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. It will be valuable for those working in areas of Legal History, Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law and European Studies.

Ville Erkkilä is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for European Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Hans-Peter Haferkamp is Full Professor of Private Law and History of German Law. He is the Director of the Institute of Modern History of Private Law, German and Rhenish Legal History, University of Cologne

Introduction: Socialist interpretations of legal history
Ville Erkkilä

PART I Framing the socialist legal historiography

1 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

2 We few, we happy few? Legal history in the GDR
Martin Otto

3 Roman law studies in the USSR: An abiding debate on slaves, economy and the process of history
Anton Rudokvas and Ville Erkkilä

4 Strategies of covert resistance: Teaching and studying legal history at the University of Tartu in the Soviet era
Marju Luts-Sootak

5 The Western legal tradition and Soviet Russia: The genesis of H. J. Berman's Law and Revolution
Adolfo Giuliani

PART II Legal historians of socialist regimes

6 Juliusz Bardach and the agenda of socialist history of law in Poland
Marta Bucholc

7 Valdemars KalninS (1907-1981): The founder of Soviet legal history in Latvia
Sanita Osipova

8 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

9 Roman law and socialism: Life and work of a Hungarian scholar, Elemér Pólay
Éva Jakab