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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Brezhnev's War on Crime: The Criminal in Soviet Society, 1963-1984 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/44n3x1m7 Author Dowling, Rhiannon Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Brezhnev's War on Crime: The Criminal in Soviet Society, 1963-1984 By Rhiannon Lee Dowling A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Victoria Frede, co-chair Professor Yuri Slezkine, co-chair Professor Eric Naiman Spring 2017 Abstract Brezhnev's War on Crime: The Criminal in Soviet Society, 1963-1984 by Rhiannon Lee Dowling Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Victoria Frede, Co-chair Professor Yuri Slezkine, Co-chair One of the most important questions concerning Soviet history is: how did the period widely known as the era of “stagnation” lead to the very opposite of stagnation, indeed to the most sudden and cataclysmic changes in the region since the Russian Revolution? Was the Brezhnev era (1964-1982) simply the calm before the storm, or was it in fact the culmination of a tempest that had been brewing for decades? I argue that it was during “stagnation,” when many citizens learned to articulate their frustrations with Soviet society and formulate demands and solutions. Those solutions drew heavily from images, ideas and promises made by agents of the Soviet state. By taking a closer look at the Brezhnev era, we can see that it was in fact the legitimacy of the state's claims, and the seriousness with which people took them in this period, that actually helped to precipitate its downfall. Nothing brings this to light better than a focus on crime. I analyze debates in Soviet society about crime and punishment as these problems became increasingly central to public life in the final decades of the Soviet Union's existence. I study the Soviet Union's first post-Stalin criminological research institute from its formation in 1963 through the height of its influence in the early 1970s, along with journalistic writing on crime and justice, films, and television programs from the thriving genre of crime fiction. I also access popular views on criminality through private and public letters and other writings. These sources show that in the Brezhnev era, an increase in scientific research on the causes of crime, coupled with a new focus on a Soviet “war on crime” in the media, opened up new possibilities for mass discussions of important political and ideological issues in multiple venues. Additionally, they show that alliances were formed between elite scholars and journalists on one hand, and ordinary citizens on the other, forcing many intellectuals to reformulate their ideas about the nature of criminality and the meaning of justice in the Soviet state. In these discussions, ordinary Soviet citizens made it clear that they had heard a good deal about the concept of justice, but witnessed only its opposite. For many, this contradiction did not discredit the ideals of Soviet justice as much as it made them all the more desirable, and the disillusionment with Soviet reality more acute. It turned out that the earlier campaigns to educate the public about crime and morality had a powerful effect on popular legal consciousness in the Soviet Union: they stoked a deep desire in people for 1 promises of justice they never saw realized, and gave them the language to condemn the state and justice system on its own terms. 2 To Svetlana Frantsievna Pokrovskaia i Table of Contents Introduction....................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgments Chapter 1. The Exceptional Case of the Soviet Criminal: The Re-Birth of Soviet Criminology and the End of the Thaw..................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2. “The Case of Two Boys”: Legal Professionalism Meets Popular Justice....................46 Chapter 3. “If you work hard enough on a case, you will discover the truth”: Crime in Brezhnev- era Mass Media..............................................................................................................................82 Chapter 4. Grigorii Medynskii and his Readers: Crime, Literature, and Reform in the Decades of Developed Socialism...................................................................................................................118 Afterword.....................................................................................................................................177 Bibliography ii Introduction “A crime wave has flooded our country. The noxious breath of the criminal underworld fills our streets,” wrote Stanislav Govorukhin, a director of popular detective films, in 1989. He continued that, “we've turned into a nation defined by clandestine theft. Just about every one of us steals something. We rob our factories of sugar, coffee, tea, candy, screws, transistors, or paper. We steal time from our workplaces—we come in a little late, leave a little early, occupy ourselves with personal affairs during the work day. In what other country do people steal automotive windshield wipers?”1 To Govorukhin, rampant criminality in the years of perestroika and glasnost' was matched only by the ineffectual response of the Soviet state to the crime epidemic. He alluded longingly to the recent era of so-called “stagnation,” in which criminals were duly punished for their crimes. Speaking to a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Govorukhin complained that what the country needed was a renewed battle (bor'ba) against crime. The deputy, Anatolii Lukianov, corrected him, “what we need is not a battle, but a war (voina). A war of the people against crime.”2 The difference between a battle and a war being presumably that instead of fighting with crime on a near-perpetual basis, hoping to see a decline or “retreat,” the state would mobilize all of its resources to defeat crime once and for all. Govorukhin failed to acknowledge, however, that the notion of a “war on crime” was not novel in the Soviet Union by 1989. From the very beginning of the country's existence each generation had waged its own war to eliminate crime. Lukianov and Govorukhin were simply 1 Stanislav Govorukhin, “Voina s prestupnost’iu,” Sovetskia Kul’tura, July 29, 1989. 2 Ibid. Reprinted in Novoe Russkoe Slovo August 19-20, 1989, and translated as “The War Against Crime,” in World Affairs Vol. 152, 2 (Sep. 1989), 115. iii echoing that tradition rather than proposing a radical new turn. The early Bolsheviks, following Marxist doctrine, understood crime as a holdover of capitalism which would fade away along with capitalist economic relations. This formulation had powerful resonance throughout Soviet history, and its echoes could be heard in legal institutes, courtrooms, and newspapers well into the Brezhnev era (1964-1982).3 In the 1920s, the people who continued to emphasize the connection between capitalism and criminality most vociferously where those who felt that the revolutionary state was regressing to its pre- revolutionary level of exploitation and decadence. The party's New Economic Policy (NEP 1921-1928) had allowed limited private enterprise into the Soviet economy. During this time, many critics claimed, professional hucksters and bourgeois swindlers grew rich by draining the war-weary country's working class of its dwindling resources.4 Beginning in 1928, Stalin's five- year plans ended the NEP not only through forced industrialization and collectivization, but also through increased criminalization. Many recently legal, lucrative, and ubiquitous activities became criminal with new legislation and changes to the legal code. Crimes now included speculation, black-marketeering, and many forms of trading, along with tardiness, absenteeism, and unemployment.5 By the mid to late 1930s, it was not only capitalist (or counterrevolutionary) economic activities, but also evidence of capitalist or counterrevolutionary “holdovers” in people's consciousness that were criminalized. Petty crimes were seen as evidence of counterrevolutionary intentions and punished more harshly. At the same time, people were 3 A. A. Gertzenzon, Vvedenie v Sovetskuiu kriminologiiu. (Moskva: Izd. “Iurid. lit,” 1965), 5-6. 4 See for example Aleksandra Kollontai, “The Workers' Opposition,” in The Structure of Soviet History. Essays and Documents, Ronald Grigor Suny, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 103-112. 5 Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953-1964. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 112; Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Soviet Russia in the 1930s. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 54-62. iv increasingly charged with crimes and punished for alleged thoughts, speech, or rumors. Entire classes of people were criminalized, and real or suspected membership in or sympathy for those classes was sufficient evidence for conviction and sentencing. As the penalties grew and the number of “criminals” mounted, their rights and legal protections dwindled.6 Earlier attempts to focus on reeducation
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