of academic authority—in la doctrine.
I grasped this truth after writing a paper for von Caemmerer’s seminar. I had read all the cases and scholarly works on a dispute at the boundary between torts and contracts. I proudly argued that scholars had misread the true source of the distinction between legal systems. Von Caemmerer responded memorably: “Recht ist das, was die Professoren sagen” (“Law is what the professors say it is”). This, believe it or not, is the basic principle underlying all civil law thinking—and Russia inherited it from the Soviet Union, which inherited it from Tsarist Russia. The Institute of State and Law in Moscow, located at 10 Frunze Street, remains a major legal think tank.
One note about civil law countries, which include Japan and South Korea: all European languages have two words for “law.” They distinguish between law as principle and law on the books—as enacted by legislatures or courts. Professor von Caemmerer referred to the higher law, law as principle. English has only one word—“law”—with which we seem to function. But honestly, I’ve never fully understood what people mean by “the rule of law,” although Neacșu clarifies it for skeptics like me. For Neacșu, the rule of law is law as decreed by authorities, used to legitimize the government. She does not invoke any ideal law. In Russian, the distinction is between zakon (statutory law) and pravo (ideal law). Other than the fact that ideal law is typically associated with the right hand—a concept that survives in the notion of personal rights— I, too, do not see any ideal law infusing the Soviet legal system.
Now I turn to the question of whether the Soviet Union followed any rule of law. If the U.S.S.R. was a dictatorship, as Neacșu argues, then it deserved no respect. If law is simply the command of the bully (the one with the guns), then it deserves no obedience. This is a critical question when considering whether there is a duty to obey unjust laws—such as those under Nazi Germany, Soviet rule, apartheid South Africa, or Jim Crow in the U.S. Believe it or not, many states in the U.S. forbade interracial marriage prior to 1967. Did one have a duty to respect such laws?
The anti-positivists—or perhaps, the believers in natural law—would say such laws are not truly laws at all. They assert there is no moral duty to obey them, except out of fear. Neacșu engages this ambiguity through Fredric Jameson’s layered textualism, which seems the most inclusive way to do so.
In addition to theoretical knowledge, I had personal experience with the Soviet legal system. In the 1970s, the Soviets required everyone to work to “build the Motherland.” Unemployment was criminalized under the offense of “parasitism.” Worse, applying for an exit visa led to termination and labeling as a “refusenik.” This was common among Jews trying to emigrate to Israel. Most people assume a right to leave one’s country, but that did not apply in the U.S.S.R.
I recall a failed hijacking by a group who sought to flee the Soviet Union and speak freely in the West. The plan was foiled on the tarmac. They were charged with treason—not for action, but for intent. Around this time, Columbia Law Professor Telford Taylor, a Nuremberg prosecutor, tapped me to assist. I had recently become friends with Alan Dershowitz, a student of Taylor’s and a major figure in the Jewish community. Taylor had personal ties to Roman Rudenko, the Soviet chief prosecutor. Because I was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, I was brought in—perhaps because, unlike more prominent Soviet law scholars like John Hazard and Harold Berman, I had no ties to protect.
Taylor asked if I could leave for Moscow immediately. My wife sent my passport. That was the beginning of one of the great adventures of my life. I had dreamt of such a journey since my Russian studies at Cornell. I traveled to Moscow many times, sometimes with Taylor, sometimes alone.
We were supervised by Intourist, the Soviet tourist agency, and housed in a hotel reserved for foreigners who could pay in valyuta (convertible currency). The mission began slowly, but soon we were invited to meet with officials from the Procuracy. In civil law systems, the chief prosecutor is a hybrid figure—part prosecutor, part judge. I have no illusion they sought my legal expertise. But the visit opened doors. I returned to Moscow often, and when possible, I secured tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet.
What I learned was that the Soviets took procedural law seriously—unsurprising given the size of the country. They needed consistency. But substantive law—especially in political cases—was applied arbitrarily. Possessing anti-Soviet material, for instance, was prosecuted in the same vague manner as pornography once was in the U.S. (“You know it when you see it,” said Justice Potter Stewart.) In this way, Dana Neacșu’s description is apt: the Soviet Union was run by bullies for their own benefit.
But the story is not simple, which is why I’m grateful Neacșu used more than legal sources in her meaning-making. Soviet influence endures—for instance, in Israel, where many immigrants came from Russia. I once attended a theater production in Jerusalem with subtitles in Hebrew, English, and Russian. One such immigrant was Anatoly (later Natan) Sharansky, who spent nine years in prison. He stayed sane by playing chess in his head. He defended himself in court, rightly suspecting any appointed lawyer would be compromised. Despite fears of harsh sentencing, we all knew he would not face the death penalty—a restraint not always observed in the U.S.
The Israeli kibbutz was modeled after the Soviet collective farm. Ironically, the imitation proved more genuine. Communal property, shared labor, even collective child-rearing—until personal bonds reasserted themselves, and the kibbutz gradually gave way to the moshav model. The result may be closer to real socialism.
There is much to learn from the Soviet experience—and much to learn from Dana Neacșu’s magnificent book. I strongly recommend Socialism: the 100-Year-Old Misnomer to anyone who remembers that, despite the Cold War and today’s nationalist resurgence, we still have much to learn from Marxist ideals and the Soviet experience—even, or perhaps especially, because they did not overlap.