Abstract
The article comprehensively analyzed the works of Soviet authors, who, in their studies, fully or partially, covered the activities of the revolutionary tribunals in the Ukrainian SSR - the Soviet emergency, extrajudicial bodies. At the initial stage of the Soviet state, under the conditions of an acute struggle of national-patriotic forces and a mass rebel movement against the communist transformations imposed by the Bolsheviks, they tried cases of counter-revolutionary and most dangerous crimes against Soviet power. In particular, it was noted the absence of studies of a historiographical nature with the problems we have chosen. The article identifies the main stages of the scientific development of the problem in the Soviet period. Due to the peculiarities of the coverage of the activities of the revolutionary tribunals in the Soviet historiography of ideological and military-political component. Noted the emergence of new directions in the process of scientific development of the problem. The features of the coverage of the problem and the nature of the theoretical and methodological approaches characteristic of individual historiographic stages of research are analyzed. It is pointed out a number of shortcomings inherent in the studies of the outlined period, due to the influence of ideology, the narrowness of the source base, its uncritical analysis, generalization based on single events and facts, the bias of the results, ignoring the activities of local revolutionary tribunals. However, it was noted that along with this, considerable factual material was accumulated and compiled, comprehensively covered the legislation on revolutionary tribunals, their interaction with other punitive-repressive bodies, defined the tasks of these bodies, their place in the system of Soviet law and the impact on the process of further reform of the judicial system. It was noted that this, in turn, made it possible to form the basis for further, modern research in this direction on the basis of new principles, methodological approaches and using a new source base. It is indicated that, for the reasons mentioned above, certain problems of the activities of extra-judicial Soviet bodies require further research.