It is frequently said that a system of society can be judged by the way in which it looks after its children. The Soviet Union passes an examination on this matter with high honours. But it would probably be just as true to say that a social system can be judged by the way in which it treats its criminals, those who offend against its laws.
A visitor to a Soviet court of law, accustomed to the courts of Britain, receives a general impression of informality. Such a room and such a gathering might be a trade union meeting, or just a small public lecture, to judge by the appearance of the people sitting in the body of the hall and on the platform. At one end of the room, on a raised dais, sit three people. The hall is fairly crowded. A discussion is going on between one of the people on the platform and someone on the floor. It appears to be a heated argument. The person on the platform is one of the judges; the speaker from the floor is a criminal facing judgment!
The informality, the heated discussion between criminal and judge, the essentially human atmosphere of the whole proceedings—these are characteristic of working-class meetings all over the world. And the Soviet court is, in fact, a working-class meeting for a particular purpose—the passing of judgment on a comrade who has committed an offence.
The fact that the administration of justice has become one of the ordinary activities of the working people in the Soviet Union has led to the breaking down of the barriers between what we may call “formal” justice on the one hand and informal justice on the other. I remember one night in Moscow returning home about ten o’clock and finding an enormous gathering on the staircase, with people arguing in loud voices, “What is it?” I asked. “A comradely court,” was the reply, “What has happened?” was my next rather obvious question. And I was at once told the whole story by a woman neighbour who seemed just as interested in relating the whole scandalous affair to me as she was in listening to the proceedings themselves.
The man in the flat below had assaulted a neighbour when drunk. The neighbour had complained to the house committee. There were witnesses. The house committee decided to hold a “comradely court” to try the case, and here on the stairs, at 10 p.m., the case was being tried. The judge was a member of the house committee; the jury was made up of the other inhabitants of the block of flats. The accused was proved guilty. The sentence was a public reprimand in front of all the neighbours. And at that the matter ended.
Is such a method of dealing with petty acts of assault, of negligence at work, of drunkenness, effective? Soviet experience shows that, in many cases which might take a person to the courts in Britain, such a comradely court, with a public reprimand, is quite an effective deterrent. If, however, the comradely court comes to the decision that a misdemeanour has been committed which merits more than a public reprimand, then it turns the case over to the People’s Court, the lowest rung in the ladder of “formal” justice in the U.S.S.R.
The People’s Court would correspond to the magistrate’s court in Britain. Hitherto, until the new Constitution of 1936, the judges were appointed from a panel submitted by the trade unions of the locality. Each judge then had a short legal training, lasting about six months, before taking up his position. Now, under the new Constitution, the judges will be elected by universal secret ballot, nominations being made by the trade unions, the Party, and other organizations of the working people. Together with the judge there sit two assistant judges, without any legal training, also appointed from panels drawn up by the trade unions in the district under the old system. They now will also be elected directly by the population.
The hearing of cases takes place in an atmosphere of the greatest informality. Criminal cases may alternate with applications for alimony against fathers who refuse to recognize their paternity, or, having recognized it, refuse to meet the financial obligations which follow. In every case the accused and the judges carry on lively back-chat, as there is no such “crime” as contempt of court. I remember a case where a young man was up on a charge of drunkenness. Late at night he had apparently demanded money while drunk from a passer-by. The judge, a woman, summed up the case with a reference to the “campaign against hooliganism,” and referred to the disgraceful behaviour of the young man in creating a disturbance in the middle of the night. The young man interjected: “It wasn’t the middle of the night, it was only twelve o’clock!” “Yes, it was the middle of the night,” said the judge, and continued with her homily on the fight against hooliganism. The young man was sentenced to several months “forced labour.”
Sentences in Soviet courts are usually to terms of “forced labour” or to imprisonment. Forced labour, terrifying as it may sound, is the lighter sentence, and in foot is the imposition of a fine, on the instalment system. The person who is sentenced to forced labour continues to work at his job, but every month there is a deduction from his pay which goes to the local authority. At the same time the fact that he is serving a term of forced labour is made known to the employing authority and to his trade union, and the latter is expected to pay special attention to that person, to see that he improves his ways and becomes a more satisfactory and conscientious citizen. The criminal, serving his sentence of forced labour, will not be immune from comment in the wall-newspaper of his place of work and general social disapproval, as well as exhortation to better work and citizenship in the future.
In more serious cases, the People’s Court imposes sentences of imprisonment. But here too, as compared with the significance of that term in Britain, Soviet imprisonment stands out as an almost enjoyable experience. For the essence of Soviet imprisonment is isolation from the rest of the community, together with other persons similarly isolated, with the possibility to do useful work at the place of isolation, to earn a wage for this work, and to participate in running the isolation settlement or “prison” in the same way as the children participate in running their school, or the workers their factory. The essential difference between Soviet imprisonment and freedom lies in: (a) The fact that the prisoners are bound to live where they are sent; (b) The fact that they get considerably lower wages than when free. Both these features are a sufficient deterrent to the ordinary citizen, but they make prison life comfortable as compared to the conditions normally prevailing elsewhere.
Soviet penal settlements are now usually situated in places where large-scale construction work is in progress. The Baltic-White Sea Canal was built to a great extent by penal labour, and the building of the Moscow-Volga canal is being undertaken in a similar way. An essential feature of such large construction enterprises is that they provide work for people of all specialities. Therefore it is unusual, when serving a sentence in the U.S.S.R., for people not to be able to practice their own speciality. And since, on such construction jobs, as on construction jobs all over the U.S.S.R., there is a continual need for skilled personnel, the unskilled prisoner may learn a trade during his sentence, and be finally released with considerably higher qualifications than he had when arrested!
Within the penal settlements themselves the prisoners earn wages according to their work. But these wages are considerably below trade union rates. Those who, in recent years, have been disappointed to find a change made in this direction (for at one time trade union rates were paid to all those serving sentences) must realize that in the U.S.S.R. since 1931 there has been no unemployment. Until that year, so long as there were workers out of work, it was correctly held that if prisoners of any kind did any form of work, this would be keeping other workers out of jobs, unless the prisoners received trade union conditions. This argument, incidentally, applies also to Britain to-day. It is often stated that prisoners in His Majesty’s prisons “only sew mailbags” as proof that their prison labour is not keeping others out of employment. But if they did not sew these mailbags gratis, then unemployed workers would be employed sewing them for a living, so that in Britain to-day the existing system of prison labour, and any system other than one in which prisoners receive trade union conditions, does contribute towards unemployment. This was also true in the U.S.S.R. till 1931, and till then the prisoners received trade union wages. To-day it is no longer the case, and therefore, though paid, they do not receive as good pay as if they were free.
The extent of self-government in the Soviet penal settlement is very considerable. The wall-newspaper is a means of expression for those serving time, just as it is a means of expression for those at liberty. Amateur social activities are carried on in various spheres, and the good workers receive rapid promotion to jobs of responsibility. The accountant who has embezzled funds while at liberty may become accountant to the penal settlement if he works well, and the leader of a gang of thieves may become the leader of a brigade of workers on a construction job.
The settlement near Moscow—Bolshevo—has received fame throughout the world. This settlement was started for the homeless children who, after the war which was forced on the Soviets from 1918 to 1922, and on which Britain spent £100,000,000, were wandering about the country living by crime. At Bolshevo they were encouraged to govern themselves in a commune, with their own elected committee of management. They built factories and learnt a trade. To-day, long after the sentences of the original inhabitants are completed, many of them remain living in the village of Bolshevo, working in its factories, and assisting new arrivals to become useful citizens also. The head of the commune is one of the original homeless children.
If we are to make a comparison between the Soviet penal system and any other aspect of Soviet life, we must consider it as a form of education. The regime in the Soviet school, giving the maximum incentive to the child to develop its sense of citizenship, is copied in the treatment of criminals, to give them, too, the greatest sense of social responsibility through the experience of constructive labour and the democratic running of their own affairs.
And, just as in the factory Socialist competition is combined with the material incentive of wages, so, too, in the penal settlement there is Socialist competition; the prisoners are paid, and the best workers are given reductions in their sentences which usually amount to the lopping of one-third off their time if they work well. In this way, if we can call Soviet education “education for citizenship,” then the Soviet penal system can only be termed “re-education for citizenship.”
A word must be said, in conclusion, of that side of the Soviet penal system which gets so much dark publicity in the world Press, that aspect of it which concerns the treatment, not of comrades who have gone wrong, but of those who act in a way which shows deliberate hostility to Soviet society. For there are individuals even to-day who are ready to take violent measures, and to co-operate with foreign Powers to overthrow the existing Soviet system.
There are many sympathizers of the Soviet regime who cannot understand how, twenty years after the Russian Revolution, there can really be enemies of the regime in the U.S.S.R. to-day. I think these people forget that open armed warfare against the Soviets was only finally defeated in 1922. Since then more than one attempt has been made to provoke cause for a new attack. And at the present time the avowed policy of the leading Fascist States is to launch an attack on the Soviet Union.
In preparation for that war, Hitler is not going to refrain from attempting to inject agents into the U.S.S.R., just as he is injecting them into other countries. If he finds it to his advantage to have agents in Spain and France, in North and South America, he will find it more necessary, not less so, to place them also in the U.S.S.R., the country an attack against which he has openly stated to be his main objective.
And, when we consider the internal position of the U.S.S.R. itself, it would be wildly Utopian to assume that to-day there are not still some persons who, for some reason or other, may have some grudge against the Soviet Government, and want to overthrow it. If these circumstances are recognized, then we see that there are definite reasons why the discovery of anti-Soviet plots in co-operation with Fascist States is likely to take place in the U.S.S.R. in the future just as it has occurred in the past.
Whereas, among comrades, justice in the U.S.S.R. is administered as a means of re-education for citizenship, the Soviet State treats those crimes which are in fact acts of war by the law of war. In the U.S.S.R. to-day the side of the system of justice which represents the future is the justice among comrades which has been described in detail. The law of war, applied to political enemies of the system—spies, saboteurs, and terrorists—will only continue so long as there are States in the world interested in fomenting war against the U.S.S.R. and in stirring up internal difficulties.
In the great Moscow trials which have taken place in 1936 and 1937 considerable confusion has been caused by the suggestion that these trials showed the undemocratic nature of the Soviet system. “If men like Radek and Zinoviev have to resort to armed terror,” it is said, “this can only be because they had no other means of expressing their views.” That statement, in essence, is true. But there are two possible reasons for this situation. First, it might be that the State authorities allowed no criticism or discussion whatever, and simply prevented the men concerned from expressing legitimate criticisms of policy. Secondly, it might be that these individuals had already, time and again, expressed their views until the whole of the democratic institutions of the country had finally decided by a vast majority that the propagation of such views was not in accordance with the interests of the community, In the latter case, the fact that these people could no longer speak their views would be because the people no longer wanted to hear them; in which case this fact illustrates, not the undemocratic, but the democratic character of such a prohibition.
So long as the threat of war hangs over the U.S.S.R. the laws of war will be enforced in those cases where, objectively speaking, citizens are in collaboration with the avowed enemies of the Soviet State. It is in these spheres that we may still find the death-penalty—“the highest measure of social defence”—being imposed on “enemies of the Republic.” At the same time, however, comradely justice, for the re-education of erring citizens, is applied to the overwhelming majority of cases tried in the Soviet courts.
Comradely justice and the law of war are applied side by side and simultaneously in the U.S.S.R. to-day. They must on no account be confused, for they represent two opposing tendencies—the struggle for security necessitated by the existing world situation, and the ordinary means operated by friends to regulate their relationships to the mutual interest of all. The law of war must still be applied in the U.S.S.R. to-day because of the external forces, identifying themselves with the mediæval past, which threatens the security of the Soviets. The other—the law of comrades, the law of future human society—is being applied more and more as an everyday activity of the working people themselves, for the purpose of preserving law and order for their own mutual benefit.