Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev, "Selective Justice: Party Control under Stalin."

Soviet justice system on the whole was controlled by the Communist Party but still it is known relatively little how exactly justice was administered within the party system, a ubiquitous and multifaceted organization that included thousands of members at different levels of administrative hierarchy. Archival documents permit studying both punishment and pardons and reveal that justice for party members, especially party elites, differed from that for ordinary people. Instead of punishing specific crimes and maintaining certain levels of deterrence, it enforced loyalty for the regime among party members.