Socialist Legality and Rural Rights: Law and Power in Eastern Europe’s Long Twentieth Century
Ville Erkkilä (Helsinki)
- Beginning:
- Wednesday, 21 October 2026 13:00
On 21 October 2026 we will welcome Ville Erkkilä to a Guest Lecture on the topic "Socialist Legality and Rural Rights: Law and Power in Eastern Europe’s Long Twentieth Century". The lecture will be held in English.
Abstract:
This presentation examines how socialist dictatorships sought to transform rural communities and agriculture through the legal system in post-war East-Central Europe. It focuses on how criminal investigations, court proceedings, penal practice, and the moralizing discourse invoked in the administration of justice were mobilized as tools for consolidating authoritarian power. At the same time, the presentation explores how rural populations negotiated, adapted to, and at times resisted the state socialist legal order and the communist one-party regimes that shaped it.
The presentation draws on an ongoing research project that compares legal cultures in post-war rural Eastern Europe. The project focuses on rural transformation in Estonia, Poland, East Germany, and Finland, paying particular attention to the ways in which central authorities sought to regulate agriculture and the use of natural resources through law. The study utilizes a range of source materials, including court records, statistical data, newspaper articles and regulations designed to govern common property resources.
The presentation demonstrates the comprehensive efforts of state socialist regimes to reshape rural identities and highlights the many ways in which law and legal institutions were employed to achieve this objective. At the same time, it illustrates the agency of rural populations as they navigated changing political and legal environments. In doing so, the presentation argues that state socialism in East-Central Europe offers an illuminating historical example of the complex relationship between law and authoritarianism, one that remains highly relevant today. It also shows that, while socialist dictatorships sought to subordinate rural populations through remarkably similar repertoires of legal and political control, local responses often followed comparable patterns as well, albeit shaped by distinct regional circumstances and traditions.
Ville Erkkilä:
He is a university lecturer and an Academy Research Fellow at the Centre for European Studies, University of Helsinki. He is a legal historian specializing in law and legality in European dictatorships. His research explores the erosion of rule-of-law structures, the maintenance of legal façades in authoritarian regimes, and the justification and legitimation of legal institutions with temporal arguments.
Erkkilä’s current research project, The Experience of Injustice: Property, Legality and Identity in Rural Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1995 (EastJustice), funded by the Research Council of Finland, investigates the socio-legal history of rural Eastern Europepr – primarily in Poland, Estonia, Finland, and the former East Germany. Adopting a comparative, long-term perspective, the project engages with broader themes such as evolving rural conceptions of property, legality, and identity, as well as contemporary challenges related to the normalization of authoritarian legal and governance practices.
Previously, Erkkilä has conducted research on socialism and legal history (e.g., 2020), on the conceptual history of law (2023), and the intertwinement of law and memory (2025). His doctoral dissertation (2019) examined German legal history from the rise of the Third Reich to the 1968 student protests, through the work of renowned legal historian Franz Wieacker. His work has appeared in journals including Law and History Review, Rethinking History, History of European Ideas, and Law and Critique.
Cooperation:
Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies
Venue:
GS OSESUR, Landshuter Straße 4, 93047 Regensburg, Room 017 (ground floor)
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