The following is a guest post by Peter Roudik, director of legal research at the Law Library of Congress. Peter has previously written a number of posts related to Russia and the former Soviet Union, including posts on the Soviet investigation of Nazi war crimes, lustration in Ukraine, Crimean history and the 2014 referendum, regulating the Winter Olympics in Russia, Soviet law and the assassination of JFK, the treaty on the creation of the Soviet Union, murder as statecraft, and the Russian Spring holiday.