In answering the question “What crimes are committed?” one could say in general that it is the usual line-up found in any country plus that category defined as the crimes against the state or the order of government. It would be hard to say what is included in the latter group. It would run the gamut from, let us say, the theft of bread from a collective farm, if it was intended to hamper the rule of the proletariat in any way, to the wrecking of a factory. It depends on the “socially dangerous” character of the person committing the act for one thing, on the social background, and for the other consideration, the motive behind the act. It is quite to be expected that this group ranks at the top of any list of crimes in the USSR.
If one wishes to go into detailed statistics on the subject of crimes committed, there is a small, compact volume, Crime Abroad and in the USSR, by M. N. Gernet, which supplies such information. It was, however, published in 1931 which is far in the past, gauged by the speed with which the Criminal Code and judicial practices change under proletariat rule. But in the main the list of crimes are the same and the classifications as to age and sex still hold.
There has been a change in the type of crime since the days of military Communism. A. J. Estrin, in his The Development of Soviet Criminal Policy includes the following1 as characterizing the period of militarism.
He goes on to say that there was considerable growth in crimes of banditry during 1918, practically all having a political or anarchistic coloring. In the matter of desertion, the menace was so great that a special commission was set up to deal with it, and by the time of the entry of the Communist army into Warsaw it had been successfully repressed on the western front. During this period there was likewise an increase in hooliganism, the acceptance of bribery on the part of officials, and speculation. The latter presented an especially difficult problem but was nearly at an end when the institution of the New Economic Policy in 1922 brought new forms of it. From then on it has been one of the crimes that has given most trouble to the government. Acts of pilfering state property in order to resell it at a greater price, or securing goods for speculation by persons working either on a state farm or in a store, are extensive. Since the law of August, 1932, providing a death penalty for taking state property these crimes have decreased in number.
Open warfare between the classes had so far subsided by 1921 that there was a demobilization of farmers and other workers from the army, and that led to the increase in another crime—banditry. These people, suddenly released from fighting ranks, broke and unable to find work in that period when production was at a low ebb, turned to theft, robbery or banditry, especially the latter, filling the country with a terror all their own.
During this period of 1921-22 there was a very definite growth in the number of crimes committed against persons—not in those of a more serious nature such as murder or severe injury but in sex crime, fighting and insults. The author explains this as resulting from the transition from the old culture to the new. The old was at an end and the new not yet sufficiently established to set up an influence against such acts of attack and rowdyism.
There is a reference here by Estrin to a statement by N. Krylenko which connects the beginning of the crime of sabotage—so serious since to the Soviet government—with activities of former owners during the years of 1921, 1922 and 1923. There was no longer opportunity for armed fighting but the opposition relentlessly kept up its battle by any means at hand and its best methods were to hinder the production without which Communism would be undermined by starvation and physical depletion. From 1923 on, there began to appear with increasing frequency in the courts cases of economic counter-revolutionary character. Firearms and open resistance might have gone by the board but sabotage grew apace until 1925-26 when it reached its greatest height.
A numerical count of court convictions in 1925 would make it appear that there was a tremendous drop in ordinary crimes and an increase in those of a political type. There is an explanation for this in the fact that a reform of the Criminal Code in 1924 deleted a number of crimes of lesser importance, and there was a consequent lessening of 300,000 in convictions during the following year, most of which loss was, of course, from the ranks of the ordinary criminals. Class lines were drawn in a still more distinct fashion, thus emphasizing the direction criminal repression was to take for some time to come.
The character of crimes against the state are today mostly of an economic nature. Before, however, we set down some of the more important ones that harass law enforcement let us look at a brief list of the type of acts which are encountered in court cases.
(a) Crimes against the state
(b) Crimes against the person
(c) Crimes against property
(d) Official crimes
(e) Hooliganism
The items here of particular interest to foreigners are the first and the last. The list of crimes included in the first category will shortly be enumerated. As for the last, the term “hooliganism” covers a multitude of crimes. If one suddenly gets up in a theater and strikes his neighbor without apparent cause, such is an act of hooliganism. It was described to the writer as defining “unmotivated” acts. If one does not pursue “motivation” into psychological or psychiatric realms that explanation pretty well expresses what is meant. Deeds not logically accounted for might come a little closer. If a group of young men go out just to “raise cain” for no particular cause they may destroy property, attack a man, and do various other criminal acts which would all fall within the definition of hooliganism. The charge corresponds roughly to our “disorderly conduct,” except that the deeds committed may be of a more serious nature. But into this category are lumped a miscellany not classified otherwise.
Now, what are the chief crimes against the state? There would be, first of all, such major deeds as counter-revolutionary activities and the dissemination of propaganda. There are no longer organizations fostering counter-revolutionary work, but a great amount of such work is carried on. Individuals with malice aforethought, work their way into factory or collective farm, and spread what discontent they may. The author heard, for example, of the trial of the director of a collective farm who managed cleverly to see that the plan of production was unfulfilled.
Next in line would be industrial sabotage and attack on or the theft of government property. So prevalent had the latter become by the committing of such acts as killing cattle or the destruction of anything possible, as well as organized theft of state property that the government had recently acquired, that the Law of August 7, 1932, providing the death penalty for such crimes, was enacted to meet the situation. On some occasions of organized theft the motive is for personal gain rather than one of desire to harm the state. For example, the author heard one case in court where the theft of grain from a collective farm was resold in speculating and the gain to the eleven persons involved was some 20,000 rubles. The death penalty was given to the leaders, prison sentences to the others. There is also the evasion of government orders and taxes, insubordination to the demands of the law, insults by word of mouth, if such involves a Kulak as against an officer. This does not by any means complete the possibilities, but it lists the headings under which the majority of such acts come.
Sabotage hardly needs comment here. So associated has the term come to be with industrial affairs in Russia that one would expect to find it ranking high as a crime against the state. It is, of course, committed by the enemies of the established order, and has hampered the progress of collectivization and industrial development to a great degree. Five men were shot and the others in the plot sentenced to ten years in prison (corrective labor with deprivation of liberty) during the past summer for burning a large factory in the Ural region by electric wire manipulation. Activities of the disorganized opposition have centered in crimes of this sort as the most effective weapon in its hands. Not much quarter is shown when guilt is established. The extreme penalty is surely and speedily given.
An enumeration of the counter-revolutionary crimes listed in the Criminal Code includes the following:
Any act directed towards overthrow, undermining and weakening of the peasants’ and workers’ order of government.
Armed uprising and entering Soviet territory.
Communication with a foreign government for counter-revolutionary purposes.
Extending aid and comfort to that part of the international bourgeoisie which aims at the overthrow of the Communist order.
Inducing a foreign government by means of forged documents to declare war or to make armed intervention, or by the same method to induce blockade, confiscation of property of USSR, interruption of diplomatic relations, renouncing of a treaty.
Espionage.
Transmission, collection, or theft, of economic information.
Undermining of state industry, transport, trade, monetary circulation, cooperatives, committed with a counter-revolutionary purpose.
Commission of terrorist acts against representatives of the Soviet order or workers’ and peasants’ organizations.
Destruction or damaging with counter-revolutionary purposes by means of the use of explosive, arson, or any other method, of railways, and other means of transportation, means of communication, aqueducts, community warehouses.
Propaganda and agitation containing an appeal to overthrow, undermine, or weaken the Soviet order. Circulation or preparation of literature. Same actions in time of mass disorders, or making use of religious and national prejudices, or in time of war or in localities under martial law.
All kinds of organizational activity directed toward preparation and commission of crimes mentioned in this chapter as well as participation in an organization founded for the preparation or commission of one of the crimes mentioned in this chapter.
Failure to report a known counter-revolutionary crime or preparation for same.
Any action or active struggle against the working class and the revolutionary movement committed while in office under the Tzarist régime or under the counter-revolutionary government, during the Civil War.
Counter-revolutionary sabotage, i.e., premeditated omission to carry out the duties or deliberate negligence in carrying them out with the specific purpose of weakening the authority of the government.
Chief in the list of “official crimes” is the accepting of bribery, dealing out sentences in excess of the provision of the law, or beyond what circumstances warrant, failing to fulfill one’s duty, taking the law into one’s hands, etc. As an example of punishment in excess of justification of circumstances there is a case recorded in which a drunken priest was given a heavy penalty in a Siberian People’s Court. In view of the government’s attitude toward religion one would suppose that such a sentence might stand, but when it was called to the attention of the higher court, the prosecutor was removed from office and the militiaman was arrested.
Commissar of Justice Krylenko, in his Revolutionary Law, lists a number of omissions and commissions on the part of officials, but when a complaint of, or information on, such acts reach the authorities, action follows. The population, taught from the cradle up that this is their government, has no timidity, apparently, about seeing that men in office regard the laws of the land, if they have information of acts to the contrary. This authority says, after mentioning a variety of actual cases of such violation, “The struggle against distortions of this kind must be waged with absolute ruthlessness.”2
The other two classifications—crimes against the person and against property—include what they would in our own country, but penalties imposed differ from ours a great deal. Since they, as our most elementary groupings, are generally understood, and since outside of crimes against the state or order of government, these two comprise the great bulk of criminal transgressions in Russia as well as in our own country, it seems of general interest to include here, even at the risk of being tedious, those two chapters of the Criminal Code which relate to these classes of crime, and they are therefore inserted.
CRIMES AGAINST LIFE, HEALTH, LIBERTY, AND DIGNITY OF PERSONS
PROPERTY CRIMES
Those familiar with women’s prisons in our own country will have missed “prostitution” from among the crimes enumerated in the Soviet Criminal Code. This practice is treated as a social problem in Russia, and rightly, in the opinion of most persons interested in penology, it is not held to be a crime. The six articles in the code directed against sex offenses, it will be noted, provide penalties for rape, or, in the interest of public health, for the infection of a person with a venereal disease by one aware that he (or she) has the disease. By treating prostitution as a social problem Russia has almost eliminated it. Women plying this trade are picked up by inspectors at railroad stations or other public places and taken, not to a jail, but to a prophylactorium where they are taught a useful trade with a view to removing the economic cause which is held to be the chief one in this practice. Many of the women at these centers have come voluntarily, the director of the prophylactorium in Moscow reports, through friends who have already received training and treatment. As a result of this omission from the Criminal Code, one does not find in women’s prisons that the chief cause of sentence is sex offense as it is in the United States, nor that the prisons are filled with a group who not only in the opinion of the author, but also in that of such organizations as the Women’s Prison Association of New York, should not have been sent there.
Who commits the crimes? Immediately following the Revolution the chief concern in regard to the crime situation was the suppression of those acts which jeopardized the authority of the Soviet government, but as the program of Socialist construction went forward, as they got the political situation more in hand, the type of prisoner began to change in the predominant number. Counter-revolutionary organizations were practically wiped out; the Kulak war, though still going on, somewhat thinned out, and in the residue of those of the criminal ranks there now appeared more of such types as constitute the convict population of other countries. In other words, the social composition of the group changed. Instead of there being more of an otherwise honest group of middle class farm people whose crimes consisted in efforts to overthrow a government, there was a rising percentage of ordinary criminals. This does not mean to say that the government is not still confronted with a great number of crimes against the state, by those of the bourgeoisie and Kulak class who, while not attempting to organize counter activities, still manage to get into collective farm or factory and cause a great deal of trouble, but it is noticeable that the other type of crimes is being given more attention and that programs of treatment are designed to apply to that problem.
In age, considering both sexes, the peak is reached in criminal acts at about twenty-four years. The curve descends sharply to forty and in a more leisurely fashion from forty to sixty. Official figures give the age group of 14-18 years as committing 2.5 per cent. of all crimes, 18-24 as being responsible for 25 per cent., and 24 and above, for the remaining. The crimes committed by the first group are almost wholly stealing; in the second group there are, of course, all sorts, but hooliganism figures large, and in the third there is every kind of law breaking.
The youth, then, from 14-18 years are guilty of theft, more than of any other crime, both as to male and female, and next to that are crimes against the person—fisticuffs, breaking of bones, etc. Then, there shows up a phenomenon that is noted both in juveniles and adults—the female commits more crimes against the order of the government than do the men, relatively speaking. The author asked repeatedly for an explanation of this fact, and one man who had come from the rural districts, and is now an Intourist representative in Moscow, gave an interpretation which may or may not be right. It is interesting enough to pass on. The men, he said, did not resist collectivization so intensely when they saw that it was no use, but when a woman had collected a few goats or pigs, or a cow or two, it was no use trying to take them from her. She poisoned them first. No ideal of a final society in which she could take according to her needs could make up to her for the immediate loss of her treasures.
Here is a more extensive comparison of the crimes committed by male and female transgressors. The first important thing to note is that the female is more given to excesses than the male in crimes of a less serious nature (Gernet, op. cit. p. 169). In one type of crime, hooliganism, the male is in the majority, with a percentage of 27.4 as against the female’s 2.8; but, in all other groups the woman is far in the lead. She commits six times the offenses of the men in insults, five times as many in the illegal manufacture of liquor, twice as many for assault, etc.
However, in the crimes carrying sentences of above a year the men take the lead again. Note this table from an article Women in Correctional Labor Institutions, by A. Shestakova and B. Utievsky, included in the volume edited by Vishinsky. It shows clearly to what point women exceed in crime.3
| Length of sentence | Per cent. of male | Per cent. of female |
| Up to 3 months | 8.7 | 18.3 |
| From 3 to 6 months | 11.6 | 20.1 |
| From 6 months to a year | 16.8 | 21.0 |
| From 1 year to 2 years | 21.1 | 17.1 |
| From 2 years to 3 years | 13.6 | 11.1 |
| From 3 years to 5 years | 14.6 | 7.9 |
| From 5 years to 10 years | 12.6 | 4.5 |
The social composition of the criminal group in the USSR is, as is to be expected, different from that of the ordinary capitalist country. In the first group of crimes mentioned the guilty are largely those of the village bourgeoisie and the rural Kulaks, who still struggle against the socialist order. They are persons who would not ordinarily be included in a criminal classification. Yet if we regard any legal definition of crime as including acts that contravene the rules and regulations of the proletariat society then they are actually criminals.
While this group commits most of the crimes against the state, the laborers themselves constitute the major portion of persons committing other types of crime. We find Professor Gernet,4 dividing them into owners of property or employers, and laborers. In theft we have a percentage of 12.2 for the first class, and 21.9 for the second; banditry is .8 per cent. for the first, and 1.7 per cent. for the second; murders 1.6 per cent. for the first, 2.4 per cent. for the second; hooliganism is 9.3 per cent. for the first, and 11.4 per cent. for the second. The situation is reversed in regard to crimes against the person. We find the first group there with a percentage of 10.5 and the second with 7.1.
There is some substantiation of the theory of the economic basis of crime which disciples of Marx and Lenin hold to so firmly in the fact that the curve for crime and unemployment rise and fall together. Russia claims to have no unemployment problem now, but there are those who do not work. There is always an idle band in any country. She has her dregs, misfits, and those who fall by the wayside from a variety of causes. And it is from this group that a large degree of criminals come. It furnishes its quota in Russia, too.5
There is danger of getting too statistical. We want only to have a picture of the situation. Since 1928, the date already referred to as the beginning of a program to extend Socialism from villages to cities by means of collectivization, the curve for crimes against the state has risen. The Kulaks and the village middle class have waged a relentless war, apparently not daunted by what happens to those who are caught. Or, it may be heroism of a kind, even if a misplaced one. However, the expressed attitude of the authorities who administer the corrective labor system is steadfastly to win them over, to persuade and to educate in such a political fashion that they will be convinced. Whereas “crushing” was once the order of the day, the firmer establishment of the government now gives leeway for the more constructive measures. It is interesting to note that whoever is responsible for that political education knows his approaches well, if the statements of authorities are accurate. They have released enough, they say, to see what zealous citizens it turns back to society. I have no figures on it. But as I said in the preface, they know what they want of the man who is their criminal. Given that, accomplishment is easier. It is no small thing to persuade a man that the society he thought he was against was his all the time.
Footnotes
1. P. 51 et. seq.
2. P. 23.
3. P. 358.
4. P. 167.
5. Gernet, op. cit. p. 167.