[7][8][9] But the nationalizations in all areas of the economy soon considerably restricted the avenues through which an author could publish her or his work, even if her or his copyright remained initially untouched.
On July 29, 1919, the government declared a state monopoly on unpublished works of deceased authors; and on April 20, 1920, all books (including those in private possession) were nationalized, except those in public libraries.
[11] In the interest of public education, the new Communist regime wanted to widely (and inexpensively) disseminate classic Russian literature to the masses.
Toward this end, a decree was issued December 29, 1917 (Gregorian date) enabling the People's Commissariat for Education to nationalize works of deceased authors (including composers).
[7][12] On February 14, 1918, the works of 58 deceased authors were nationalized[13]—including, among others, Chekhov, Chernyshevsky, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Herzen, Lermontov, Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Turgenev.
On August 16, 1919, the works of the seventeen composers Arensky, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Balakirev, Cui, Kalinnikov, Laroche, Lyadov, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rubinstein, Sakketi, Scriabin, Serov, Smolensky, Stasov, and Taneyev were nationalized.
In the context of the general abolition of legal and testimonial succession rights,[9] the nationalization decree of November 26, 1918 also reduced the copyright term from the 50 years p.m.a.
[21] Only in the Azerbaijan SSR were the copyright provisions included in the Civil Code of the republic; in all other SSRs, the act was a separate ad-hoc piece of legislation.
If an author died before that period had expired, the heirs were granted the right to receive royalties according to the schedules established by the government for the shorter of the remaining part of the 25-year term or during 15 years.
[27] This provision was, already before Soviet times, motivated by the desire to ensure an economically viable way to translate works between the many national languages of the country.
[35] Royalty collection and payment was centralized through a state agency founded in 1932 and named in 1938 the "All-Union Administration for the Protection of Copyrights", (VUOAP – Vsesoiuznoe upravlenie po ochrane avtorskich prav; Всесоюзное управление по охране авторских прав, ВУОАП).
[43] Furthermore, the courts limited damage claims in copyright infringement cases to the sums defined by the existing standard schedules of remuneration issued by the government.
For the first time, copyright law was incorporated into the federal Civil Code and no longer formed a separate piece of legislation.
[40] Photographs still were subject to the rule from the 1928 Fundamentals that they needed to be marked with the name of the studio, its address, and the year in order to be copyrighted.
[40] Employees for the first time were granted a copyright on works they created as part of their duties, but their right to remuneration was limited to their salary.
[81] The 1961 Fundamentals, like its predecessor laws, allowed for a wide selection of free uses and compulsory licenses, subject only to the attribution of the original author of a work.
[85] The Civil Code of the RSFSR of 1964 contained an additional free use provision in article 493 that allowed the reproduction or other use of a published work for personal purposes.
[93] These changes concerned the introduction of special advantages for developing countries and the explicit acknowledgment of an author's exclusive rights to reproduction, performance, and broadcast of a work.
[98] The UCC gave signatory countries more leeway than the Berne Convention to keep the idiosyncrasies of their laws (such as requirements for copyright registrations, or a two-term scheme as it was used until 1978 in the United States).
The USSR would then have been forced to implement the somewhat stronger provisions of the 1971 Paris version, which in particular explicitly recognized an author's exclusive rights to reproduction, performance, and broadcast of a work.
[105] In 1978, the USSR declared its agreement with the use of Soviet copyrighted works in developing countries according to the rules laid down in the 1971 Paris edition of the UCC.
The first was a very broad free use permission allowing newspapers to reproduce any published report or scientific, artistic, literary, or oral work; either in the original or as a translation.
[116] When the Soviet Union joined the UCC, a new type of freely negotiable licences was introduced to facilitate dealing with publishers abroad, and in particular in the West.
[66] The intention clearly was that the old-style authors' contracts were to be used amongst Soviet partners for domestic publication, whereas the new licensing scheme was to be employed towards foreign publishers.
Upon a decree of August 16, 1973,[117] the "All-Union Agency on Copyrights" (VAAP – Vsesoiuznoe agentstvo po avtorskim pravam; Всесоюзное агентство по авторским правам, ВААП) was founded on September 20, 1973.
[128] Elst concludes that the accession to the UCC questioned the internal consistency of Soviet law and undermined several of its basic principles,[128] and that the myriad of improvement suggestions by scholars actually caused new legal uncertainties.
[134] Despite the briefness of chapter IV of the new 1991 Fundamentals—it consisted of only 10 articles, of which 2 covered neighbouring rights and one was on measures against copyright infringements—it was a radical break with the previous practice.
[138] The copyright of legal entities was abolished; publishers of scientific collections or encyclopedias as well as film studios were only granted a derived right to use the work in its entirety, subject to the remuneration of the authors.
[139] The state's authors' contracts for publication were no longer mandatory, and the upper limits to remuneration were dropped: contractual freedom was established.
[154] The old Soviet law was thus rendered largely obsolete in Russia; it remained applicable only to copyright violations that had occurred before August 3, 1993.