Belkin, Rafail Samuilovich

R. S. Belkin was born on July 11, 1922 in the city of Chernigov (now Ukraine ) into a Jewish family. His father, Samuel Rafailovich Belkin (1885-1975), was a specialist in hemp and ropes, later worked in the People's Commissariat of Light Industry; mother, Belkina (Eskina) Ida Hononovna (1896-1966) subsequently worked at the Borets factory in Moscow.

Member of the CPSU (b) since 1940. Then he was called up to the Red Army , his service began in the Far East. Since October 1941, he was deputy editor of the newspaper “In the Battle for the Motherland” of the 415th Infantry Division, was transferred to the front, fought near Moscow , and later participated in battles near Rzhev , near Smolensk , in the battle of Kursk and the Dnieper . He fought the Baltic states, liberated Warsaw, participated in the assault on Berlin . Victory Day met on the Elbe .

After the Victory, he served in the occupation forces in Germany, and in 1946 he was seconded to Moscow and enrolled in the Military Law Academy .

He graduated from the Academy with a gold medal in 1951 and was sent to work as an investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Baku Air Defense District , then he was a senior investigator and assistant military prosecutor for the management of the investigation and inquiry .

In parallel, he collected materials for scientific work and in 1954 he defended his thesis on the topic: “Inspection of the scene. Criminal procedural and forensic aspects. ”

In 1955, he transferred to scientific and pedagogical work at the Higher School of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (later - the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, now the Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia), successively holding the posts of senior researcher, and then scientific secretary, senior lecturer, assistant professor and professor of the department of forensics.

Just seven years after the successful defense of the Ph.D. thesis, R. S. Belkin prepared for his doctoral dissertation “An experimental research method in the Soviet criminal process and criminalistics” and successfully defended it in 1961 . Eyewitnesses noted that the defense of the dissertation itself, despite the criticism of the applicant by one of the opponents - the famous domestic processionist Professor M. S. Strogovich , who condemned the tactical method proposed by the dissertation candidate for entering the place with the accused and the witness — admittedly, went perfectly ^[3] .

In 1963, R. S. Belkin was awarded the academic title of professor . The Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia awarded Professor Belkin the title "Honored Professor of the Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia". The Russian Academy of Natural Sciences awarded R. S. Belkin the title of Honorary Academician. Professor Belkin was also an honorary member of the Bulgarian Scientific Society of Forensic Physicians and Criminologists and a member of several other scientific societies.

For over 20 years, R. S. Belkin headed the Department of Criminology of the Higher School of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia), one of the largest and most authoritative in the USSR. By the end of 1973, the total number of the department was about 50 people, including 27 teachers, among whom were 6 doctors and 19 candidates of legal sciences ^[1] .

The scientific works of Professor R. S. Belkin were widely known in the Soviet Union and beyond, and later in Russia, the CIS countries and foreign countries, translated into English, German, Serbian, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and other languages.

Professor R. S. Belkin is rightfully considered the founder of a large scientific school with more than a hundred direct students; during his lifetime he received the honorary unofficial title of the patriarch of Russian forensics . Under his direct supervision, more than 120 candidates and doctors of legal sciences successfully prepared and defended dissertations ^[4] .

The children of Rafail Samuilovich Belkin are considered to be the successors: his daughter is a famous Russian forensic scientist, expert in the field of forensics, Professor Elena Rafailovna Rossinskaya ; the son is a well-known Russian lawyer, a specialist in the field of criminal procedure and criminalistics, Professor Anatoly Rafailovich Belkin , and his grandson is a specialist in the field of criminal procedure, Professor Sergei Borisovich Rossinsky.

Rafail Samuilovich Belkin is known not only as a forensic scientist, but also as a researcher in the field of criminal process and operational-search activity. In his monograph “Theory and Practice of Investigative Experiment” (1959), he actually anticipated the appearance of a new investigative action, a year later legitimized by the new Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR (1960), and investigated it from the forensic perspective. Further in the monograph “An Experiment in Investigative Judicial and Expert Practice” (1964), he investigated this topic from the standpoint of the general theory of knowledge, paying special attention to questions of proof.

Monograph “Collection, research and evaluation of evidence. Essence and methods ”(1966), clearly showed the connection between forensic science and criminal procedure law, and thereby laid the foundation for the methodology of domestic forensics, developed in the next fundamental work“ Forensics and Evidence ”(1969, together with Professor A. I. Vinberg ).

Professor R. S. Belkin is the author of the generally accepted concept of reflection as the epistemological foundation of forensic science, put forward by him in the work “Leninist theory of reflection and methodological problems of Soviet forensics” (1970). Lenin himself did not create such a theory, he only conjectures that in the very foundation of matter lies a property close to the property of sensation - the property of reflection. However, a reference to the authority of Lenin was necessary in those days. Application of this idea to the subject of forensics allowed R. S. Belkin in 1967 to formulate a new understanding of this subject and to propose a single concept of the general theory of forensics, based on the philosophical concept of reflection.

In the fundamental three-volume Course of Soviet Forensics (1977-1979), such sections of forensics as the doctrine of the methods, systematics and language of forensics, the doctrine of signs, etc .; private forensic theories are investigated in detail: causality, search, the mechanism of crime, forensic registration, forensic forecasting, etc.

The Belkin’s definition of the subject of forensics is accepted by the scientific community and the authors of almost all recent forensics textbooks.

He died on February 3, 2001 in Moscow.

Professor R. S. Belkin identified and described the laws of the development of criminalistics in the light of the general laws of the development of scientific knowledge. Of great importance was the idea put forward by him that criminalistics is not only a legal, but a synthetic science, inextricably linked with many natural science disciplines. He was invited to supplement the structure of forensic science with another, fourth, section - the general theory of science.

R. S. Belkin paid special attention to the issues of forensic tactics, in particular tactics and combinations, investigative situations, the factor of surprise , etc. At the same time, he examined this range of issues in connection with the solution of the ethical problems of forensic science and criminal justice in general. In works on legal ethics and legal psychology, R. S. Belkin repeatedly raised and investigated the question of the admissibility of fraud as a means of mental influence and showed that the prevailing official concept of immorality of fraud is recognized only in words, but practical workers everywhere resort to its use. R. S. Belkin called for openly admitting that fraud in the law enforcement sphere within a certain framework is permissible, since the state investigative activities based on misinformation and fraud of criminals are legal, but limited the scope of fraud to a strictly defined scope.

Professor R. S. Belkin is the author of more than 300 scientific works, including more than 20 monographs, among which the first three-volume course in the history of forensic science “The course of Soviet forensics” (1977-1979); two-volume “Forensics: problems, trends, prospects” (1987-1988); “Forensics: the problems of today” (2001); “Forensic science course” (2001) and many others. He wrote more than 25 criminalistics textbooks for higher and secondary specialized educational institutions, including the joint Bulgarian (1972) and three-volume Czechoslovak (1984-1985) textbooks.

The Criminalistic Encyclopedia (1993, 1997, 2000), the Dictionary Dictionary Handbook (1999), the fundamental “History of Russian Forensics” (1999), created by R. S. Belkin, have no analogues.

In addition to purely scientific works, R. S. Belkin left a number of vivid popular science and scientific-fiction books: “An Investigation is Underway” (1976), “Don't Break the Line” (1979), “Through the Veil of Secrets” (1989), “Equal to myself ”(1991, together with M. Ya. Segay),“ Boring forensics ”(1993),“ My profession is an investigator ”(1995),“ Report from the investigator’s workshop ”(1998),“ Profession is an investigator ”(1998 ) and even the “Forensic Primer” (1997) for elementary school students.

• Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1976)
• two orders of the Red Star (07.23.1944;?)
• Order of the Patriotic War I degree (1985)
• Order of the Patriotic War II degree (12.4.1945)
• Medal "For Courage" (11/05/1943)
• medal "For the defense of Moscow" (1.5.1944)

The name of Professor R. S. Belkin is the Department of Forensics, MFPA ^[5] . The Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation operates a memorial cabinet-museum of Rafail Samuilovich Belkin.

The jubilee scientific conferences in Voronezh (2002) and Moscow (2002, 2007, 2012, 2017) were devoted to the development of the ideas of Professor R. S. Belkin in modern forensics.

At the Kazakh National University . Al-Farabi and the Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia regularly hold Belkin forensic readings.

The Institute of Independent Studies (Moscow) together with the Academy of Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia and the Moscow branch of the International Award Union established a commemorative silver medal of R. S. Belkin for outstanding services in the development of forensics and forensics, awarded annually.