Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : defining, policing, and producing deviance during the thaw 9780299287436, 0299287432, 9780299287443, 0299287440

Citation preview

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved. LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:45:04.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hoo­li­gans in ­Khrushchev’s Rus­sia

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:45:04.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Publication of this volume has been made possible, in part, through support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:45:04.

HOOLIGANS IN KHRUSHCHEV’S RUSSIA

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

De­fin­ing, Po­lic­ing, and Pro­duc­ing De­vi­ance dur­ing the Thaw

Brian La­Pierre

T h e

U n i ­v e r s­ i t y

o f

W i s c ­ o n ­s i n

P r e s s

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:45:04.

The Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Press 1930 Mon­roe ­Street, 3rd Floor Mad­i­son, Wis­con­sin 53711-2059 uw­press.wisc.edu 3 Hen­rietta ­Street Lon­don WCE 8LU, En­gland eu­ros­pan­book­store.com Copy­right © 2012 The Board of Re­gents of the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin ­System All ­rights re­served. No part of this pub­li­ca­tion may be re­pro­duced, ­stored in a re­trieval ­system, or trans­mit­ted, in any for­mat or by any means, dig­i­tal, elec­tronic, me­chan­i­cal, photo­cop­y­ing, re­cord­ing, or oth­er­wise, or con­veyed via the Inter­net or a web­site with­out writ­ten per­mis­sion of the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Press, ex­cept in the case of brief quo­ta­tions em­bed­ded in crit­i­cal ar­ti­cles and re­views.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

­Printed in the ­United ­States of Amer­ica

Li­brary of Con­gress ­Cataloging-in-Publication Data La­Pierre, Brian. Hoo­li­gans in ­Khrushchev’s Rus­sia : de­fin­ing, po­lic­ing, and pro­duc­ing de­vi­ance dur­ing the thaw / Brian La­Pierre. p.   cm. In­cludes bib­lio­graph­i­cal ref­er­ences and index. ISBN 978-0-299-28744-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-299-28743-6 (e-book) 1.  Crim­i­nal jus­tice, Ad­min­is­tra­tion of—So­viet Union.   2.  Hood­lums—Govern­ment pol­icy—So­viet Union.   3.  De­vi­ant be­hav­ior—Govern­ment pol­icy—So­viet Union. 4.  So­v iet Union—His­t ory—1953–1985.   5.  So­v iet Union—So­c ial con­d i­t ions— 1945–1991.   I.  Title. HV9960.S65L36 2012 364.30947’09045—dc23 2011045234 An ear­lier ver­sion of chap­ter 2 was pub­lished as “Pri­vate Mat­ters or Pub­lic ­Crimes: The Emer­gence of Do­mes­tic Hoo­li­gan­ism in the So­viet Union, 1939–1966” in Bor­ders of So­cial­ ism: Pri­vate ­Spheres of the So­viet Union, ed. Lewis H. Sie­gel­baum (New York: Pal­grave Mac­mil­lan, 2006), 191–210. Por­tions of chap­ter 3 were pub­lished ear­lier as “Mak­ing Hoo­li­gan­ism on a Mass Scale: The Cam­paign ­against Petty Hoo­li­gan­ism in the So­viet Union, 1956–1964,” Ca­hiers du monde russe, 47 (2006): 349–376. Like­wise, seg­ments of chap­ter 5 were first pub­lished in a fests­chrift for Rich­ard Hel­lie as “Deal­ing with So­cial Dis­or­ders That ­Should Not Exist: The ­Khrushchev-Era Soft Line on Petty Crime,” Rus­sian His­tory/His­toire russe, 36 (2009): 183–200. I would like to thank Brill, Pal­grave Mac­mil­lan, and the ed­i­to­rial board of the Ca­hiers du monde russe for their gen­er­ous per­mis­sion to reuse sec­tions of these ar­ti­cles in the cur­rent work.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:45:04.

To

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Lena

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:45:04.

The law is like the shaft of a wagon; it goes wherever you turn it.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

—Russian proverb

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:45:04.

Con­tents

List of Ta­bles Ac­knowl­edg­ments



Intro­duc­tion

1

A Por­trait of Hoo­li­gan­ism and the Hoo­li­gan dur­ing the Khrush­chev Pe­riod

17

Pri­vate Mat­ters or Pub­lic ­Crimes? The Emer­gence of Do­mes­tic Hoo­li­gan­ism in So­viet Rus­sia

59

Mak­ing Hoo­li­gan­ism on a Mass Scale: The Cam­paign against Petty Hoo­li­gan­ism

96

Em­pow­er­ing Pub­lic Ac­ti­vism: The ­Khrushchev-Era Cam­paign to Mo­bi­lize ­Obshchestvennost’ in the Fight against Hoo­li­gan­ism

132

5

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

168



Con­clu­sion: Plus ça ­change, plus c’est la même chose: Hoo­li­gan­ism after Khrush­chev

199

Notes Bib­liog­ra­phy Index

209 265 275

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

2 3 4



ix xi

3

vii

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:26.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved. LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:26.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

List of Ta­bles Table 1.  Num­ber of Court­room Con­vic­tions for Ma­li­cious and Sim­ple Hoo­li­gan­ism in the USSR and the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (RSFSR), 1945–1965

18

Table 2.  So­cial Com­po­si­tion of Hoo­li­gan Con­victs in the USSR, 1947–1965

43

Table 3.  Age Range of Con­victed Hoo­li­gans in the USSR, 1945–1957

47

Table 4.  Age Range of Con­victed Hoo­li­gans in the USSR, 1962–1965

47

Table 5.  Re­cid­i­vism Rate among Con­victed Hoo­li­gans in the USSR, 1947–1957

51

Table 6.  Dis­tri­bu­tion of Hoo­li­gan­ism (Sim­ple and Ma­li­cious) by Re­pub­lic, Meas­ured in Num­ber of Con­victs per 100,000 Peo­ple, 1961–1963

52

Table 7.  Rates of Party and Kom­so­mol Mem­ber­ship among Con­victed Hoo­li­gans, 1947–1957

55

Table 8.  Urban/Rural Dis­tri­bu­tion of Hoo­li­gan­ism in the USSR, 1947–1957

56

Table 9.  Num­ber of Peo­ple Given Meas­ures of Ad­min­is­tra­tive Pun­ish­ment for Petty Hoo­li­gan­ism (Ar­rests and Fines) in the USSR, 1957–1964 ix

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:37.

104

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved. LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:37.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Ac­knowl­edg­ments This book would not have been pos­sible with­out the help and sup­port of many in­di­vid­u­als and agen­cies. My re­search was gen­er­ously sup­ ported by a ­Fulbright-Hays Doc­to­ral Dis­ser­ta­tion Re­search ­Abroad Fel­low­ship (with funds pro­vided by the ­United ­States De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion), a grant from the Inter­na­tional Re­search and Ex­change ­Board’s Re­gional ­Scholar Ex­change Pro­gram (with funds pro­vided by the ­United ­States De­part­ment of ­State’s Bu­reau for Ed­u­ca­tional and Cul­tural Af­fairs), an An­drew W. Mel­lon Foun­da­tion Dis­ser­ta­tion Year Fel­low­ship, and by a Sum­mer Fa­culty Re­search Grant from the Uni­ver­ sity of South­ern Mis­sis­sippi. For help­ing me to re­al­ize my dream of re­search­ing in the Rus­sian ­archives, I am very grate­ful to these four in­sti­tu­tions. This book had its be­gin­nings as a PhD dis­ser­ta­tion, and I would like to thank the mem­bers of my dis­ser­ta­tion com­mit­tee at the Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago, ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick, Ron Suny, and the late Rich­ard Hel­lie, for their coun­sel and guid­ance. In par­tic­u­lar, ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick has ­guided me ­through each step of the re­search and writ­ing pro­cess and of­fered ad­vice, en­cour­age­ment, and sup­port dur­ing the good times and the bad. For hav­ing the op­por­tu­nity to learn from these won­der­ful schol­ars and men­tors, I have been most for­tu­nate. Dur­ing the writ­ing of this book, I was ­greatly sad­dened to learn the news of Rich­ard ­Hellie’s death. He was a cen­tral fig­ure in our Chi­cago kru­zhok and will be ­sorely ­missed. Through­out the ­course of my work on this book, I have ben­e­fited ­greatly from the aid and en­cour­age­ment of my fel­low his­to­rians and xi

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

xii



Acknowledgments

f­ riends. I would like to thank, in par­tic­u­lar, Alan Ba­ren­berg, Ed Cohn, Mark Edele, Marc Elie, Klaus ­Gestwa, Mie Nak­a­chi, Chris Raf­fen­sper­ger, and Ben Zaj­i­cek for their help and good humor over the years. My jour­ney from the first draft to the final man­u­script would have been more dif­fi­cult and lone­lier with­out them. I also owe a spe­cial debt to all of those who have read and com­mented on ear­lier ­drafts of this work. In par­tic­u­lar, I would like to rec­og­nize (in ad­di­tion to all those pre­vi­ously ­listed) Ste­phen Bitt­ner, Susan Co­stanzo, Yoram Gor­lizki, Phyl­lis Jes­tice, Mi­chael Kho­dar­kov­sky, Joan Neu­ber­ger, David ­Shearer, and Lewis Sie­gel­baum for their in­sight­ful and help­ful com­ments on ear­lier ver­sions of var­i­ous chap­ters. Spe­cial ­thanks are due to Peter Sol­o­mon and the other anon­y­mous re­viewer for the Uni­ ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Press for read­ing ­through the en­tire man­u­script and of­fer­ing im­por­tant sug­ges­tions for its im­prove­ment. I would also like to thank the many uni­ver­sities, work­shops, and con­fer­ences that have given me the op­por­tu­nity to ­present my re­search over the last ­decade. Their par­tic­i­pants have given me many inter­est­ing ideas and much help­ful crit­i­cism. In par­tic­u­lar, I would like to thank the Rus­sian Stud­ies work­shops of the Uni­ver­sity of ­Tübingen, Hum­boldt Uni­ver­ sity, the Ham­bur­ger In­sti­tut für Soz­i­al­fors­chung/Hel­mut ­Schmidt Uni­ver­sity, and the Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago for par­tic­u­larly stim­u­lat­ing ses­sions. All of these in­di­vid­u­als and au­di­ences have saved me from many er­rors and are re­spon­sible for none that re­main. My col­leagues in the his­tory de­part­ment of the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Mis­sis­sippi merit spe­cial ­thanks for their good humor and as­sis­tance over the years. Spe­cif­i­cally, my hat goes off to Phyl­lis Jes­tice for her ed­i­to­rial ­skills and to Doug Cham­bers for giv­ing me the cou­rage to let this man­u­script go. Of all the fine peo­ple at the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Press, I would like to rec­og­nize Gwen ­Walker. She has ­stayed with this pro­ject through­out its long life and has been a model of pro­fes­sion­al­ism through­out it all. On a per­sonal note, I would like to thank my par­ents, Doug­las and Anne La­Pierre, for al­ways sup­port­ing my ­dreams. Now that I am a par­ent, I only hope that I can do for my daugh­ter every­thing that they have done so skill­fully and self­lessly for me. To my wife, Ma­nuela, I owe a spe­cial note of ­thanks. She has been my com­pan­ion ­through all my ac­a­demic ad­ven­tures and has lived with me ­through all the highs and lows of a ­historian’s life. She left her ca­reer and coun­try and she put her ­dreams on hold so that I could ful­fill my own.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:52.

one line short

Acknowledgments



xiii

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

­Shortly after I began work­ing on the re­search for this book, my daugh­ter was born. Her ­beauty, kind­ness, and end­less en­ergy have en­liv­ened the long and ­lonely hours of work and given me great joy. As a proud papa, I ded­i­cate this book to my happy khu­li­ganka, Lena. If it is any­where near as good as she is, I will be as for­tu­nate a ­scholar as I am a ­father.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved. LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hoo­li­gans in ­Khrushchev’s Rus­sia

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved. LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:34:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Intro­duc­tion In 1957, So­viet po­lice ar­rested an in­tox­i­cated man for at­tack­ing and stab­bing a by­stander twice with a knife.1 In 1959, an­other man was ar­rested for hav­ing sex with his wife in a “per­verted man­ner.”2 Five years later, au­thor­ities de­tained yet an­other So­viet man for ­cutting off a cat’s tail.3 De­spite the di­ver­sity of their ac­tions, these three men were tried and con­victed under the same crim­i­nal ar­ti­cle. In­stead of being con­victed for sex­ual as­sault, spou­sal abuse, ­cruelty to an­i­mals, or at­ tempted mur­der, So­viet ­courts con­victed them for “rudely vi­o­lat­ing pub­lic order and ex­press­ing clear dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety.” The ­crimes these men com­mit­ted did not make them rap­ists, wife bat­ter­ers, or mur­der­ers in the eyes of the So­viet court. They made them hoo­li­gans. These three cases, and the mil­lions of hoo­li­gan cases like them that oc­curred dur­ing the Khrush­chev era, are the sub­ject of this study. In mod­ern En­glish, “hoo­li­gan” is a term for a “young ­street tough or mem­ber of a ­street gang.”4 Per­haps a contrac­tion of “Hooley’s gang” or a ref­er­ence to an in­fa­mous or fic­tional Irish crim­i­nal fam­ily (the Hoo­li­ hans or Hou­li­hans), the word “hoo­li­gan” burst into the Lon­don press in the sum­mer of 1898 and re­flected wide­spread fears about the crim­i­ nal­ity of the wild Irish im­mi­grant.5 Al­though it once cir­cu­lated ­widely in the world of mass jour­nal­ism and pop­u­lar en­ter­tain­ment, the word “hoo­li­gan­ism,” is sel­dom used in con­tem­po­rary ­American En­glish. It is a ­quaint and ­slightly ar­chaic term of ad­mo­ni­tion that has found re­newed cur­rency with the rise of soc­cer hoo­li­gan­ism, a vi­o­lent form of ­sports fan­dom first pop­u­lar­ized and prac­ticed in the ­United King­dom. 3

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

4



Introduction

In the So­viet Union, hoo­li­gan­ism (khu­li­ganstvo) was more than a mild term of ad­mo­ni­tion and more than a vi­ol­ ent ­soccer-based sub­cul­ture. It was a crime: the se­ri­ous crime of show­ing dis­re­spect to the val­ues of So­viet so­ci­ety. Dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod, au­thor­ities im­pris­oned mil­lions of So­viet cit­i­zens under the crim­i­nal cat­e­gory of hoo­li­gan­ism for any­where from three days to five years for every­thing from swear­ing at a ­stranger to stab­bing him. In ­contrast to his con­tem­po­rary Eu­ro­pean counter­part, the So­viet hoo­li­gan was not con­fined to the soc­cer sta­dium or the ­sports under­world.6 As the most com­mon of­fender on the ­docket after the petty thief (mel­kii khish­che­nik), the hoo­li­gan was a more fre­quent char­ac­ter in the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system than in the world of spec­ta­tor ­sports.7 In short, hoo­li­gan­ism was a mass crime. The fact that one out of every ­twenty-five So­viet men ­between the ages of 18 to 40 was ei­ther con­victed in a court or ar­rested ad­min­is­tra­tively for hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the ­course of a sin­gle av­er­age year (1963) shows the ubiq­uity of this form of every­day crim­i­nal­ity in the Khrush­chev era.8 It also dem­on­ strates that the So­viet Union suf­fered from more than just a prob­lem with po­lit­i­cal crime; it also suf­fered from an equal, if not more se­ri­ous, prob­lem with or­di­nary forms of de­vi­ance. While the So­viet Union was ­justly fa­mous (or in­fa­mous) for man­u­ fac­tur­ing pig iron and re­press­ing po­lit­ic­ al dis­sent, this study will show that it was just as good at pro­duc­ing and pun­ish­ing the ­little-known hoo­li­gans who ­clogged its crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. These hoo­li­gans ­formed one of the larg­est in­mate pop­u­la­tions in the penal col­o­nies and labor camps of ­Khrushchev’s Gulag ar­chi­pel­ago, ri­val­ing and often ex­ ceed­ing in terms of sheer size many cat­e­go­ries of the po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers more pop­ul­ arly as­so­ciated with these sites.9 In early 1956, for ex­am­ple, the per­cent­age of Gulag in­mates de­tained for hoo­li­gan­ism (15.9 per­ cent) was ­greater than those held under the po­lit­ic­ ally ­charged ru­bric of counter­rev­o­lu­tion­ary ­crimes (11.3 per­cent).10 Such fig­ures show that the Gulag in the Khrush­chev era was as much a home for hoo­li­gans as it was a space for dis­ci­plin­ing Ivan De­ni­so­viches. But the ­courts and labor col­o­nies were not the ­hooligan’s only hab­i­tat in So­viet so­ci­ety. He ­lurked along every ­citizen’s ­street, hid in his shad­owy court­yard, and lived in the noisy ­neighbor’s apart­ment. He ­worked in col­lec­tives and re­sided in com­mu­nities ­across the ­world’s first so­cial­ist state. As a focus of anger, anx­iety, and even amuse­ment, the hoo­li­gan was an ­ever-present part of So­viet so­ci­ety: one that So­viet

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction



5

cit­i­zens ex­pe­ri­enced every day on their ­streets, in their homes, and in each other. In this study, I ex­am­ine how cit­i­zens, ­courts, and so­cial con­trol agen­cies dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod (1953–1964) under­stood and ap­plied the amor­phous and com­mon­place crim­i­nal cat­e­gory of hoo­li­ gan­ism. By ex­plor­ing prac­tices of ­peer-group re­form, pun­ish­ment re­duc­ tion, cat­e­gory crea­tion, and pub­lic ac­ti­vism, I ex­am­ine how the ac­tions of local ac­tors and the re­form­ist pol­i­cies of cen­tral bu­reau­crats ­changed the way hoo­li­gan­ism was po­liced and pun­ished in the ­post-Stalin era. Last, I ex­plore how the shift from lim­ited lib­eral re­form to con­ser­va­tive re­ac­tion in the final years of the Khrush­chev re­gime led to the adop­tion of a new pol­icy of vi­ol­ ent con­fron­ta­tion ­between so­cial con­trol agen­cies and the hoo­li­gan crim­i­nal. Of ­course, hoo­li­gan­ism was nei­ther a new so­cial phe­nom­e­non nor a new con­cern of the So­viet state dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod. In­stead, hoo­li­gan­ism had been a per­en­nial ­source of pub­lic panic for Rus­sian so­ci­ety and the ob­ject of in­ten­sive ­anti-crime cam­paigns since the late 1890s. Far from being the crea­tion of com­mu­nism, the hoo­li­gan strad­ dled re­gime types and rev­o­lu­tion­ary di­vides, find­ing fer­tile breed­ing ­grounds both in the auto­cratic em­pire and in the new so­cial­ist state that fol­lowed it.11 ­Khrushchev’s cam­paign ­against hoo­li­gan­ism was there­fore part of an ­anti-hooligan ef­fort whose his­tory pre­ceded So­viet power. It fit into a cy­cli­cal cam­paign of Rus­sian and So­viet ­anti-hooligan ef­forts and into a ­larger ­Khrushchev-era pro­gram of pros­e­cut­ing stig­ma­tized so­cial ­groups, such as par­a­sites and gyp­sies, whose val­ues ­clashed with the cul­tured and pro­duc­ti­vist ideol­ogy of the So­viet civ­il­iz­ing pro­ject. Yet, al­though ­Khrushchev’s ­anti-hooligan ef­forts com­ple­mented some of his ­regime’s pro­grams, they also com­pli­cated and contra­dicted oth­ers, such as the push to pro­mote so­cial­ist le­gal­ity ­through pro­cesses of pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion, pro­ced­u­ral cod­ifi­ca­tion, and in­sti­tu­tional over­ sight. By boost­ing the super­vi­sory pow­ers of the Pro­cu­racy, rein­ing in po­lice power, and re­duc­ing pun­ish­ments, ­Khrushchev’s ­de-Stalinizing state took a va­riety of meas­ures dur­ing the 1950s to con­tain the ag­gres­ sive and un­con­trolled po­lice power it as­so­ciated with the dis­cred­ited ter­ror tac­tics of the Sta­lin era.12 In the inter­ests of ac­cel­er­at­ing and im­prov­ing its ­anti-hooligan ef­forts, the Khrush­chev re­gime, how­ever, often acted out­side of and in op­po­si­ tion to the so­cial­ist le­gal­ity pro­gram that was its dom­in ­ ant pol­icy of

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

one line short

6



Introduction

­de-Stalinization. To fight hoo­li­gan­ism, it opted for using pub­lic vol­un­ teers ­rather than pro­fes­sion­als, for sim­plify­ing legal pro­ce­dures ­rather than strength­en­ing them, for over­rid­ing ­rather than in­sti­tut­ing mech­a­ nisms of over­sight and ap­peal, and for strength­en­ing so­cial con­trol at the ex­pense of ex­tend­ing so­cial­ist le­gal­ity.13 The pol­i­cies and prac­tices of ­Khrushchev’s ­anti-hooligan cam­paign re­mind us that the Thaw pe­riod was more than a time of lim­ited lib­eral re­form and de­creased re­gime re­pres­sion. It was also, as this study will show, a time of re­pres­ sive so­cial dis­ci­pline in which the state ­sought to ex­pand its po­lic­ing power to the most mun­dane as­pects and areas of every­day life. By re­ veal­ing the lim­its of lib­er­al­iza­tion and so­cial­ist le­gal­ity, the ­Khrushchevera cam­paign ­against hoo­li­gan­ism shows us that a ­de-Stalinizing state co­ex­isted in an un­easy equi­lib­rium dur­ing the 1950s with the de­vel­op­ ment of a so­ci­ety of over­reach­ing and in­creas­ingly in­ti­mate in­tru­sion, in­ tol­er­ance, and the mass in­car­cer­a­tion of stig­ma­tized so­cial un­de­sir­ables.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Historiog­ra­phy Most his­to­rians view Rus­sian hoo­li­gan­ism ­through the inter­pre­ta­tive frame­work of so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion the­ory.14 De­vel­oped by the Chi­cago ­School of so­ci­ol­o­gists in the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, the so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion par­a­digm ­argues that the rapid so­cial ­change as­so­ ciated with in­dus­trial mod­ern­iza­tion, ur­ban­iza­tion, and mass mi­gra­ tion pro­duced de­vi­ancy by de­stroy­ing the tra­di­tional con­trol mech­a­ nisms em­bed­ded in the ­face-to-face so­cial struc­ture of the vil­lage. In­stead of in­hab­it­ing the ­village’s ­stable so­cial world of set rit­ual, au­thor­ity, and rou­tine, the early twen­ti­eth ­century’s new ur­ban­ites found them­selves set loose in an un­fa­mil­iar world of dis­orient­ing an­on ­ ym­ity, free­dom, and es­trange­ment. As tra­di­tional mech­a­nisms of so­cial con­ trol lost their trac­tion, urban im­mi­grants were freed to ex­peri­ment with ac­cepted rules, flout au­thor­ity fig­ures, and in­dulge in un­con­ven­tional roles and be­hav­ioral rep­er­toires that at­tracted the scorn of urban ­elites.15 As mod­ern­iza­tion fell out of fash­ion for its eth­no­cen­trism and its teleo­log­i­cal as­sump­tions about so­cial ev­o­lu­tion, com­pet­ing inter­pre­ tive par­a­digms, such as moral panic, de­vel­oped to ex­plain the or­i­gins of de­vi­ant be­hav­ior. Moral panic the­ory seeks to aug­ment the struc­tu­ral bias of the so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion ­school by under­lin­ing the in­de­pen­dent role dis­course has in creat­ing and steer­ing ­anti-deviancy cam­paigns. Pop­u­lar­ized by the work of so­ci­ol­o­gist Stan­ley Cohen, the model of moral panic looks at de­vi­ance as an out­come not of so­cial struc­tu­ral

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction



7

c­ hange, but of the way mass media cover­age con­structs cri­ses and stim­u­lates cit­i­zens and so­cial con­trol agen­cies to act ­against tar­geted so­cial ­groups and care­fully se­lected scape­goats.16 By sug­gest­ing that de­vi­ance does not be­come a so­cial prob­lem until the mass media makes it into one, moral panic the­ory under­lines the key role of the media in shap­ing the ­public’s re­ac­tion to the de­vi­ant com­mu­nities it helps ­create. As a re­sult, moral panic stud­ies pay close at­ten­tion to media rep­re­sen­ta­ tions and as­sign them a key cau­sal role in fo­ment­ing ­anti-hooligan hys­teria. ­Rather than sim­ply being a by­prod­uct of in­dus­trial mod­ern­iza­ tion, stud­ies on moral panic inter­pret the ­public’s ­anti-deviancy par­a­noia as a symp­tom of mis­placed and mis­di­rected anx­iety over l­ arger is­sues of so­cial mal­aise, eco­nomic stag­na­tion, per­ceived moral decay, and im­pe­rial de­cline.17 Com­bin­ing both inter­pre­tive ­worlds, most stud­ies of Rus­sian/So­viet hoo­li­gan­ism merge so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion with moral panic and ex­plain hoo­li­gan­ism as the prod­uct of rapid so­cial struc­tu­ral ­change, cul­tural clash, mass ­media-induced anx­iety, and elite angst. They argue that hoo­li­gan­ism was the re­sult of so­cial ­changes that ­brought new ac­tors and ideas to the mod­ern­iz­ing me­trop­o­lis and ­created cul­tural clash and com­ pe­ti­tion ­between es­tranged work­ers, po­lit­i­cal ­elites, and the urban in­tel­li­gent­sia. In ad­di­tion, most also treat hoo­li­gan­ism as a ­mediadriven dis­course of moral panic that sym­bol­ized ­society’s anx­iety over ­larger is­sues of ­status re­ver­sal, erod­ing so­cial val­ues, and ideo­log­i­cal con­tam­i­na­tion.18 More­over, many schol­ars of Rus­sian de­vi­ance treat hoo­li­gan­ism as a form of re­sis­tance. In her study of late Im­pe­rial hoo­li­gan­ism, Joan Neu­ ber­ger ­argues that St. ­Petersburg’s hoo­li­gans ­created a new type of “street the­a­ter” or “Rab­e­lai­sian car­ni­val” that up­ended the es­tab­lished so­cial order and ­scoffed at the val­ues of the cul­tured urban elite.19 Like the fu­tur­ist art­ists of the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury, hoo­li­gans, Neu­ber­ger ex­plains, were ­street per­form­ers who used pub­lic­ity (both on the boule­ vards and in the penny press) and “in your face” tac­tics to shock their au­di­ences into re­think­ing ac­cepted can­ons of civ­il­ized taste and con­ duct.20 Ac­cord­ing to V. A. ­Kozlov’s anal­y­sis of mass urban dis­or­ders in the ­post-Stalin pe­riod, hoo­li­gans were not only ­agents of re­sis­tance but also ac­tive fo­ment­ers of ­anti-Soviet re­bel­lion. Hoo­li­gans, Koz­lov con­ tends, were pro­voc­a­teurs push­ing the urban crowd into overt and ag­gres­sive op­po­si­tion ­against the state and its local ­agents. By ma­nip­u­ lat­ing grie­vances ­against short­ages and po­lice bru­tal­ity, Koz­lov con­tends that hoo­li­gans ­turned peace­ful mass dem­on­stra­tions ­against of­fi­cial

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

8



Introduction

mis­con­duct and mal­fea­sance into vi­o­lent riots that ­served their own a­ nti-statist and ­anti-authoritarian ­agenda.21

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hoo­li­gan­ism as a Label In this study, I have en­deav­ored to move away from (but not to ig­nore com­pletely) the ex­pla­na­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as a prod­uct of so­cial dis­ or­gan­iza­tion, moral panic, and mass media scape­goat­ing. ­Rather than being the out­come of ex­traor­di­nary so­cial ­change, this study ­argues that the So­viet hoo­li­gan was a de­press­ingly or­di­nary and com­mon­place so­cial char­ac­ter. In­stead of being a crea­ture of dis­or­der, ­stress, and dis­ lo­ca­tion, he was a child of So­viet nor­mal­ity: the off­spring of the ugly under­side of every­day life in the sup­posed ­workers’ uto­pia. As a fix­ ture of so­cial life, the hoo­li­gan was a kind of So­viet every­man. He was a fa­mil­iar prob­lem fig­ure that cit­i­zens saw on the ­streets and, in­creas­ingly dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod, lived with in their homes. By lo­cat­ing it in the com­mon­place and the quo­tid­ian, this study ­treats hoo­li­gan­ism as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive ar­ti­fact of the dif­fi­cult, re­pres­sive, and mun­dane en­vi­ ron­ment of the So­viet every­day. For So­viet cit­i­zens, the ex­pe­ri­ence of hoo­li­gan­ism was not an ab­stract one me­di­ated by ­shifts in so­cial struc­ture and ­media-driven dis­course. In­stead, it was an im­me­di­ate one of being ha­rassed on the ­street, bat­tered by an abu­sive part­ner, or dis­turbed in the dead of the night. In short, hoo­li­gan­ism was a daily re­min­der of the con­stant dif­fi­culty of liv­ing life in an in­tol­er­ant so­ci­ety where there was too much al­co­hol, too much bore­dom, and where ag­gres­sive po­lic­ing, am­big­u­ous laws, and nar­row con­duct norms were ­likely to label the small­est mis­deed as a se­ri­ous vi­o­la­tion of vague con­cepts like so­cial order or so­cial­ist mo­ral­ity. ­Rather than view­ing so­cial ­change or shift­ing mass media dis­course as the pri­mary driv­ers of de­vi­ance, I argue that it was count­less in­di­ vid­ual po­lice­men, ­judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and or­di­nary cit­i­zens who made So­viet hoo­li­gan­ism. Far from being the pow­er­less tools of a to­tal­i­tar­ian state, these ac­tors were em­pow­ered by ­broadly de­fined laws that al­lowed them to see hoo­li­gan­ism in vir­tu­ally any un­sa­vory ac­tion or ec­cen­tric be­hav­ior and by an ­anti-deviance cam­paign that en­a­bled them to ex­pand the do­main of de­vi­ance to new ac­tors and areas. As we shall see through­out this study, the ­state’s ­anti-hooligan cam­paign, in­stead of con­strain­ing ­agency, del­e­gated it down­ward and gave local law en­force­ment per­son­nel and So­viet cit­i­zens the power to re­de­fine the elu­sive hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory in new and some­times star­tling ways.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction



9

Seen from this per­spec­tive, hoo­li­gan­ism was a cu­mu­la­tive prod­uct of the way So­viet cit­i­zens (both of­fi­cial and or­di­nary) inter­acted with, eval­u­ated, and ap­plied inter­pre­tive la­bels to the ­small-scale so­cial ­niches ­around them. In­stead of being im­posed by the cen­ter or iden­tified ­solely in the pages of the mass press, hoo­li­gan­ism was end­lessly ­created and re­created in count­less local inter­per­sonal set­tings where ac­tions met inter­pre­ta­tions and where cit­i­zens were out­fit­ted with ap­pro­pri­ate stig­mata. In these di­verse ­niches, in­di­vid­u­als, based on their own in­ com­plete under­stand­ings and per­sonal inter­ests, ap­plied a flex­ible and am­big­u­ous crim­i­nal and cul­tural cat­e­gory (hoo­li­gan­ism) onto the con­ crete, in­ti­mate, and or­di­nary world of their lives and re­la­tion­ships. ­Through their var­ied acts of every­day at­tri­bu­tion, these or­di­nary ­agents some­times con­firmed, some­times contra­dicted, and some­times chal­ lenged con­ven­tional ideas and ex­pec­ta­tions of what it meant to be hoo­li­gan.22 For these rea­sons, this study will pri­mar­ily focus on the po­lic­ing, pe­ti­tion­ing, and pros­e­cu­tion prac­tices ­through which cen­tral bu­reau­ crats, local law en­force­ment, and So­viet cit­i­zens ap­plied and in­stan­tiated their under­stand­ing of the hoo­li­gan label. This ap­proach re­flects my be­lief that it was not just dis­or­der or media dis­course that ­created So­viet hoo­li­gan­ism. In­stead, it was in­di­vid­u­als and their con­crete inter­ pre­ta­tions, inter­ests, and at­tri­bu­tions that con­tin­u­ally de­fined and re­ de­fined Rus­sian de­vi­ance. This study ­treats hoo­li­gan­ism as a fluid and flex­ible label: an as­cribed iden­tity that in­di­vid­ual inter­pret­ers ap­plied ­across a wide and chang­ ing array of ac­tors and ac­tions.23 As a his­tor­i­cally con­structed, so­cially con­di­tioned, and in­di­vid­u­ally inter­preted ar­ti­fact, hoo­li­gan­ism was not a uni­tary cat­e­gory that re­mained con­stant over time. In­stead, it had multi­ple mean­ings that ­evolved and ­changed ­across inter­pret­ers and in dif­fer­ent pop­u­lar and pro­fes­sional dis­cur­sive do­mains. Far from being stan­dard­ized, the am­big­u­ous and evoc­a­tive qual­ity of the hoo­li­gan label made its under­stand­ing and ap­pli­ca­tion ­highly in­di­ vid­ual and local. Never a ­stable or a sin­gu­lar con­cept, hoo­li­gan­ism re­flected the var­y­ing con­cerns and cri­ses of in­di­vid­u­als at all lev­els and lo­ca­tions in the So­viet so­cial struc­ture. By look­ing at dif­fer­ence and ­change in this flex­ible catch­all cat­e­gory, this study ex­am­ines the multi­ple mean­ings, pol­i­cies, and prac­tices that co­a­lesced ­around this key word of So­viet cul­ture and how these under­stand­ings and ap­pli­ ca­tions ­changed over time to cover and crim­i­nal­ize new peo­ple and prac­tices.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

10



Introduction

In terms of its inter­pre­ta­tion, this study takes many of its basic in­sights from the ­school of so­ci­olog­ic­ al anal­y­sis known as la­bel­ing the­ory. Ac­cord­ing to la­bel­ing theo­rists, de­vi­ance does not refer to a time­less and uni­ver­sal set of dys­func­tional or im­mo­ral ac­tions and be­hav­iors. In­stead, they argue that de­vi­ance is best under­stood as a label that en­com­passes dif­fer­ent ac­tions at dif­fer­ent times and ­changes to match his­tor­i­cal, so­cial, and in­di­vid­ual con­tin­gen­cies. La­bel­ing theo­rists, there­fore, ex­plore the ways def­i­ni­tions of de­vi­ance ­change and ex­am­ine how these shift­ing def­i­ni­tions de­ter­mine who gets lo­cated ­within the flex­ible boun­dar­ies of il­le­gal be­hav­ior.24 Fol­low­ing from these ideas, this study con­cen­trates on how chang­ing legal dis­course ­helped to de­ter­mine the con­vic­tion rates and cam­paign dy­nam­ics that ­marked ­Khrushchev’s ­anti-hooliganism. In par­tic­u­lar, it pays close at­ten­tion to the chang­ing lan­guage of the crim­i­nal ­code’s def­i­ni­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism and how these mod­ifi­ca­tions al­tered the under­stand­ing, ex­pan­sive­ness, and over­all ap­pli­cabil­ity of this elas­tic de­vi­ant label. Along­side “enemy of the peo­ple,” “kulak,” and “Trots­kyite,” the hoo­li­gan label joins So­viet ­Russia’s in­fa­mous list of in­dis­tinct so­cial cat­e­go­ries, cat­e­go­ries that were often vul­ner­able to over­inter­pre­ta­tion, out­right in­ven­tion, and ar­bi­trary abuse.25 Like these sim­i­larly un­stable terms, hoo­li­gan was an as­cribed iden­tity whose sym­bolic power and prom­i­nence rose with the ­regime’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to purge its pop­u­la­ tion of the peo­ple and be­hav­iors un­worthy of its ­bright com­mu­nist fu­ture. Dur­ing an era of ideo­log­i­cal ­change, Cold War com­pe­ti­tion, and in­creas­ing ­foreign in­flu­ence, this study will show how the hoo­li­gan label be­came a con­ven­ient ­weapon with which the Khrush­chev re­gime could civ­il­ize the So­viet work­ing class, en­force ap­pro­pri­ate codes of every­day con­duct, and so­cially en­gi­neer the new ­post-Stalinist So­viet man. ­Hooliganism’s la­bel­ing, hence, did not take place ­within a vac­uum. It oc­curred ­within an ex­cit­ing and un­easy so­cial and cul­tural con­text that con­trib­uted to and con­strained its uni­verse of pos­sible mean­ings: a con­text de­fined by the anx­ie­ties of the con­fron­ta­tion with ­American cap­i­tal­ism, the un­cer­tain­ties of the era of ­de-Stalinization, and the prom­ises of a ­Soviet-style civ­il­iz­ing mis­sion that ­sought to call forth and for­tify the build­ers of com­mu­nism. ­Khrushchev’s cam­paign ­against hoo­li­gan­ism fit ­within this con­text of cul­tural clash, ­foreign pol­lu­tion, and ideo­log­i­cal reset well. In an era of trans­at­lan­tic un­ease over ­rebels with­out a cause and dur­ing a time when taboo West­ern fash­ions and sub­cul­tures were creep­ing into the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction



11

­ nce-cloistered world of post­war com­mu­nism, pros­e­cut­ing de­vi­ance o ­served as a means for res­ur­rect­ing the ­post-Stalinist So­viet ­Union’s ­frayed sense of so­cial sol­i­dar­ity, ideo­log­i­cal cer­tainty, and moral supe­ r­ior­ity. As the func­tion­al­ist dis­ci­ples of Emile Durk­heim have ­argued for over a cen­tury, the po­lic­ing of de­vi­ant be­hav­ior al­lows com­plex so­ci­eties to come to­gether in the pub­lic af­fir­ma­tion and de­fense of their basic val­ues.26 In­stead of being a de­sta­bi­liz­ing prod­uct of so­cial dis­ or­der, these schol­ars have shown how de­vi­ancy often sta­bi­lizes so­ci­eties by al­low­ing them to en­gage in pub­lic rit­u­als of per­se­cu­tion that de­fine their ­shared moral boun­dar­ies.27 In an era of ­foreign cul­tural pen­e­tra­ tion, ­de-Stalinization, and de­clin­ing faith in the old or­tho­dox­ies, fight­ ing hoo­li­gan­ism ­served a sim­i­lar func­tion for So­viet ­elites anx­ious to re­af­firm and rec­om­mit to their core ­ideals about human na­ture, right con­duct, and so­cial­ist civ­il­iza­tion. ­Through pub­lic com­bat ­against its un­cul­tured other, the So­viet Union ­sought to save it­self, re­gain its whole­ness, and re­al­ize its vi­sion of a model so­ci­ety pop­u­lated by po­lite, pro­duc­tive, and po­lit­i­cally lit­er­ate sub­jects. Ideol­ogy mo­ti­vated ­Khrushchev’s ­anti-hooligan cam­paign; am­bi­ gu­ity and ­campaign-style en­force­ment ­shaped it and ex­tended its reach deep into So­viet so­ci­ety. ­Rather than treat­ing hoo­li­gan­ism as a re­sis­t­ ance pro­ject cen­tered on overt ­anti-regime op­po­si­tion, I argue that many of the hoo­li­gans pro­duced in the Khrush­chev pe­riod were ac­ci­den­tal de­vi­ants.28 In­stead of being ­self-conscious ­rebels who raged ­openly ­against the ­system, they stum­bled un­wit­tingly into hoo­li­gan­ism as their for­merly in­noc­uo ­ us or un­pun­ished every­day be­hav­iors (such as curs­ing or drink­ing) were ab­sorbed into the ex­pand­ing boun­dar­ies of an in­creas­ingly broad de­vi­ant label, in­vested with crim­i­nal con­tent, and trans­formed into im­pris­on­ing of­fenses. As the So­viet legal ­system ex­panded the do­main of de­vi­ance into the triv­ial acts of every­day life dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, mil­lions of So­viet cit­i­zens ­drifted into an ever more in­clu­sive def­i­ni­tion of de­vi­ance, were re­made into hoo­li­gans, and re­born as out­casts of the So­viet ­system. ­Fueled by al­co­hol and an­i­mus, their deeds had lit­tle overt dis­si­dent or ­anti-state con­tent and spoke more of their per­sonal ­foibles and petty ha­treds than of their po­lit­i­cal pas­sions. In­stead of being cen­tered on the op­po­si­tion ­between sub­jects and their state, hoo­li­gan­ism re­volved ­around a se­ries of un­ stable re­la­tion­ships: re­la­tion­ships ­between cit­i­zens and so­cial con­trol agen­cies; ­drunks and ­do-gooders; com­mon­place bad be­hav­iors and slip­pery crim­i­nal cat­e­go­ries; and empty lives and over­abun­dant al­co­hol.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

12



Introduction

The fact that over 90 per­cent of hoo­li­gans were in­tox­i­cated when they en­gaged in de­vi­ance shows that hoo­li­gan­ism was ­caused not so much by dis­sent, but by the drink­ing to which work­ers ­turned to es­cape the bore­dom, blur, and bleak­ness of life in the So­viet fac­tory town.29 Just as hoo­li­gan­ism can­not be de­fined ­solely in terms of re­sis­tance, nei­t her can it be de­f ined pri­m ar­i ly in ­c lear-cut gen­e r­a ­t ional or ­age-related terms. ­Rather than being a youth cat­e­gory or a syno­nym for juve­nile de­lin­quency, hoo­li­gan­ism oc­curred at all ages. ­Though juve­ niles cer­tainly com­mit­ted hoo­li­gan­ism and often monop­o­lized the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­ities and mass media on this issue, the ma­jor­ity of con­victed hoo­li­gans were not chil­dren under the age of 18 (see chap­ter 1). They were ­adults in their late twen­ties and thir­ties.30 What uni­fied hoo­li­gans was their gen­der ­rather than their age. The fact that over 97 per­cent of con­victed hoo­li­gans were men meant that hoo­li­gan­ism was not a youth prob­lem but a male prob­lem.31 As a pro­ foundly gen­dered cat­e­gory, hoo­li­gan­ism was in­ex­tri­cably ­linked to no­tions of mas­cu­lin­ity and ma­chismo. In his per­for­mances and pos­tur­ ing, the hoo­li­gan acted out a vi­sion of man­hood that con­flicted with the ­state’s vi­sion of cul­tured sub­jec­tiv­ity and drew its re­pres­sive wrath. As a cat­e­gory of rough mas­cu­lin­ity, hoo­li­gan­ism tells us some­thing about what it meant to be a “real” man in the So­viet Union and about how cer­tain (non-Soviet) no­tions of man­li­ness were per­ceived and em­bod­ied in the lei­sure­less and under­ser­viced fac­tory towns of the ­post-Stalin pe­riod. It also tells us how steep and slip­pery the slope was from being a man to be­com­ing a hoo­li­gan in a so­ci­ety whose of­fi­cial cul­ture left lit­tle room for the tra­di­tional rites and rowdy rit­u­als of male, ­working-class so­ci­abil­ity. By drink­ing, curs­ing, and ca­rous­ing, work­ers made them­ selves into men in the eyes of their co­horts and hoo­li­gans in the eyes of the state and its ­agents of so­cial con­trol. Hoo­li­gan­ism made col­lec­tive farm­ers and work­ers into tough guys and tar­gets and, in this sense, ­served less as a space for en­act­ing re­sis­tance than as a site ­around which a rough mas­cu­line iden­tity was per­formed and pub­li­cized in op­po­si­ tion to the ­state’s non­gen­dered, ­class-based so­cial cat­e­go­ries.32 In ad­di­tion to being men, the ma­jor­ity of con­victed hoo­li­gans were mem­bers of the work­ing class. ­Rather than being mar­gi­nal­ized mis­fits who ex­isted at the ­fringes of So­viet so­ci­ety, the av­er­age hoo­li­gan ­worked as a fac­tory la­borer and was a vital part of the ­state’s in­dus­trial econ­omy. De­spite what the ­regime’s rhet­o­ric about the sur­vi­vals of cap­i­ tal­ism sug­gested about his alien or­i­gins, the ­hooligan’s class ­status and oc­cu­pa­tional pro­file put him at the os­ten­sible cen­ter of a So­viet pro­ject

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

Introduction



13

whose rai­son ­d’être was (in rhet­o­ric, if not ex­actly in re­al­ity) ­workingclass em­pow­er­ment. As the sym­bolic heart of the so­ci­ety he was al­leg­edly sin­ning ­against, the hoo­li­gan oc­cu­pied a par­a­dox­ic­ al po­si­tion as both class in­sider and cul­tural out­sider to the So­viet pro­ject, as both the ­regime’s ­poster boy and its prob­lem child. In­stead of being an out­sider, the hoo­li­gan was made an out­sider by the ­system of which he was so in­ ex­tri­cably a part. The story of hoo­li­gan­ism is a story of how the So­viet state crim­i­nal­ized part of its core con­stit­u­ency and ­turned those who ­should have been ­system-supporters into of­fend­ers who acted out­side of the ­state’s nar­row vi­sion of civ­il­ized and cul­tured so­ci­ety. ­Through the fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism, the So­viet state found it­self, iron­i­cally, at war with the ex­ist­ing life­ways of a work­ing class that it ­claimed to cham­pion, but that it could nei­ther under­stand nor es­teem.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Chap­ter Out­line This study is di­vided into ­roughly three sec­tions. In the first sec­tion (chap­ter 1), I ex­plore how So­viet au­thor­ities and cit­iz­ ens de­fined and under­stood hoo­li­gan­ism. In the sec­ond sec­tion (chap­ters 2 and 3), I ex­am­ine the crea­tion of new cat­e­go­ries of hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod. The final sec­tion (chap­ters 4 and 5) of the study is de­voted to the chang­ing ways au­thor­ities po­liced and pun­ished hoo­li­ gan­ism in the Khrush­chev era. In chap­ter 1, I ex­plore the dra­matic in­crease in con­vic­tion rates for hoo­li­gan­ism that took place in the So­viet Union dur­ing the mid-1950s. As sta­tis­tics ­spiked, hoo­li­gan­ism be­came a grow­ing cause of con­cern for au­thor­ities and or­di­nary cit­i­zens alike. I begin the first sec­tion of this chap­ter by ex­am­in­ing the ­causes be­hind the in­crease in 1950s-era con­vic­tion rates. In­stead of fo­cus­ing on so­cial dis­or­der, I ex­plore how ­shifts in def­i­ni­tion and po­lic­ing prac­tices drove the de­vi­ancy pro­duc­ tion pro­cess to new lev­els. Chap­ter 1 also ex­plores ­hooliganism’s multi­ple mean­ings and faces by look­ing at how the law, the pop­u­lar imag­i­nary, and state sta­tis­tics con­structed hoo­li­gan­ism and the hoo­li­gan. By treat­ing hoo­li­gan­ism as a crime, as a style, as a per­for­mance prac­tice, or as a cat­e­gory of so­cial anal­y­ sis, each of these sites ­created its own vi­sion of who the hoo­li­gan was and what he did. When ­viewed to­gether, they show the hoo­li­gan not only as an ob­ject of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion but also as a per­former whose ac­tions and at­tire out­raged and at­tracted and as a per­son with par­tic­u­lar class, oc­cu­pa­tional, ed­u­ca­tional, and gen­er­a­tional char­ac­ter­is­tics. By

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

14



Introduction

look­ing at hoo­li­gan­ism ­across pro­fes­sional and pop­u­lar dis­courses, I ex­am­ine in this chap­ter the var­i­ous ways So­viet so­ci­ety im­a­gined and under­stood its de­vi­ant other. Most stud­ies of hoo­li­gan­ism treat the pub­lic ­street as the main site of de­vi­ant be­hav­ior. The ­street was the space where the hoo­li­gan en­acted his ­anti-elitist car­ni­val or led the urban crowd in its show­down with the So­viet state.33 In chap­ter 2, I ex­plore the de­vel­op­ment, dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod, of a new type of de­vi­ancy: do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism (by­tovoe khu­li­ganstvo). The grow­ing prev­a­lence of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ ism through­out the Khrush­chev pe­riod meant that the home, in many areas, began to dis­place the ­street as the most com­mon hab­i­tat of the ­post-Stalin hoo­li­gan. The shift in the locus clas­si­cus of hoo­li­gan­ism from the ­street cor­ner to the ­kitchen table trans­formed the iden­tity of both hoo­li­gan and vic­tim and ­changed the way peo­ple ap­plied and under­ stood this label. Re­mak­ing hoo­li­gan­ism from a crime of anon­ym ­ ous vi­o­lence that hap­pened on the ­street to a crime of in­ti­mate vi­o­lence that took place in the home ­opened new av­en ­ ues for crim­i­nal­iz­ing com­mon ­sources of do­mes­tic dys­func­tion, such as spou­sal bat­tery and child abuse. How­ever, the in­ser­tion of the pub­lic cat­e­gory of hoo­li­gan­ism into areas and ac­tions many ­thought of as pri­vate and ­non-prosecutable also ­touched off a de­bate over how to dis­en­tan­gle the bor­ders ­between pub­lic and pri­vate and where to draw the boun­dar­ies of com­mu­nal re­spon­sibil­ity. Be­gin­ning in the 1950s, hoo­li­gan­ism ­shifted from being a pub­lic crime com­mit­ted in a pub­lic place and be­came a crime that pro­blem­a­ tized pub­lic space, push­ing its fluid pa­ram­e­ters out­ward and ex­pand­ing the ­state’s pu­ni­tive reach ­deeper down into the every­day world of ­hearth and home. By ap­peal­ing to an out­sized and ex­panded inter­pre­ta­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism, local po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges not only re­lo­cated the de­vi­ant to the do­mes­tic realm, they also con­trib­uted to the crea­tion of a ­system of over­reach­ing and in­ti­mately in­tru­sive so­cial con­trol and made hoo­li­gan­ism into a flex­ible in­stru­ment for reg­u­lat­ing the most per­sonal and pri­vate areas of So­viet ­citizens’ lives. In chap­ter 2, I trace how hoo­li­gan­ism was do­mes­ti­cated dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod and ex­am­ine the de­bate that ­swirled ­around this new and con­tro­ver­sial form of do­mes­tic de­vi­ance. In chap­ter 3, I ex­plore how the re­gime de­cided, start­ing in 1956, to get tough on hoo­li­gan­ism by par­a­dox­i­cally get­ting more len­ient. By giv­ing more peo­ple ­lighter pun­ish­ments, the state ­sought to curb more se­ri­ous forms of crim­i­nal­ity ­through com­bat­ing minor forms of mis­be­hav­ior

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction



15

and creat­ing a new ­post-Stalinist style of so­cial con­trol. To ac­com­plish this, a new ­watered-down cat­eg ­ ory of hoo­li­gan­ism, “petty hoo­li­gan­ ism,” was ­created that gave len­ient pun­ish­ments for light of­fenses. In an­tic­i­pa­tion of high case vol­umes, the govern­ment also in­sti­tuted a new ­pared-down pun­ish­ment pro­cess to ­fast-track petty hoo­li­gan cases and pre­vent the ­system from swamp­ing over. Chap­ter 3 ex­am­ines the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram that ­changed hoo­li­gan­ism into a mass crime in­volv­ing the ad­min­is­tra­ tive ar­rest of over a mil­lion So­viet cit­i­zens an­nu­ally. With the crea­tion of petty hoo­li­gan­ism, the So­viet state ­pushed the lim­its of an am­big­u­ous crim­i­nal cat­e­gory ­deeper down the be­hav­ioral spec­trum into com­mon prac­tices such as drink­ing and curs­ing. By creat­ing types of hoo­li­gan­ism to fit every oc­ca­sion, the state not only en­sured that every act, from the triv­ial bor­der­line be­hav­ior to the ter­rible crime, would fall under one of the cat­e­go­ries of the hoo­li­gan catch­all, it also made it pos­sible for a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple to be la­beled as de­vi­ants, fit­ted with out­ sider iden­tities, and stig­ma­tized. By chart­ing how it made mil­lions of or­di­nary cit­i­zens into hoo­li­gans, ex­posed them to ar­bi­trary and un­reg­u­ lated po­lice and ju­di­cial power, and ­dragged them ­through a de­grad­ing de­ten­tion pro­cess, I inter­pret the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree not as a sym­bol of Thaw era lib­er­al­iza­tion. In­stead, I see it as part of a ­larger pack­age of pros­e­cu­tion, co­er­cive re­fash­ion­ing, and ag­gres­sive state in­tol­er­ance that the Khrush­chev re­gime ­brought to bear on an ex­pand­ing array of so­cial out­casts dur­ing the 1950s, a col­lec­tion of so­cial un­de­sir­ables rang­ing from va­grant gyp­sies and ­labor-shirking par­a­sites to the in­noc­u­ ous of­fend­ers of So­viet byt (or every­day life). In chap­ter 4, I ex­plore how the Khrush­chev re­gime began ex­peri­ ment­ing with new ways of po­lic­ing and pun­ish­ing hoo­li­gans dur­ing the mid- to late 1950s. In­stead of rely­ing ­solely on the po­lice and the crim­i­nal ­courts for its ­anti-hooligan ef­forts, the re­gime ap­pealed to pub­lic ac­ti­vism (obshchestvennost’) to as­sist and aug­ment the ­anti-crime cam­paign. It ­sought to stim­u­late pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion and ­create through­ out the coun­try an ex­ten­sive grass­roots net­work of vol­un­teer po­lice and pros­ec­ u­tory agen­cies. In the dru­zhina and ­comrades’ ­courts, a com­ mu­nity of ­self-policing so­cial ac­ti­vists func­tion­ing out­side, al­though under the ul­ti­mate over­sight, of the for­mal ­systems of law en­force­ment and crim­i­nal jus­tice would ap­pre­hend hoo­li­gans and bring them to ac­count. Chap­ter 4 ex­plores the at­tempt to out­source the fight ­against hoo­li­ gan­ism to ­obshchestvennost’ and looks at the costs and con­straints that

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

16



Introduction

ham­pered the cam­paign to ­create a grass­roots net­work of vol­un­teers ex ni­hilo. ­Comrades’ ­courts and dru­zhina units were left to them­selves not only to im­pro­vise their own type of jus­tice but also to con­front the vi­o­lent under­world of the So­viet city. The loos­en­ing of re­stric­tive ­self-defense laws and the ­campaign’s vi­o­lent rhet­o­ric of con­fron­ta­tion sug­gests that the ­obshchestvennost’ ex­peri­ment was about more than con­struct­ing com­mu­nism and re­liev­ing an over­crowded crim­in ­ al jus­ tice ­system. It was also a way to mo­bi­lize vi­o­lent vig­i­lant­ism ­against wrong­doers and take the of­fen­sive in the fight ­against So­viet ­society’s stub­bornly per­sis­tent crime prob­lem. In chap­ter 5, I ex­am­ine the new ­soft-line ap­proach to­ward petty crim­i­nals that the So­viet state un­veiled in 1959. In­stead of man­da­tory ­prison sen­tences, the soft line urged ­judges to give petty crim­i­nals non­ cus­to­dial forms of pun­ish­ment, trans­fer them out of the for­mal crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system, and re­mand them to the care of their col­lec­tives for re­form and re­ed­u­ca­tion. By work­ing and being ­worked on by the col­lec­ tive, of­fend­ers would be saved for the So­viet ­system and re­turned as re­made men to their fam­i­lies and fac­to­ries. ­Through the soft line, the state di­vested it­self from the job of dis­ci­plin­ing petty de­vi­ants and con­ served its po­lice and ju­di­cial re­sources for the fight ­against dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals. Chap­ter 5 ­traces the story of the soft line and its de­mise. By ex­am­in­ing how the soft line op­er­ated in the col­lec­tives and on the crim­i­nals who were re­manded to them, the chap­ter il­lus­trates how most col­lec­tives left ­soft-line crim­i­nals ig­nored and un­cor­rected ­rather than re­formed and re­made. As of­fi­cials mis­used ­soft-line meas­ures to cod­dle hard­ened crim­i­nals and hide ­crimes from key sta­tis­ti­cal ­records, op­po­si­tion to the soft line grew, es­pe­cially among So­viet cit­i­zens. The dys­func­tion of most col­lec­tives and the wide­spread mis­use of sus­pended sen­tences even­tu­ally dis­cred­ited the soft line and led to the un­veil­ing, to­ward the end of the Khrush­chev pe­riod, of ­hard-line pol­ic­ ies that fa­vored the use of phys­i­cal force in the fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:21.

1

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

A Por­trait of Hoo­li­gan­ism and the Hoo­li­gan dur­ing the Khrush­chev Pe­riod Hoo­li­gan­ism had risen to high lev­els sev­eral times in the Sta­lin era. How­ever in the mid-1950s, con­vic­tion rates for this crime rose to un­ prec­e­dented ­post-WWII ­heights, mak­ing it a crit­ic­ al prob­lem for the young so­cial­ist state as it ­sought to win the Cold War and con­struct com­mu­nism. In tan­dem with soar­ing sta­tis­ti­cal in­di­ca­tors, So­viet ­citizens’ anx­iety over the in­creas­ing prob­lem of de­vi­ance ­swelled. Al­though it had al­ways been an ugly part of every­day life in the ­workers’ state, hoo­li­gan­ism, by 1958, pre­sented an ­unique prob­lem that had, as a man from ­Riazan’ wrote to ­Pravda, “sur­passed all pre­vi­ous ­bounds.”1 Com­pared with the past, “there has never been such a prob­lem with hoo­li­gan­ism as there is now,” con­cerned cit­iz­ ens ­pointed out.2 ­Wherever So­viet cit­i­zens ­looked, they saw, as a res­i­dent of the Sverd­lovsk re­gion noted, “hoo­li­gan­ism . . . flour­ish­ing every­where.”3 They were, a man from ­Gor’kii com­mented, “the every­day eye­wit­nesses of hoo­li­gan acts.”4 Sup­pos­edly the fa­vored sons of the so­cial­ist state, work­ers “were la­bor­ing for the good of the Moth­er­land, but [they] lived in fear,” as a let­ter ­writer from the Iv­a­novo re­gion com­plained.5 When the sun went down in some cit­ies, women and chil­dren ­stayed in­doors and work­ers on the night shift slept on the shop floor ­rather than brav­ing dark and de­serted ­streets.6 17

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

18



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Table 1.  Number of Courtroom Convictions for Malicious and Simple Hooliganism in the USSR and the Russian Republic (RSFSR), 1945–1965 Year

Number of Hooligan Convictions in USSR

1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965

40,092 69,789 40,133 45,024 70,425 71,907 85,741 103,897 116,592 126,832 126,772 196,558 185,035 207,587 152,612 82,430 181,318 173,659 115,678 100,682 110,654

Number of Hooligan Convictions in RSFSR 30,683 51,906 27,908 30,628 51,515 51,086 62,687 74,353 86,213 91,219 92,324 143,924 128,672 145,180 108,255 55,168 123,911 123,113 81,244 71,347 —

Sources: GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 44. Data on USSR convictions before 1945 and after 1957 are taken from GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 1; and GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 147. For data on RSFSR convictions until 1957, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5681, l. 65. For data on RSFSR convictions after 1957, see GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 474, l. 2.

These con­cerned cit­i­zens ­wanted to live what they saw as the So­viet good life: to work, to rest, and to raise their fam­il­ ies. But the ­ever-present and per­sis­tent prob­lem of hoo­li­gan­ism ­haunted their neigh­bor­hoods and ­spoiled their daily rou­tines. “Hoo­li­gan­ism has grown to such an ex­tent,” a rail­road ­worker com­plained, “that if you want to relax, then you bet­ter stay at home be­cause the hoo­li­gans in the park and in the movie the­a­ters al­ways spoil your mood.”7 “I can’t even re­mem­ber the last time I went to the park with my daugh­ter since there is so much hoo­l i­g an­i sm there,” a man re­g ret­f ully told his col­l eagues at an ­anti-crime as­sem­bly.8

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



19

Like the let­ters of con­cerned So­viet cit­i­zens, sta­tis­tics ­showed that the mid-1950s were a boom time for hoo­li­gan­ism in the ­post-WWII pe­riod. Col­lec­tively, they ­painted a bleak pic­ture of an ­ever-expanding hoo­li­gan­ism that ­seemed to be spi­ral­ing out of con­trol. Court­room con­ vic­tions for hoo­li­gan­ism in the USSR rose 417 per­cent from a post­war low of 40,133 in 1947 to a high of 207,587 in 1958. Dur­ing the post­war pe­riod, the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (RSFSR) ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar ­strong ­growth with hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions rates climb­ing 420 per­cent from 1947 to 1958 (see table 1). As the sta­tis­tics make clear, the Khrush­chev pe­riod may have been an era of ­de-Stalinization and cul­tural thaw, but it was also the be­gin­ning of the ­golden age of So­viet hoo­li­gan­ism.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Ques­tion­ing the ­Causes of the Crime Boom How could hoo­li­gan­ism exist, and even in­crease, in this, the best of all pos­sible ­worlds? That was the ques­tion that trou­bled So­viet lead­ers, law en­force­ment of­fi­cials, and crim­i­nol­o­gists not only in the 1950s, but ever since the ad­vent of So­viet power. Crime, all of these par­ties ­agreed, was a cap­i­tal­ist phe­nom­en ­ on ­fueled by the struc­tu­ral in­equal­ities, class con­flict, po­lice re­pres­sion, and ab­ject pov­erty that ­marked ­working-class life in that ex­ploi­ta­tive and im­mo­ral eco­nomic ­system. But if cap­i­tal­ism ­caused crime, how could it pos­sibly exist in the set­ting of ­Soviet-style so­cial­ism, which, ac­cord­ing to Com­mu­nist Party ideo­logues and per­ sis­tent prop­a­ganda, knew nei­ther ex­ploi­ta­tion nor class war­fare? Crim­ i­nol­o­gists and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials could not deny that crime was a trou­bling part of So­viet so­cial life (al­though some did claim that cit­i­zens were ex­ag­ger­at­ing the ex­tent of crime in their local com­mu­nities).9 But they also could not craft an or­tho­dox so­cial struc­tu­ral ex­pla­na­tion with­ out ei­ther draw­ing an un­ac­cept­able anal­ogy ­between the USSR and its cap­i­tal­ist ­competitor-states or shed­ding un­wel­come at­ten­tion on the prob­lems that con­tin­ued to ­plague life in the ­workers’ par­ad ­ ise. In short, lead­ers, of­fi­cials, and ac­a­dem­ics alike were ­stretched to their con­ sid­er­able so­phis­ti­cal lim­its pon­der­ing how to ex­plain the in­ex­pli­cable per­sis­tence of crim­i­nals, such as hoo­li­gans, under the en­light­ened con­ di­tions of So­viet rule. Be­cause they could not blame their na­tive so­cial and ideo­log­i­cal ­system, So­viet legal theo­rists and crim­i­nol­o­gists ­blamed the near­est avail­able scape­goat. They ­pinned the crime prob­lem on the late Im­pe­ rial ­period’s ex­peri­ment in ­state-sponsored cap­i­tal­ism and on the ad­verse so­cial and cul­tural ef­fects it had on some mem­bers of So­viet so­ci­ety.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

20



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

In­stead of being a prod­uct of con­tem­po­rary so­cial­ism, hoo­li­gan­ism was a “sur­vi­val of the past”—a rot­ten prod­uct of cap­i­tal­ism and the Rom­a­ nov old re­gime that con­tin­ued to haunt a So­viet ­system that in and of it­self ­lacked all the nec­es­sary so­cial con­di­tions that ­Marxist-Leninists be­lieved pro­duced crime.10 Cap­i­tal­ist con­tam­i­na­tion and harm­ful ideo­ log­i­cal hold­overs from the late tsar­ist era that pol­luted the con­scious­ ness of a small num­ber of un­en­light­ened and es­tranged cit­i­zens were the cau­sal ­agents that lay be­hind crim­in ­ al be­hav­iors such as hoo­li­gan­ ism.11 As So­viet power be­came en­trenched among the pub­lic and as in­ten­sive po­lit­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and prop­a­ganda made the new So­viet man, crime would grad­u­ally begin to de­crease and, even­tu­ally, dis­ap­pear. Al­most four ­decades after the Oc­to­ber Rev­o­lu­tion, how­ever, the ex­pla­na­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as a ­slowly di­min­ish­ing “sur­vi­val of the past” was los­ing its cred­ibil­ity among the pub­lic and crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sion­als. In­stead of get­ting bet­ter grad­u­ally, crime was grow­ing along with the So­viet ­system. In­stead of being com­mit­ted by a ­preRevolutionary gen­er­a­tion pol­luted by tsar­ism, hoo­li­gans were (as we shall see later) now peo­ple born and bred in the USSR—prod­ucts of a so­cial and ideo­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment that was sup­posed to be free of ­crime-causing fac­tors. While the “sur­vi­vals of the past” ex­pla­na­tion for ­crimes such as hoo­li­gan­ism never left the es­tab­lished or­tho­doxy, con­cerned in­di­vid­u­als and law en­force­ment pro­fes­sion­als began to seek more satis­fy­ing ex­pla­na­tions for the con­tin­u­ance of crime under ­Soviet-style so­cial­ism. Some con­tin­ued to in­sist that crime was a ­foreign phe­nom­e­non that hos­tile ­forces must have im­ported into the per­fect world of the So­viet Union. Feed­ing on Cold War fears and foes, they ­blamed ­American spies for sow­ing the seeds of crime and de­vi­ance in an at­tempt to sab­o­ tage their so­ci­ety from ­within ­through the crea­tion of a crim­in ­ al “fifth col­umn.”12 Oth­ers, how­ever, ­sought inter­nal ex­pla­na­tions for the ac­cel­er­ a­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity that would pin the or­i­gins of So­viet crime on in­dig­e­nous so­cial prob­lems. The high rate of binge drink­ing and drunk­en­ness in So­viet life, es­pe­ cially among the male, in­dus­trial work­ing class, was an inter­nal prob­ lem that some ­argued was the root of crime and de­vi­ant con­duct. The high num­ber of hoo­li­gans who com­mit­ted their crime under the in­flu­ ence of al­co­hol re­in­forced the be­lief that drink­ing was the main cause of de­vi­ance. Hoo­li­gan­ism, a pros­e­cu­tor re­marked con­fi­dently to his col­ leagues, “is the re­sult of drunk­en­ness.”13 The equa­tion of al­co­hol and egre­gious mis­con­duct made many think that, as a local Kom­so­mol

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



21

­leader noted: “Where there is drink­ing, hoo­li­gan­ism is the in­ev­it­ a­ble out­come.”14 Given the high cor­re­la­tion ­between al­co­hol and hoo­li­gan­ism, per­haps the rapid rise of hoo­li­gan­ism in the mid-1950s was due to a par­allel rise in drink­ing and drunk­en­ness? As we shall see, al­co­hol was a key lu­bri­ cant of So­viet so­cial life that re­mained ­well-entrenched ­within the male, in­dus­trial work­ing class and its rowdy lei­sure life dur­ing this pe­riod. Con­cerned cit­i­zens in­un­dated the au­thor­ities with let­ters com­plain­ing about the local abuse of al­co­hol, es­pe­cially at key mo­ments of the hol­i­day cal­en­dar and pay cycle, and de­cry­ing the ease with which it could be ob­tained in their local com­mu­nities, often de­spite of­fi­cial at­tempts to limit sales and cap con­sump­tion in re­tail ­stores and res­tau­rants. More­ over, sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies have also shown a rel­a­tively ­steady in­crease in al­co­hol pro­duc­tion in the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod, in the out­put of both vodka and ­lighter al­co­holic bev­er­ages, ­though it is un­clear ­whether these pro­duc­tion in­creases trans­lated into in­creased con­sump­tion, abuse, and in­ebri­a­tion.15 This com­bi­na­tion of acute pub­lic con­cern, in­creased al­co­hol sup­ply, and abu­sive drink­ing prac­tices meant that the local po­lice only ­awaited ap­pro­pri­ately ex­pan­sive cat­e­go­ries of crim­i­nal de­vi­ance and the em­pow­er­ment of an ­anti-hooligan cam­paign to turn the So­viet ­Union’s ­steady ­stream of ­drunken mis­be­hav­ers into hoo­li­gans—and, start­ing in the sec­ond half of the 1950s, they would get both. In ad­di­tion to the ­chronic abuse of al­co­hol, ob­serv­ers at all lev­els spot­lighted the poor moral ed­u­ca­tion and up­bring­ing of young So­viets as an in­dig­e­nous and in­de­pen­dent cause of de­vi­ant be­hav­ior. Of­fi­cial re­ports, sen­sa­tion­al­ist mass media, and cit­i­zen com­plaints alike all de­nounced the young gen­er­a­tion for their rude­ness, their ma­te­ri­al­ism, and their over­all lack of good man­ners.16 In­stead of ­merely blam­ing the bad kids, how­ever, au­thor­ities, jour­nal­ists, and angry cit­i­zens fo­cused their crit­i­cism on par­ents, ped­a­gogues, and fac­tory di­rec­tors. These ab­sen­tee au­thor­ity fig­ures, they ­argued, ­failed to in­still the ­proper val­ues in their im­pres­sion­able ­charges and did not ex­er­cise the nec­es­sary super­vi­sion and ste­ward­ship over their daily lives.17 In­stead of being intro­duced to the cul­tured lei­sure prac­tices and acts of ­self-improvement that would make them into ap­pro­pri­ately en­light­ened So­viet sub­jects, So­viet chil­dren were often left to their own de­vices and to the ugly temp­ ta­tions of the un­civ­il­ized ­street and its twin vices of drink and de­vi­ance. Were ­out-of-control kids the cause of the mid-1950s in­crease in hoo­li­ gan­ism? Cer­tainly, media cover­age and cit­i­zen anger over de­lin­quents

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

22



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

fed into an at­mos­phere of moral panic and gen­er­a­tional anx­iety about the char­ac­ter and com­mit­ment of the ­post-war ­period’s ­overly pam­pered “golden youth”—con­cern that was mag­nified by ap­pre­hen­sion over the num­ber of sin­gle moth­ers and their often un­super­vised off­spring.18 This moral panic over a youth gone wild, in turn, ­helped push the au­thor­ities to take ac­tive meas­ures to ad­dress so­cial order. How­ever, the as­so­ci­a­tion b ­ etween youth and hoo­li­gan­ism was often over­drawn. As we shall see, the main dem­o­graphic driv­ing the in­crease in hoo­li­gan­ ism in the Khrush­chev pe­riod was not among the juve­nile age co­hort; in­stead, the adult was the ­post-Stalinist ­decade’s new face of de­vi­ance. Sur­vi­vals of cap­i­tal­ism, ­American spies, in­creased drunk­en­ness, de­vi­ant juve­niles, and im­proper moral up­bring­ing—these were some of the many ex­pla­na­tions that So­viet au­thor­ities and con­cerned cit­iz­ ens ad­vanced for the ex­is­tence of hoo­li­gan­ism and crime in their coun­try. Few, how­ever, ­looked at their own dis­or­dered so­ci­ety and its rapid de­vel­op­ment as a rea­son for the in­crease in de­vi­ance. The so­cial land­ scape of the So­viet Union in the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod was chang­ing rap­idly as the USSR ac­cel­er­ated its shift from an agrar­ian em­pire to a mod­ern, urban, in­dus­trial super­power. These ­changes ­created prime con­di­tions for in­creased pub­lic con­cern over de­vi­ant be­hav­ior. Cit­ies grew ­swiftly as mass ­in-migration ex­panded their pop­u­la­tions and ­brought new ur­ban­ites out of the reg­u­lated, ­face-to-face world of the vil­lage and into the anon­y­mous and de­sta­bi­liz­ing set­ting of the mod­ern­iz­ing in­dus­trial me­trop­ol­ is.19 Per­haps even more un­set­tling, the move to the sep­ar­ate apart­ment and the mass con­struc­tion of stan­dard­ ized, pre­fab­ri­cated hous­ing pro­jects trans­formed the So­viet city­scape and added to the sense of move­ment and mon­u­men­tal ­change that ­marked urban life in the Khrush­chev era.20 Of ­course, state and so­ci­ety cel­e­brated this de­vel­op­ment as a sign of ma­te­rial prog­ress and as a so­lu­ tion to the hous­ing shortage and the com­mu­nal apart­ment. But, the move to the stan­dard­ized ­single-family apart­ment also ­created a de­sign land­ scape in the ex­pand­ing So­viet city that ­American so­ci­ol­o­gists have long as­so­ciated with in­creased crim­i­nal­ity and fear of vic­tim­iza­tion.21 Writ­ing in 1958, the New York Times re­porter Har­ri­son Sa­lis­bury was ­firmly con­vinced that hoo­li­gan­ism was ­linked to the new hous­ing pro­jects—and he was in a good po­si­tion to know, hav­ing writ­ten his own ex­posé link­ing ­American de­vi­ance and urban hous­ing re­form.22 Lump­ing these new res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ments in with the pub­lic hous­ing pro­jects of the ­American inner city as cen­ters of ­anti-social crim­i­nal­ity, Sa­l is­b ury noted that hoo­l i­g ans “sprung up ­a round the great new

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



23

Cher­e­mushki hous­ing pro­jects just as they have ­around the slum clear­ ance build­ings in Brook­lyn and lower Man­hat­tan. . . . The So­viet young­ sters have been up­rooted and sent foot­loose into a new and shift­ing en­vi­ron­ment just as were their ­American cou­sins.”23 Es­tab­lished life­ style pat­terns and so­cial net­works were dis­rupted as peo­ple re­lo­cated into the at­om ­ ized world of the sep­ar­ate apart­ment and ­re-situated next to strang­ers.24 In short, this was a time of mo­bil­ity and in­tense ­change for both new and old urban res­i­dents that pro­duced both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive re­sults. While often im­prov­ing the liv­ing stan­dards and con­ di­tions of count­less So­viet cit­i­zens, these ­abrupt so­cial ­changes also ­created con­di­tions in which al­ien­a­tion and fear could in­ad­ver­tently find fer­tile new soil. The death of the great dic­ta­tor in 1953 and the un­cer­tain­ties of ­de-Stalinization added an ele­ment of moral anx­iety and cul­tural con­fu­ sion to the un­stable so­cial at­mos­phere as So­viet cit­i­zens tried to fig­ure out what to be­lieve, who to obey, and how to act now that all the old au­thor­ities, or­tho­dox­ies, and val­ues of the Sta­lin­ist era were seem­ingly open to re­as­sess­ment.25 Wors­en­ing the sense of moral cri­sis and chal­ lenge, ­Khrushchev’s soft power strat­egy of wag­ing the Cold War by open­ing the So­viet Union up to the out­side world ­flooded the coun­try with ideo­log­i­cally alien ­foreign in­flu­ences that ­spawned en­thu­sias­tic copy­cat sub­cul­tures and out­raged crit­ics in equal meas­ure. Moral panic and gen­er­a­tional anx­iety de­vel­oped as lead­ers, cit­i­zens, and mass media de­cried the de­gen­er­a­tion and cor­rup­tion that ­lurked in the cos­mo­pol­i­tan under­world of the So­viet city.26 In this en­vi­ron­ment of cul­tural ­strain and con­fron­ta­tion, ­anti-hooligan cam­paign­ing be­came a use­ful tool that the au­thor­ities could use to po­lice the outer boun­dar­ies of ac­cept­able be­hav­ioral ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, dis­pel the moral un­cer­tain­ties of the ­deStalinizing era, and de­fine the new eth­i­cal con­tours of the civ­il­ized ­post-Stalinist sub­ject.27 ­Anti-hooligan cam­paign­ing was not just an out­come of the so­cial and cul­tural ­strains fac­ing so­ci­ety dur­ing the Khrush­chev era, how­ever. It also re­flected the im­proved ma­te­rial con­di­tions of the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod and the pop­u­lar ex­pec­ta­tions that this ­created for using state power to ­sculpt a more civ­il­ized and re­fined cit­i­zenry. ­Besides in­tense urban ­change and ideo­log­i­cal up­hea­val, the 1950s were a pe­riod of eco­ nomic ad­vance and im­proved liv­ing con­di­tions as Khrush­chev ­raised ­workers’ wages, pur­sued a more ­consumer-oriented eco­nomic pol­icy, and wrung new peaks of pro­duc­tiv­ity out of the cen­trally ­planned com­ mand econ­omy.28 With the rise in liv­ing stan­dards, cit­i­zens de­manded

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

24



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

that the au­thor­ities ful­fill basic pub­lic goods, not only by giv­ing them more con­su­mer sta­ples such as but­ter, but also by pro­vid­ing safer ­streets ­filled with ­better-behaving and more cul­tured sub­jects—cit­i­zens who were, in other words, just like them­selves. Ar­gu­ably, all of these ­causes and con­di­tions ­played roles in pro­duc­ing the spike in hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the mid-1950s. Yet, these were all suf­fi­ cient ­rather than nec­es­sary ­causes for the ex­plo­sion of de­vi­ance in the Khrush­chev era. The ­biggest fac­tors in the in­crease in hoo­li­gan­ism at this time had less to do with so­cial struc­tu­ral ­change, of­fen­sive sub­ cul­tures, and urban dis­or­der than with shift­ing def­i­ni­tions of de­vi­ance. It was the crea­tion of such newly ex­pan­sive under­stand­ings and cat­e­ go­ries of hoo­li­gan­ism that al­lowed So­viet cit­i­zens and of­fi­cials to take their in­choate anx­ie­ties and fears over so­cial ­change and turn them into con­crete, pros­e­cut­able ­crimes. Be­fore we deal with such nec­es­sary ­causes as def­i­ni­tional ­shifts and ­anti-crime cam­paigns, how­ever, we must look at one more ex­pla­na­tion for the es­ca­la­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism in the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod, the mass am­nesty of Gulag pris­on­ers. Like their So­viet counter­parts, con­tem­po­rary schol­ars have strug­gled with ex­plain­ing the or­i­gins of the ­mid-decade’s in­crease in crim­i­nal de­vi­ance. The dom­i­nant an­swer in the historiog­ra­phy is that boom in hoo­li­gan­ism in the 1950s was the re­sult of the mass am­nesty of March 1953: an event that re­leased over 1.2 mil­lion pris­on­ers from the Gulag and sent them, with lit­tle so­cial­iza­tion, back into a So­viet so­ci­ety that could not or would not ab­sorb them. Dur­ing the “cold sum­mer” of that year, this re­turn­ing horde ter­rified local pop­ul­ a­tions, pro­duced sig­nif­i­ cant panic, and in­creased crime lev­els in some lo­cal­ities.29 How­ever, the con­vic­tion fig­ures that the So­viet state com­piled on hoo­li­gan­ism show that the steep in­crease in hoo­li­gan­ism came in 1956 ­rather than in 1953, the year ad­vo­cates of the Beria boom hypoth­e­sis iden­tify as the mo­ment when hoo­li­gan­ism took off in the ­post-Stalinist So­viet Union. After the great Gulag am­nesty, hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion rates rose only 12 per­cent un­ion­wide in com­par­i­son with 1952 lev­els. In the RSFSR dur­ing the same year, the in­crease was ­slightly ­larger at 16 per­cent. By ­contrast, the un­ion­wide hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion rate rose 55 per­cent from 1955 to 1956. In the RSFSR, con­vic­tions in­creased 56 per­cent over the same pe­riod. ­Rather than spik­ing after the am­nesty, hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion rates rose only ­slightly in 1953 and held rel­a­tively ­steady until 1956, after which they in­creased rap­idly. The ­state’s con­vic­tion fig­ures do not sup­port the Beria boom hypoth­e­sis that hoo­li­gan­ism in­creased ­sharply in the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



25

­spring and sum­mer of 1953. In­stead, they sug­gest an al­ter­na­tive ­take-off point in 1956. The re­ported re­cid­i­vism rate for the hoo­li­gan con­vict co­hort dur­ing this pe­riod does not sup­port the Beria boom hypoth­e­sis ei­ther. If the 1953 am­nesty c­ aused a large in­crease in hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions, then we ­should ex­pect to see an in­crease in the num­ber of ­ex-prisoners in the con­vict sam­ple. How­ever, the per­cent­age of re­cid­i­vists in the con­vict sam­ple did not in­crease fol­low­ing the 1953 am­nesty. In­stead, it ­dropped in 1953 and de­creased again in 1954, fall­ing from 20 per­cent in 1952 to 13 per­cent in 1953 and fi­nally to 11 per­cent in 1954.30 The con­vic­tion fig­ures for hoo­li­gan­ism ­present us with a rid­dle. Un­doubt­edly, the mass am­nesty of 1953 pro­duced, as both Mir­iam Dob­son and V. A. Koz­lov have shown, at least lo­cal­ized in­creases in crime and a great deal of pub­lic panic.31 How­ever, the con­vic­tion sta­tis­ tics do not show a sharp in­crease in hoo­li­gan­ism until 1956, three years after the 1953 am­nesty. More­over, in­for­ma­tion on rates of re­cid­i­vism among con­victed hoo­li­gans shows that Gulag re­turn­ees were not the en­gine driv­ing the dra­matic in­crease in mid-1950s de­vi­ance. Low re­cid­i­ vism rates sug­gest, in­stead, that the in­crease was ­caused not by the re­ ar­rest of old crim­i­nals, but by the crea­tion of new ones.32 Maybe the ­amnesty-related crime in­creases were too lo­cal­ized to show up or af­fect the move­ment of broad un­ion­wide or ­republic-wide sta­tis­tics. Or maybe the con­vic­tion sta­tis­tics com­piled by the So­viet state were too ­biased to be fully rep­re­sen­ta­tive.33 Or, I would sug­gest, for­mer crim­i­nals did not cause the in­crease in hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion sta­tis­tics. In­stead, it was the cops who were sup­posed to fight them who did. The March 1953 am­nesty did not cause the ex­plo­sive ­growth in hoo­li­ gan con­vic­tions in the 1950s. In­stead, it was ­caused by a con­certed cam­ paign in 1955 and 1956 to get tough on crime in gen­eral by crack­ing down on hoo­li­gan­ism in par­tic­u­lar. Dur­ing this pe­riod, the Pre­sid­ium had ­formed a ­top-level, inter­mini­ste­rial group to dis­cuss and draft ­anti-hooligan and ­anti-crime meas­ures.34 Dur­ing this pe­riod, de­crees were ­passed to pro­fes­sion­al­ize the po­lice and boost their per­for­mance.35 Dur­ing this pe­riod, ad­di­tional ­patrols, many ­manned by vol­un­teers and Kom­so­mol mem­bers, were ­placed on city ­streets to clear them of hoo­li­gans and other crim­i­nal ele­ments.36 Dur­ing this pe­riod, a new ­anti-hooligan de­cree was ­passed that pun­ished even the most minor mis­be­hav­iors and ­created al­most a mil­lion and a half new hoo­li­gans an­nu­ally dur­ing the first few years of its op­er­a­tion.37

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

26



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

These meas­ures may in part have orig­i­nated in the panic and dis­ or­der un­leashed by the mass am­nes­ties. How­ever, they did not tar­get ­solely, or even pri­mar­ily, Gulag re­turn­ees; the new crim­i­nals they ­created were not ­ex-prisoners, but “or­di­nary” peo­ple. In the mid-1950s, the state took the panic ­caused by ris­ing crime and pro­duced a ­system of so­cial con­trol that would make hoo­li­gans out of a new gen­er­a­tion of ­first-time of­fend­ers.38 Dur­ing the mid-1950s ­anti-hooligan cam­paign, law en­force­ment and ju­di­cial ­agents ­pushed the bor­ders of this ab­stract and un­bounded crim­i­nal cat­e­gory out­ward to an ­ever-widening cir­cle of peo­ple and prac­tices. By creat­ing ­crimes and by in­crim­i­nat­ing those pre­vi­ously ­treated as ­non-prosecutable, the cam­paign in­creased the con­vic­tion rate and ­caused the mid-1950s boom in de­vi­ance by mak­ing bor­der­line be­hav­iors into hoo­li­gan­ism. Speak­ing dur­ing the ­height of the con­vic­ tion in­crease in 1957, the Dep­uty Chair­man of the USSR Su­preme Court noted that the 1956 ­anti-hooligan cam­paign had led “to the dis­cov­ery of a great num­ber of crim­in ­ al acts that would ear­lier have re­mained un­pun­ished.”39 The crim­i­nol­o­gist N. F. Kuz­net­sova, also not­ing the “dis­cov­ery” and “crea­tion” of crim­i­nal­ity in­her­ent in ­anti-hooligan cam­paign­ing, re­marked that: “Every strength­en­ing of the strug­gle ­against hoo­li­gan­ism is fre­quently ac­com­pa­nied by en­thu­siasm for bring­ing to crim­i­nal re­spon­sibil­ity those whose ac­tions would ear­lier have been con­sid­ered as mis­de­mean­ors.”40 ­Through creat­ing new mean­ings for hoo­li­gan­ism, work­ers in the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system ­created new ­classes of hoo­li­gans and, ­rather than end­ing de­vi­ance, ex­tended its ap­pli­ca­tion, ratch­eted up its con­vic­tion rate, and ­created the 1956 sta­tis­ti­cal spike. If hoo­li­gan­ism was an epi­demic in ­Khrushchev’s So­viet Union, it was ­largely ­self-inflicted. ­Through its own ­anti-hooligan cam­paign, the state ­ramped up ar­rest and con­vic­tion fig­ures by em­pow­er­ing local po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges to ex­pand the ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ ism. Fur­ther­more, as it loos­ened its def­i­ni­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism, the So­viet state began to see the in­fec­tious ­agents of de­vi­ance de­vel­op­ing and spread­ing all ­around it. In the mid-1950s, the state ­looked at the every­ day dis­or­der and de­vi­ance on the So­viet ­street and made mil­lions of new cases of hoo­li­gan­ism out of it. The Khrush­chev era, there­fore, was a time of sky­rock­et­ing hoo­li­gan­ ism be­cause it stood at the cross­roads of two in­de­pen­dent, but ul­ti­ mately inter­re­lated, de­vel­op­ments: the de­vel­op­ment of a con­ven­ient and ­campaign-ready crim­i­nal cat­e­gory of max­i­mum ap­pli­cabil­ity and

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



27

ex­ten­sion and the grow­ing wave of anx­iety and ex­cite­ment un­leashed by the dra­mas of ­de-Stalinization, ­post-WWII so­cial ­change, and the lim­ited open­ing of the coun­try to the out­side world. In ad­di­tion, the 1950s was also a time of peak hoo­li­gan pro­duc­tion be­cause the inter­ pre­tive and def­i­ni­tional con­fu­sion sur­round­ing hoo­li­gan­ism was par­ tic­u­larly in­tense dur­ing this time. As we shall see, hoo­li­gan­ism, dur­ing this ­d ecade, be­c ame in­c reas­i ngly de­n uded of its spe­c ific con­t ent ­through def­i­ni­tion ­change and ex­ci­sion. The ­Stalin-era legal con­sen­sus that de­fined hoo­li­gan­ism and spec­ified the ­spaces and re­la­tion­ships where it could and could not occur was aban­doned. The re­sult was fun­ da­men­tal am­bi­gu­ity, con­tes­ta­tion, and in­con­sis­tent ju­di­cial prac­tice. Basic ques­tions—such as how to apply hoo­li­gan­ism, where to apply it, to whom to apply it, and how to dif­fer­en­tiate it from other ­crimes— be­came ­harder to an­swer. Basic com­po­nents of its def­i­ni­tion, such as what type of crime it was and who were its vic­tims, be­came and re­mained con­tested sub­jects of re­con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion and cat­eg ­ ory shift­ing. The grow­ing am­bi­gu­ity of hoo­li­gan­ism made pos­sible its ap­pli­ ca­tion to new ac­tions as local ac­tors ­played in­creas­ingly loose with an amor­phous law. The Ukrai­nian Su­preme Court, not­ing with worry how am­bi­gu­ity and inter­pre­tive free­dom com­bined to push out the pa­ram­e­ters of hoo­li­gan­ism and in­crease con­vic­tion lev­els, re­marked that: “Some in­ves­ti­ga­tors and ­courts are inter­pret­ing the mean­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism ­broadly. There­fore, the in­ves­ti­ga­tive or­gans ­charge, and the ­courts con­vict under the hoo­li­gan­ism ar­ti­cle, any type of be­hav­ior as­so­ciated with phys­i­cal vi­o­lence ( poboi) or in­de­cent ex­pres­sion even ­though these ac­tions lack the ele­ment of [hoo­li­gan­ism]. . . . This leads to an ar­ti­fi­cial in­crease in the num­ber of per­sons con­victed [of this type of crime].”41 The lat­i­tude that law en­force­ment had in de­ter­min­ing the am­big­u­ous crim­i­nal cat­e­gory of hoo­li­gan­ism re­minds us that the an­swer to the ques­tion of what hoo­li­gan­ism was was not ­stable ­across the sta­tis­ti­cal time se­ries. In­stead, it ­changed as the no­tion of “de­vi­ance” was re­im­a­g­ ined and re­thought. The inter­pre­ta­tive in­stabil­ity sur­round­ing hoo­li­gan­ ism ­caused, as Kuz­net­sova noted, “the ­sphere of crim­i­nal re­spon­sibil­ity for hoo­li­gan­ism [to] ex­pand and ­contract.”42 There­fore, the way hoo­li­ gan­ism was under­stood, both in the legal and the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, had (like cam­paign pol­i­cies) ­strong ef­fects on con­vic­tion rates. By re­ lo­cat­ing the bor­ders of ac­count­abil­ity ei­ther to­ward or away from new peo­ple and ­places, such ­shifts in mean­ing and inter­pre­ta­tion de­ter­ mined who could and could not be con­sid­ered hoo­li­gan and, hence,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

28



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

who would and would not be con­victed of this crime. As these ex­ am­ples show, it was not am­nes­ties and ­ex-inmates that ­created the boom in hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions dur­ing the mid-1950s, but the un­likely ways cam­paign em­pow­er­ment, am­bi­gu­ity, and the crea­tion of new hoo­li­gan cat­e­go­ries com­bined to ex­pand the do­main of de­vi­ance in a So­viet so­ci­ety un­set­tled by rapid so­cial ­change, cul­tural pen­e­tra­tion, and ­de-Stalinization.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Multi­ple Faces of Hoo­li­gan­ism: The Legal Por­trait of the Hoo­li­gan Hoo­li­gan­ism was (and is) no­to­ri­ous for being one of the most ­opaque and ­ill-understood ­crimes in Rus­sia. Full of un­de­fined gen­eral ­phrases and sep­ar­ated into three in­dis­tinct cat­e­go­ries, it was, as a USSR Su­preme Court jus­tice com­plained to his col­leagues, “per­haps the most im­pre­cise and am­big­u­ous of all the im­pre­cise and am­big­u­ous ­crimes that we have in our crim­i­nal code.”43 This am­bi­gu­ity made the crim­i­nal cat­e­gory of hoo­li­gan­ism both ex­tremely dif­fi­cult to de­fine and tempt­ingly easy to ex­ ploit and abuse. Fuzzy and im­pre­cise, it ­served as a con­ven­iently ex­pan­ sive catch­all into which seem­ingly any of­fender could be fit­ted with ease. As its mean­ings multi­plied and ­evolved dur­ing the first half cen­tury of the So­viet pe­riod, how­ever, ­hooliganism’s no­to­ri­ous am­bi­gu­ity was in­ten­sified as this crime was grad­u­ally ­stripped of con­crete qual­ifi­ers and in­creas­ingly in­vested with ab­stract and ­ill-defined con­tent. In re­sponse to chang­ing ­trends and con­cerns, new types of hoo­li­gan­ism were con­tin­u­ally ­created be­fore older types were de­lim­ited and de­fined. Cru­cial parts of the def­i­ni­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism were de­leted from the crim­i­nal code with lit­tle ex­pla­na­tion or in­struc­tion. These ad­di­tions and ex­ci­sions made it ­harder for po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges to under­ stand what hoo­li­gan­ism was and led to a great ­amount of cat­e­gory con­ fu­sion over how to dif­fer­en­tiate an in­creas­ingly de­nuded con­cep­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism from ­closely re­lated ­crimes, such as in­ten­tional in­flic­tion of light bod­ily in­ju­ries (ar­ti­cle 112 of the RSFSR Crim­i­nal Code) or in­sult (ar­ti­cle 131). But am­bi­gu­ity also (as we shall see in chap­ters 2 and 3) ­opened up new op­por­tu­nities for local po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges to apply and in­stan­tiate hoo­li­gan­ism ­across a wide array of new ac­tors and ac­tions and, in the pro­cess, to in­crease ­hooliganism’s pos­sible range of mean­ings. In­itially, hoo­li­gan­ism was de­fined in con­crete terms as a crime di­rected ­against the per­son. When it en­tered the Rus­sian lex­ic­ on at the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



29

turn of the cen­tury via late-1890s Lon­don, ­Russia’s penny press used hoo­li­gan­ism to label a new type of in­sub­or­di­nate and con­fron­ta­tional ­street con­duct.44 In one of the first at­tempts to de­fine this un­fa­mil­iar En­glish loan­word, the third edi­tion of V. I. ­Dal’’s fa­mous dic­tion­ary iden­tified hoo­li­gans as “petty crim­i­nals (zhu­liki ) who at­tack peo­ple in gangs.”45 This sim­ple def­i­ni­tion made a clear state­ment con­cern­ing the iden­tity of both hoo­li­gan and vic­tim. Re­flect­ing the fears of the urban in­tel­li­gent­sia and ­elites, the hoo­li­gan of ­Dal’’s dic­tion­ary was an un­ couth, un­skilled ­worker ­caught up in the crim­i­nal­ity of the ur­ba­niz­ing me­trop­o­lis and a prod­uct of rural ­in-migration into the in­dus­tri­al­iz­ing cit­ies of Eu­ro­pean Rus­sia. In ad­di­tion, ­Dal’’s dic­tion­ary de­fined ­hooli-­ ganism’s vic­tims in in­di­vid­ual, ­rather than ab­stract, terms. Ac­cord­ing to this under­stand­ing, hoo­li­gan­ism was a vi­o­lent crime in­flicted on and ­against con­crete peo­ple. The Min­is­try of ­Justice’s 1912 draft def­i­ni­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism ­echoed ­Dal’’s for­mu­la­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as a crime that vic­ti­mized con­crete in­di­vid­u­als. Hoo­li­gan­ism, ac­cord­ing to the draft, was de­fined as “par­ tic­u­lar ma­li­cious­ness or li­cen­tious­ness on the part of the ­guilty party or . . . the in­tent on the part of the ­guilty party to vi­o­late in a crude man­ner the per­sonal ­rights of the vic­tim.”46 In ad­di­tion to under­stand­ing hoo­li­gan­ism as a crime ­against the per­son, the 1912 Min­is­try of Jus­tice draft added an af­fec­tive com­po­nent into the under­stand­ing of hoo­li­ gan­ism that ­marked the hoo­li­gan as out­side the com­mon mo­ral­ity of cul­tured so­ci­ety (“ma­li­cious­ness or li­cen­tious­ness”): an under­stand­ing that was under­lined by folk et­y­mol­o­gies that iden­tified the hoo­li­gan with the un­civ­il­ized im­mi­grant or the fe­ro­cious and un­tamed In­dian ­tribes of the ­American West, like the ­Apaches.47 The So­viet under­stand­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism re­tained many as­pects of pre­rev­o­lu­tion­ary law and usage. Echo­ing the Dal’ ­dictionary’s con­cep­ tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as a crime ­against con­crete in­di­vid­u­als, the 1924 RSFSR Crim­i­nal Code cat­e­go­rized hoo­li­gan­ism as a “crime ­against the per­son” ( pre­stu­ple­nie pro­tiv lich­nosti). Pun­ish­able by a term of cor­rec­tive labor not ex­ceed­ing one month or by a fine of fifty ru­bles, hoo­li­gan­ism was de­fined as “the com­mis­sion of mis­chie­vous acts that are ac­com­ pa­nied by clear dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety (obsh­chestvo).”48 The 1924 def­i­ni­ tion, like its 1912 tsar­ist pre­de­ces­sor, at­trib­uted a mis­chie­vous psycho­ log­i­cal com­po­nent (ozorstvo) to hoo­li­gan ac­tions that ­marked the de­vi­ant as an out­sider to ac­cepted codes of ap­pro­pri­ate so­cial con­duct. Later in the 1920s, the legal con­fig­u­ra­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism ­shifted, caus­ing a re­con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion of who ­hooliganism’s vic­tims were. This

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

30



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

shift, by rec­a­te­gor­iz­ing hoo­li­gan­ism under the sec­tion “crimes ­against ad­min­is­tra­tive order” ( pre­stu­ple­niia pro­tiv por­i­adka up­rav­le­niia) took vic­tim­hood away from the in­di­vid­u­als who suf­fered at the hands of hoo­li­gans.49 While they were often the tar­get of hoo­li­gan as­saults and in­sults, in­di­vid­u­als were no ­longer con­sid­ered as ­hooliganism’s vic­ tims, ac­cord­ing to the new legal def­i­ni­tion. ­Hooliganism’s vic­tim was en­vi­sioned as an in­dis­tinct, ­supra-individual en­tity de­noted by the mul­ti­va­lent word “up­rav­le­nie” (de­fined as “au­thor­ity, ad­min­is­tra­tion, man­age­ment”). While hoo­li­gan­ism was still de­fined as “mis­chie­vous­ness ac­com­ pa­nied by ex­plicit dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety,” its vic­tim was trans­posed from par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­u­als to ab­stract no­tions of au­thor­ity, or­gan­iza­ tion, and col­lec­tive mo­ral­ity. In c­ ontrast to im­a­gin­ing them as dis­crete in­di­vid­u­als, D. N. Usha­kov, in his 1940 dic­tion­ary, de­fined ­hooliganism’s vic­tims in gen­eral and ab­stract terms as “so­ci­ety (obsh­chestvo) and human dig­nity (dos­toinstvo chel­o­veka).” 50 By de­let­ing ref­er­ences to per­son­hood, Usha­kov and the RSFSR Crim­i­nal Code ex­cised any sense of in­di­vid­ual vic­tim­iza­tion from the mean­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism and ­turned hoo­li­gan­ism into a crime ­against ab­stract no­tions of au­thor­ity and civ­il­ized cul­ture. The re­form of the Crim­i­nal Code in 1960 es­tab­lished a new cat­e­gor­iza­ tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as a crime ­against so­ci­ety. The 1960 RSFSR Crim­i­nal Code re­de­fined hoo­li­gan­ism by drop­ping its equa­tion with “mis­chie­ vous­ness” and, in­stead, de­fin­ing it as “in­ten­tional ac­tions that vi­o­late pub­lic order in a ­coarse man­ner and ex­press clear dis­re­spect for so­ci­ ety.”51 ­Rather than en­vi­sion­ing so­cial dis­re­spect and dis­rup­tion as “ac­com­pa­ny­ing” or re­sult­ing from the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity of the hoo­li­gan, so­cial dis­re­spect and dis­rup­tion be­came the crime it­self. ­Rather than being cat­e­go­rized as an of­fense ­against govern­men­tal au­thor­ity, hoo­li­ gan­ism be­came a crime di­rected ­against the calm and com­mu­nal life of the so­cial col­lec­tive. The ca­non­iza­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as a crime ­against the So­viet so­cial order took vic­tim­hood away from the ­abused, in­sulted, and ac­costed in­di­vid­ual and ap­plied it to so­ci­ety at large. In this man­ner, it ­erased in­di­vid­ua­ ls from the re­ceiv­ing end of the crim­i­nal con­fron­ta­ tion. By strik­ing a cit­i­zen on the ­street, the hoo­li­gan did not com­mit as­sault ­against the af­fected in­di­vid­ual. He ­showed dis­re­spect to So­viet so­ci­ety as a whole. At the same time as they were re­con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing hoo­li­gan­ism, legal au­thor­ities were multi­ply­ing its mean­ings by creat­ing new cat­e­go­ries of this crim­i­nal catch­all. The first new ad­di­tion to the ex­pand­ing

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



31

­anti-hooligan ar­senal was ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism (zlost­noe khu­li­ganstvo). ­ reated in 1935 as a re­sponse to the rise of vi­o­lent ­street crime dur­ing C this pe­riod, the new law de­fined ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism as hoo­li­gan­ism com­mit­ted under one of the fol­low­ing ag­gra­vat­ing circum­stances: ex­hi­bi­tion of “row­di­ness” (buistvo) or “ex­cess” (beschinstvo); “con­tin­u­ing to com­mit hoo­li­gan­ism de­spite warn­ings from the po­lice to stop;” and for ac­tions that were “dis­tin­guished by ex­cep­tional cyn­i­cism or au­dac­ity (derzost’).” Ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism was also dis­tin­guished by the se­ver­ity of its sen­tence: dep­ri­va­tion of free­dom from three to five years.52 In ad­di­tion to cus­to­dial meas­ures, sup­ple­men­tal pun­ish­ments could also be ap­plied to con­victed ma­li­cious hoo­li­gans. They could be ­stripped of a va­riety of ­rights, such as vot­ing ­rights, pa­ren­tal ­rights, the right to hold ­elected of­fices in pub­lic or­gan­iza­tions, or the right to bear hon­orary ti­tles. The res­i­dence of re­peat ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan of­fend­ers could also be re­stricted or con­trolled. They could be ex­iled for a pe­riod of up to five years or de­nied the right to live in cit­ies sub­ject to the spe­cial pass­port re­gime, a re­stric­tion that some­times se­vered hoo­li­gans from birth­places, so­cial net­works, and the op­por­tu­nity to live in cov­eted show­case cit­ies like Mos­cow or Le­nin­grad.53 The crea­tion of the legal cat­e­gory of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism led to a spate of ques­tions from local ac­tors on the mean­ing of ma­li­cious ­hooliganism’s ­opaque qual­ify­ing terms (such as “au­dac­ity” and “cyn­i­ cism”) and about how to de­fine the bor­der ­between “cyn­i­cism” and “ex­cep­tional cyn­i­cism.”54 How­ever, the mean­ing of ­non-aggravated or sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism ( pros­toe khu­li­ganstvo) was even more prob­le­matic for prac­ti­cal work­ers in the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. A 1940 de­cree of the Pre­sid­ium of the USSR Su­preme So­viet man­dated a pun­ish­ment for sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism (dep­ri­va­tion of free­dom from three ­months to one year, cor­rec­tive labor for the same pe­riod, or a fine of ­thirty ru­bles). It did not, how­ever, give a def­i­ni­tion for this cat­e­gory of crime, stat­ing only that “hoo­li­gan acts that are com­mit­ted in en­ter­prises (pred­priia­tii­akh), in in­sti­tu­tions (uch­rezh­de­niiakh) and in pub­lic ­places are pun­ished by a ­prison term not to ex­ceed one year in ­length.” Many jur­ists were quick to point out that the 1940 de­cree “did not give any legal de­scrip­tion of the ele­ments (priz­naki) of sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism.”55 Mak­ing it even more dif­fi­cult for local au­thor­ities to de­fine sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism, the re­pub­lics ­created, in 1956, a third type of hoo­li­gan­ism, petty hoo­li­gan­ism (mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo). In­stead of being pre­cisely de­fined and de­lim­ited, petty ­hooliganism’s ­open-ended con­struc­tion

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

32



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

often over­lapped with the un­de­fined do­main of sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism. Pun­ish­able by a ­three- to ­fifteen-day pe­riod of in­car­cer­a­tion and ­forced labor, petty hoo­li­gan­ism was de­fined as “vi­o­la­tion of pub­lic order and peace, in­so­lent (oskorbitel’noe) dis­re­spect to cit­i­zens, the use of foul lan­guage (skver­nos­lo­vie), and other in­de­cent acts.”56 As a tell­ing ex­am­ple of the purg­ing of the par­tic­u­lar, petty ­hooliganism’s tag ­phrase (“and other in­de­cent acts”) ­showed the ­authorities’ pen­chant for at­tach­ing am­big­u­ous qual­ifi­ers to its new hoo­li­gan­isms that were un­de­fined, ­open-ended, and ex­pand­able. The legal his­tory of hoo­li­gan­ism was one of multi­ply­ing its mean­ings, strip­ping it of the con­crete and the qual­ify­ing, and in­vest­ing it with ab­strac­tion and am­bi­gu­ity. As its legal inter­pre­ta­tion ­evolved, hoo­li­ gan­ism was ­purged of par­tic­u­lars and sad­dled to ab­stract no­tions of au­thor­ity, mo­ral­ity, and so­cial order. This purg­ing pro­cess was par­tic­u­ larly acute dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod, a pe­riod in which many ac­cepted or­tho­dox­ies and au­thor­ities were sub­ject to re­think­ing and re­ mod­el­ing. Dur­ing this pe­riod (as we shall see in chap­ter 2), key qual­ifi­ers that reg­u­lated the ­spaces and re­la­tion­ships in which hoo­li­gan­ism could occur were ­dropped from the hoo­li­gan def­i­ni­tion. These moves ­created con­fu­sion, contra­dic­tory local prac­tices, and op­por­tu­nities for local ac­tors to apply ­anti-hooligan laws to new ac­tors and areas such as the home and the fam­ily. At the same time, legal and state au­thor­ities ex­tended ­hooliganism’s in­her­ent am­bi­gu­ity and flex­ibil­ity by multi­ply­ing its mean­ings and con­ tin­u­ally creat­ing new hoo­li­gan cat­e­go­ries. By dif­fer­en­tiat­ing de­vi­ancy into multi­ple cat­e­go­ries that var­ied in terms of se­ver­ity and sen­tence, legal au­thor­ities tried to re­spond to chang­ing so­cial con­cerns and crime ­trends.57 To do this, they ­created a type of hoo­li­gan­ism for every oc­ca­ sion, from the ter­rible to the triv­ial, each of which (sup­pos­edly) had its own def­i­ni­tion and do­main of de­vi­ancy. How­ever, con­tin­u­ally dif­fer­en­ tiat­ing de­vi­ancy led to grow­ing cat­e­gory con­fu­sion as local po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges strug­gled to un­tan­gle in their daily prac­tice the in­dis­tinct boun­dar­ies ­between ­hooliganism’s multi­ple mean­ings, a con­ fu­sion that was es­pe­cially ­strong with such ­closely re­lated cat­eg ­ o­ries as petty and sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism. Lower ­courts and local law en­forc­ers bom­barded the USSR Su­preme Court with re­quests to de­fine and de­lin­eate ­hooliganism’s ex­pand­ing spec­trum of mean­ings more ­clearly.58 Some even sug­gested get­ting rid of seem­ingly super­flu­ous cat­e­go­ries of this crime, such as sim­ple

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



33

hoo­li­gan­ism, to re­duce the con­fu­sion and com­plex­ity that sur­rounded the issue of under­stand­ing and ap­ply­ing the hoo­li­gan label.59 How­ever, the USSR Su­preme Court ­largely ­stayed si­lent on these is­sues, wait­ing for the new re­pub­li­can crim­i­nal codes (then being ­drafted) to be com­ pleted.60 As the pro­cess of com­plet­ing the crim­i­nal codes ­dragged on for the rest of the ­decade, the Su­preme Court left local law en­forc­ers ­adrift and, as a con­se­quence, ­forced them to fig­ure out for them­selves the dif­fer­ences ­between ­hooliganism’s multi­ple forms of de­vi­ance. Aside from creat­ing con­fu­sion, multi­ply­ing ­hooliganism’s mean­ings also ­created the con­text in which the mid-1950s boom in de­vi­ancy could de­velop. Armed with an ex­pan­sive menu of ­open-ended hoo­li­gan cat­e­ go­ries that cov­ered every­thing from major acts to minor ec­cen­tric­ities and em­pow­ered to inter­pret these cat­e­go­ries in their own way, local au­thor­ities could en­com­pass ­within the boun­dar­ies of de­vi­ance a do­main of sit­u­a­tions and sites that was ­larger than ever be­fore. When the cam­ paign a­ gainst hoo­li­gan­ism ­kicked in, they used this catch­all cat­e­gory to pur­sue of­fend­ers ­across the en­tire range of wrong­do­ing and, as a re­sult, ­pushed con­vic­tions up to un­prec­ed ­ ented lev­els. In ad­di­tion to creat­ing con­fu­sion and ex­panded la­bel­ing op­por­tu­ nities, crim­i­nal law ­created a par­tic­u­lar por­trait of who the hoo­li­gan was and what he did. Un­like ­Dal’’s dic­tion­ary, which saw this crime as gang re­lated, So­viet law ­painted a por­trait of the hoo­li­gan as a loner and out­sider whose mo­ti­va­tion was his dis­taste for So­viet so­ci­ety and its col­lec­ti­vist mo­ral­ity. The ca­non­iza­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as a crime ­against so­cial order ­created a ten­sion ­between the in­di­vid­ual of­fender (lichnost’) and the so­cial col­lec­tive (obshchestvennost’) as well as ­between the pub­lic and the pri­vate. This ten­sion and op­po­si­tion can be seen in the dis­cus­sion of the main trope of hoo­li­gan­ism, “clear dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety.” A com­men­tary of the 1960 RSFSR Crim­i­nal Code de­fined “clear dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety” as “a scorn­ful at­ti­tude to So­viet laws, norms of so­cial­ist mo­ral­ity, rules of so­cial­ist com­mu­nal liv­ing and the striv­ing to place the per­son in op­po­si­tion to the col­lec­tive.”61 Under­lin­ing the con­struc­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as an op­po­si­tion ­between the pri­vate and the pub­lic, an­other com­men­tary ex­plained “ex­plicit dis­re­spect” as “ac­tions that op­pose the per­sonal (lich­nyi) inter­est of the hoo­li­gan to the pub­lic (obsh­chest­ven­nyi) inter­est.”62 Hoo­li­gan­ism was seen as an op­po­si­ tion ­between the in­di­vid­ual and the pri­vate world of his inter­ests and ap­pe­tites and the “rules of com­mu­nal liv­ing” and “so­cial­ist mo­ral­ity” of the col­lec­tive.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

34



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

Crim­i­nal cat­e­gor­iza­tion did not ex­haust the com­plex ques­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism, how­ever. As a con­cept that had a rich life in the com­mon world of So­viet cul­ture, hoo­li­gan­ism had multi­ple ­sources of mean­ing that re­sided out­side of the court­rooms and crim­i­nal codes and in­side a ­larger so­cial world of ­speech, stereo­type, and style. For most So­viet cit­i­zens, the or­di­nary phe­nom­e­non of hoo­li­gan­ism was de­fined not by the legal pro­fes­sion, but by pop­u­lar cul­ture. In­stead of rep­re­sent­ing the alien and the ex­otic, hoo­li­gan­ism was a fa­mil­iar con­cept that they under­stood and ap­plied in­tui­tively and non­prob­le­mat­ic­ ally. As a com­ mon word of every­day So­viet ­speech, the word “hoo­li­gan­ism” was, as an ­American ex­change stu­dent de­clared in the 1960s, “an in­dis­pens­able word” that So­viet cit­i­zens used ubiq­ui­tously to refer to the so­cial world ­around them.63 A West­ern tour­ist, not­ing its “wide ap­pli­ca­tion” in the every­day arena to all types of im­proper con­duct, wrote: “Small boys who drop their ice cream ­p apers may be hoo­l i­g ans; so are noisy, shout­ing four­teen year olds, and so were the ad­o­les­cent gangs who used to knife peo­ple in order to steal their cloth­ing.”64 In other words, hoo­li­gan­ism was an ob­ject of cul­tural re­vul­sion, fas­ci­na­tion, and ap­pro­pri­a­tion that lived out­side the legal ­sphere in the every­day ­speech acts and vivid imag­i­na­tion of So­viet cit­i­zens. In the dy­namic world of ­street-level lan­guage, new di­men­sions were con­ tin­u­ally added onto hoo­li­gan­ism as peo­ple ap­plied this elu­sive cat­e­ gory to the var­ied con­texts of their every­day lives and, in the pro­cess, trans­formed its lim­ited range of legal mean­ings. By using the term hoo­li­ gan­ism to scold a school­boy or to con­demn se­ri­ous and shock­ing ­crimes, cit­i­zens were doing more than mak­ing their emo­tions and anger con­crete. They were also mak­ing ­hooliganism’s ­ever-evolving mean­ing into a com­pos­ite cul­tural prod­uct that was ­shaped by count­less in­di­ vid­ual under­stand­ings and at­tri­bu­tions as much as by the ar­cane com­ plex­ities of legal dis­course. The pub­lic de­ployed the term “hoo­li­gan­ism” even ­though they may not have under­stood, or even been aware of, the ­shifts in its legal mean­ing. They did not need to know the law be­cause they were ac­cus­ tomed to iden­tify­ing hoo­li­gan­ism (rightly or ­wrongly) by read­ing de­vi­ ance in the faces, fash­ion, and ac­tions of the so­cial ac­tors ­around them. As we have seen, the legal com­mu­nity had great dif­fi­culty de­fin­ing the mean­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism in legal terms. The pub­lic did not: they knew hoo­li­gan­ism by sight. And, much to the cha­grin of So­viet au­thor­ities, some of them even liked what they saw.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



35

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Multi­ple Faces of Hoo­li­gan­ism: Hoo­li­gan­ism as a Style of ­Self-Presentation and Cat­e­gory of Per­for­mance The hoo­li­gan was a com­mon char­ac­ter in the vis­ual mi­lieu of So­viet space. The hoo­li­gan was, in fact, so fa­mil­iar a sight that a 1956 Iz­ves­tiia ar­ti­cle had to admit that: “Bit­ter as it may be, the ­hooligan’s loath­some ap­pear­ance is fa­mil­iar to many.”65 As the fre­quent sub­jects of So­viet media, hoo­li­gans ap­peared in mag­a­zines, news­papers, and nov­els. They were broad­cast via mo­vies, radio, and tele­vi­sion. ­Street signs and fac­tory wall­pa­pers dis­played the ­photos of ac­cused hoo­li­gans.66 These rep­re­sen­ta­tions of hoo­li­gan­ism de­fined de­vi­ance vis­u­ally in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. And, they did so by as­so­ciat­ing it with a rich set of ­iconic ref­er­ents, prac­tices, and props. ­Through link­ing hoo­li­gan­ ism to cer­tain cloth­ing ­styles, man­ner­isms, weap­ons, and forms of body art as­so­ciated with the crim­i­nal under­world, the mass media, am­a­teur art­ists, and in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens did more than just stig­ma­tize the de­vi­ants of So­viet so­ci­ety. They also ­created a por­trait of hoo­li­gan­ism as a com­mon­place cul­tural per­sona with an iden­tifi­able dress and de­meanor. In the pro­cess, they gave face to an ab­stract crim­i­nal cat­eg ­ ory and re­ in­forced in the pub­lic mind a par­tic­u­lar vi­sion of the hoo­li­gan that ­linked this out­sider iden­tity to par­tic­u­lar modes of un­cul­tured being and be­hav­ing. ­Besides being a crime, hoo­li­gan­ism was a cat­e­gory of cul­tural per­ for­m­ance or a way of look­ing and act­ing that was re­flected, re­en­acted, and re­in­forced in pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions and prac­tices. In ad­di­tion to being a legal cat­e­gory, it was a cul­tural stereo­type with an im­me­di­ately rec­og­niz­able ic­o­nog­ra­phy that one could learn to read on faces, in dress ­styles, and into ways of act­ing. A sa­tir­ical poem pub­lished in a 1956 edi­tion of ­Iunost’ dem­on­strates the pop­u­lar iden­tifi­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ ism with par­tic­ul­ ar modes of sty­lis­tic dis­play and ­self-presentation. His cap ( fu­razhka) is flat like a pan­cake (al­though he ­bought it just the other day). The shirt is un­but­toned at the col­lar (he is not one for this but­ton busi­ness). There have not been any hooks on his ­jacket for quite some time (he ­thinks this is es­pe­cially chic). And his pants (there is no se­cret in this), he sim­ply is not in the habit of iron­ing. And that sad sym­bol of the ­petty-bourgeois, the ­neck-tie,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

36



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

he has abol­ished for­ever from his neck. As for his shoes, he does not clean them, as they say, on prin­ci­ple. When he walks down the ­street, . . . [he has in his ­pocket] a pack of Bel­o­mar cig­ar­ettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You will say that he is a hoo­li­gan.67

From the car­toons of Krok­o­dil to the char­ac­ter of Volk in Vi­ac­ hes­lav ­ otenochkin’s car­ton se­ries Nu po­godi (1969–1986), the vis­ual rep­re­sen­ta­ K tion of the hoo­li­gan re­mained re­mark­ably ­stable ­across the ­post-Stalinist ­decades and de­fined hoo­li­gan­ism for the pub­lic in terms of con­crete vis­ual and per­for­ma­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics. In par­tic­u­lar, the ic­o­nog­ra­phy of de­vi­ance ­through which hoo­li­gan­ism was pop­u­larly under­stood and em­bod­ied re­volved ­around a clus­ter of props, such as the cig­ar­ette, the tat­too, the cap (kepka), the dan­gling fore­lock (chelka), and the ­striped ­sailor’s shirt (tel’niashka). It also cen­tered on a style of ­self-presentation that in­volved groom­ing prac­tices, nam­ing con­ven­tions, songs, and ­speech pat­terns. Krok­o­dil, for ex­am­ple, por­trayed the “stan­dard hoo­li­ gan” as a per­son “in a ­striped ­sailor’s shirt, with ­clenched fists and a stub­bly face.”68 When the hoo­li­gan an­tag­on ­ ist of a Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda feuille­ton was intro­duced, he was de­picted as a per­son “who wore his cap (kepka) dash­ingly (likho) at an angle with a fore­lock of hair (chelka) stick­ing out from it.”69 In a sa­tir­ical ­sketch about a meet­ing ­between the “he­roes of the early 1960s” and an ed­i­to­rial board from the fu­ture, the ­article’s ar­che­typal hoo­li­gan was de­scribed as “a ­red-nosed sub­ject with a lout­ish fore­lock (khams­koi che­loch­koi ) grac­ing his fore­head.”70 So­viet cit­i­zens would have iden­tified the hoo­li­gan in the ac­com­pa­ny­ing il­lus­ tra­tion eas­ily: he was the one wear­ing the small cap with the afore­men­ tioned lock of dis­obe­di­ent hair, with a cig­ar­ette dan­gling from his frown­ing mouth and ­dressed in a ­striped ­sailor’s shirt. In ­contrast to the men sur­round­ing him, the hoo­li­gan was also the only one with­out a tie.71 The small cap, the red nose, the stub­bly face and the ­striped ­sailor’s shirt were not in­no­cent fash­ion ac­ces­so­ries and phys­i­cal at­trib­utes. In com­bi­na­tion and con­text, they ­formed a dis­play that ­helped com­mu­ni­ cate and re­in­force cer­tain no­tions about hoo­li­gan­ism to the read­ing and view­ing pub­lic. A 1956 ­Pravda ar­ti­cle dem­on­strated the role style ­played in mark­ing de­vi­ant iden­tities by de­scrib­ing how an in­spec­tor at­trib­uted hoo­li­gan ­status to a boy ­brought be­fore her based only on see­ing his fash­ion ­choices and slo­venly man­ner of ­self-presentation. The in­spec­tor

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



37

met the de­lin­quent and saw that “an out and out hoo­li­gan (ot­petyi sor­ va­nets) was stand­ing be­fore her. His out­ward ap­pear­ance, small cap (ke­pochka), a fore­lock of hair (chelka) pro­trud­ing from under the cap’s visor, ­raised col­lar and ­sloppy boots (sap­ogi gar­mosh­koi), con­firmed it.”72 A 1956 Iz­ves­tiia ar­ti­cle on hoo­li­gan­ism like­wise intro­duced its hoo­li­gan hero by de­scrib­ing what he wore and how he acted: “Pants styl­ishly ­stuffed into his boots (sap­ogi gar­mosh­koi ), a ­sports cap ­pulled for­ward on his head, a fore­lock of hair (chelka), ­shifty eyes. . . . He is the one who or­ga­nizes a gang near some dark door­way; he is the first one to hurl ob­scen­ities after a ­passer-by, to shove a woman, to in­sult a child. . . . He is a hoo­li­gan.”73 The ob­jects dis­played in the ic­on ­ og­ra­phy of de­vi­ance under­lined the low cul­tural ­status and sub­hu­man­ity of the hoo­li­gan. They vis­u­ally ­marked him for the read­ing pub­lic as a re­ject of the So­viet civ­il­iz­ing pro­cess and its pro­gram of cul­tured liv­ing. The lack of cul­ture was ­marked on the ­hooligan’s body ­through the ­artists’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion of fa­cial groom­ing and fash­ion. In an era when the beard was dis­ap­proved of with a vigor ­worthy of Peter the Great and as­so­ciated with the or­tho­ dox peas­ant past or the dis­si­dent ­avant-garde, the hoo­li­gan often ­sported an un­tidy five ­o’clock ­shadow.74 While the ­white-collar ideal was shirt and tie, the hoo­li­gan never wore a tie. In­stead, he un­but­toned his shirt to show a ­striped ­sailor’s shirt or a bare chest, or he ­stalked the ­streets in a sleeve­less under­shirt.75 The ­hooligan’s in­ces­sant chain smok­ing, cuss­ing, and drink­ing under­lined his ­status as the arch­en­emy of cul­tured con­duct. The cig­ar­ette, the ­subject’s smok­ing style, and the bot­tle of al­co­hol ­played key roles in the ic­o­nog­ra­phy of de­vi­ance as sym­bolic at­trib­utes of the typ­i­cal hyper­mas­cu­line hoo­li­gan. A cig­ar­ette (more than ­likely a ­self-rolled pap­i­rosa) was in­var­i­ably de­picted dan­gling ­loosely from the cor­ner of the ­deviant’s mouth.76 A bot­tle was often shown ei­ther car­ried in the hand, dis­carded on the ­ground, or on a ­nearby table. To show that the hoo­li­gan was drunk, he was often por­trayed in con­torted bod­ily pos­ tures, in a ­drunken rage, or with tell­tale phys­i­cal symp­toms of in­ebri­a­ tion, such as the red nose.77 In these rep­re­sen­ta­tions, the ­hooligan’s be­hav­ior com­mu­ni­cated his dis­tance from ac­cepted modes of cor­rect con­duct. To under­line his dis­re­spect for the lit­tle mon­u­ments of cul­tured life and his slo­venly style of ­self-presentation, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion ac­com­pa­ny­ing the ­Iunost’ poem ­showed the hoo­li­gan tram­pling on care­fully ­tended ­flower beds as spit­tle flies from his mouth.78 Other im­ages de­picted hoo­li­gans

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

38



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

per­form­ing such ig­no­min­ious feats as pull­ing a ­girl’s pig­tails or yell­ing at a woman push­ing a per­am­bu­la­tor.79 In ad­di­tion, the names given to hoo­li­gan char­ac­ters ad­ver­tised their oth­er­ness from ac­cepted con­ven­ tion. As Ve­cher­ni­aia ­Moskva noted: “They [hoo­li­gans] do not call each other by their ­proper names but by their nick­names, such as “Blin” and “Arkan.”80 Hoo­li­gan­ism was more than a cul­tural stereo­type whose con­tours were de­fined by art­ists and au­thors and de­ployed in the count­less every­day acts of So­viet in­di­vid­u­als. It was also an iden­tity that those la­beled as hoo­li­gans some­times in­scribed on them­selves ­through acts of ­self-attribution, such as tat­too­ing. Par­tic­u­lar tat­toos be­came ve­hi­cles for ­self-representation ­through which these hoo­li­gans vis­u­ally ad­ver­ tised and af­firmed their de­vi­ant iden­tity. Such tat­toos ­formed a key part of the ic­o­nog­ra­phy of de­vi­ance that art­ists de­ployed in the pop­u­lar press. Given the ­strong cor­re­la­tion ­between tat­too­ing and crim­i­nal­ity, the tat­too acted as a ­strong vis­ual ­marker of out­sider iden­tity ­through which art­ists could stig­ma­tize the de­vi­ant and under­line the ­status of the hoo­li­gan as a re­ject of the So­viet civ­il­iz­ing pro­ject.81 The mass media con­spic­u­ously ­flaunted such tat­toos to hoo­lig­a­nize its sub­jects. Car­toon­ists often de­picted hoo­li­gans with fore­arm tat­toos, such as a heart with an arrow ­through it. Often the tat­toos that art­ists de­picted under­lined the ­deviant’s ­status as out­sider and other. The prom­i­nent dis­play of ­lower-class and ­peasant-sounding fe­male di­min­u­ tives in the tat­tooed ­hearts, such as the name Mania, under­lined the con­nec­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism with the un­ed­u­cated under­class. It also ­linked the hoo­li­gan to the re­cently ar­rived rural in­hab­it­ ant whom work re­cruit­ment pol­i­cies had ­thrust into the cen­ter of urban life but had not ac­cli­mated to the rar­ified cul­ture of the civ­il­ized so­cial­ist city.82 The media also used the tex­tual con­tent of tat­toos to link hoo­li­gan­ism to l­ arger so­cial prob­lems. A Trud ar­ti­cle re­in­forced the con­nec­tion ­between al­co­hol and de­vi­ance by spot­light­ing a photo­graph of a ­hooligan’s tat­too and its text, “why isn’t there any vodka on the moon?”83 Pris­on­ers ­marked them­selves with par­tic­u­lar signs that iden­tified and ad­ver­tised their hoo­li­gan ­status. Com­mon fin­ger and body tat­toos with which hoo­li­gan pris­on­ers ­marked them­selves under­lined their vi­o­lent and men­ac­ing na­ture, such as the skull and cross­bones or the black spade. A com­mon tat­too for an un­re­pen­tant hoo­li­gan con­vict spot­lighted one of the ma­li­cious ­hooligan’s ­iconic at­trib­utes, the knife.84 By mark­ing them­selves with such tat­toos, de­vi­ants in­scribed them­ selves into par­tic­u­lar com­mu­nities of crime and ­claimed for them­selves

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



39

an iden­tity as a hoo­li­gan. Their bod­ies be­came texts on which the his­tory of their hoo­li­gan­ism was ­carved in the dis­tinc­tive sign lan­guage of So­viet ­Russia’s crim­in ­ al under­world. The rep­re­sen­ta­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism re­volved not only ­around ex­hib­it­ ing body art or ap­pro­pri­ate props, such as the cig­ar­ette, the tat­too, or the bot­tle, it also cen­tered on the show­ing of the face. Hoo­li­gan faces were well known be­cause they were often shown as part of the hoo­li­ gan pun­ish­ment pro­cess. Vis­u­al­ity and pub­lic dis­play were cen­tral to the 1950s ­soft-line cam­paign ­against hoo­li­gan­ism and its ­shame-based pu­ni­tive pro­cess, a sham­ing pro­cess that was ac­com­plished, in part, ­through the mass man­uf­ ac­ture and ex­hi­bi­tion of ca­ric­a­tur­ized hoo­li­gan por­traits. The faces of hoo­li­gans ap­peared on ­street signs and on fac­tory wall­pa­pers. News­papers ­printed ­photos of hoo­li­gans to ac­com­pany ar­ti­cles on the ­anti-deviancy cam­paign and or­dered read­ers to “look at the photo” (vzgli­a­nite na sni­mok) and study the face of hoo­li­gan­ism.85 The pub­lic faces of de­vi­ance were meant to em­bar­rass, amuse, and under­line the at­a­vis­tic ­status of the of­fender. The faces of hoo­li­gans drawn in the pop­u­lar press bear dis­torted fea­tures sug­gest­ing the sub­ hu­man and bes­tial na­ture of the de­vi­ant. The hoo­li­gan por­traits that ac­com­pany the 1961 Krok­o­dil ar­ti­cle “100 Inter­views with Hoo­li­gans” have gro­tesquely ex­ag­ger­ated jaws, ears, and noses that mimic an­i­mal forms or the fa­cial ­traits of the de­vel­op­men­tally dis­abled.86 The link ­between hoo­li­gans and de­vel­op­men­tal de­gen­er­ates and an­i­mals was made more ex­plicit in car­toons that de­picted hoo­li­gans di­rectly as pred­a­ tory ­beasts with anthro­po­mor­phic at­trib­utes and by a pop­u­lar slang term for hoo­li­gan, bak­lan, which lit­er­ally re­ferred to a no­to­ri­ously rav­e­nous sea­bird.87 A Krok­o­dil car­toon, for ex­am­ple, de­picted hoo­li­gans as a pack of pred­a­tory, ­guitar-playing, ­binge-drinking, and ­girl-hungry ­wolves.88 Dis­play, style, and vis­u­al­ity were key parts of hoo­li­gan­ism. ­Linked in pop­u­lar cul­ture to par­tic­u­lar props, prac­tices, and modes of ­selfpresentation, hoo­li­gan­ism was a cat­e­gory of cul­tural per­for­mance that any cit­i­zen ­through his dress and de­meanor could (in­ten­tion­ally or ac­ci­den­tally) ap­pro­pri­ate and em­body for his fel­low pub­lic. As a com­ mon­place cul­tural per­sona, So­viet cit­i­zens im­a­gined the fa­mil­iar fea­tures of the hoo­li­gan in terms of a stereo­typ­i­cal set of ­iconic ­traits that sup­ pos­edly typ­ified the ar­che­typ­i­cal de­vi­ant of­fender. It was ­through the re­en­act­ment and dis­play of such ­iconic prac­tices and props that some de­vi­ants as­serted their iden­tity in a ­larger com­mu­nity of crim­i­nal­ity and ad­ver­tised their out­sider ­status. And, it was also ­through the dis­ play of such sty­lis­tic stereo­types that the mass media hoo­lig­a­nized the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

40



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

de­vi­ant sub­jects in their rep­re­sen­ta­tions and, in that way, re­flected and re­in­forced the ­public’s pe­cu­liar vi­sion of hoo­li­gan­ism. In ad­di­tion, the as­so­ci­a­tion of non­stan­dard ­styles and modes of ­self-presentation with de­vi­ant cat­e­go­ries was also used to iden­tify and in­crim­i­nate other out­ sid­ers dur­ing this pe­riod ­besides hoo­li­gans, such as the sti­li­agi (whose stig­ma­tized iden­tity could sim­i­larly be at­trib­uted on the basis of seem­ ingly triv­ial fash­ion mark­ers, such as nar­row pants and ­brightly col­ored ­shirts). For the pub­lic, the ic­o­nog­ra­phy of de­vi­ance pro­vided, in a way the law could not and did not, an ac­cess­ible and com­pre­hen­sible vo­cab­u­ lary for de­scrib­ing am­big­u­ous iden­tity cat­e­go­ries and for flesh­ing out the ab­strac­tions of So­viet leg­a­lese.89 Cer­tainly, the cul­tural rep­re­sen­ta­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism that the mass media and the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion con­jured up did not al­ways match the re­al­ities of who the av­er­age hoo­li­gan was and what he did. Many men con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism were not the tat­tooed and ­stripedsailor-shirt-wearing thugs de­picted in the mass ­media’s ic­o­nog­ra­phy of de­vi­ance. Far from being a crim­i­nal other, the av­er­age hoo­li­gan was, as we shall see, a kind of So­viet every­man in terms of his oc­cu­pa­tional, ed­u­ca­tional, and class iden­tity. By ap­ply­ing ge­neric mark­ers of crim­i­ nal­ity (such as tat­toos) or signs of hyper­mas­cu­lin­ity to hoo­li­gans, the ic­o­nog­ra­phy of de­vi­ance ­helped to crim­i­nal­ize a group of of­fend­ers who often fell into trou­ble for the or­di­nary (and some­times seem­ingly triv­ial) every­day of­fenses and rough mas­cu­line pas­times that ­plagued the urban work­ing class, such as ­binge-drinking, curs­ing, or brawl­ing. The often inter­c hange­a ble way that the mass media dis­c ourse ­treated the dis­tinc­tion ­between hoo­li­gans and other crim­in ­ als, how­ ever, mir­rored pop­u­lar sen­sibil­ities that often used hoo­li­gan­ism as a short­hand way to com­plain about urban crime and so­cial dis­or­der in gen­eral. In their let­ters to au­thor­ity, for in­stance, many cit­i­zens used the terms “hoo­li­gan” and “hoo­li­gan­ism” ­loosely to label and com­plain about a di­verse range of crim­i­nal and ­anti-social ac­tiv­ity. In the slip­pery vis­ual sym­bol­ism of the so­cial imag­i­nary and in the ­public’s homog­e­ niz­ing rhet­o­ric, the hoo­li­gan often ­played the ge­neric role of the ar­che­ typal crim­i­nal of­fender who rep­re­sented in in­di­vid­ual form all the var­i­ous dan­gers threat­en­ing the moral and phys­i­cal ­health of ­postStalinist so­ci­ety. How­ever, the hoo­li­gan in­spired fas­ci­na­tion as well as fear and be­came an ob­ject of em­u­la­tion ­rather than alarm in cer­tain ar­tis­tic cir­cles and so­cial ­niches. This cul­tural ap­pro­pri­a­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism par­alleled, and fed on, a grow­ing pop­u­lar­iza­tion of the So­viet ­Union’s

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



41

crim­i­nal sub­cul­ture among parts of the pop­u­la­tion, es­pe­cially the youth.90 Cul­tural items as­so­ciated with the crim­i­nal under­world, such as songs and slang, found cur­rency in pop­u­lar cul­ture and re­sulted in the par­tial ro­man­ti­ciza­tion of the hoo­li­gan/crim­in ­ al. No­where was this more ap­par­ent than in the under­ground songs of the semi­of­fi­cial bard move­ment that ­sprang up in the 1960s. Echo­ing Ser­gei Es­e­nin and the bo­he­mian poets of the New Eco­nomic Pol­icy (NEP) era, bards such as Vlad­i­mir Vy­sot­sky wrote works that were some­times ­self-consciously crim­i­nal and hoo­li­gan in terms of their tone, vo­cab­ul­ ary, and point of view.91 Crim­i­nal songs were also pop­u­lar ­sing-along items for ­groups of loi­ter­ing youth in the con­text of the urban court­yard (dvor). “Groups of ad­ol­ es­cents often ­gather in the court­yards and entry ways dur­ing the even­ings,” a Mos­cow Kom­so­mol of­fi­cial com­plained to his col­leagues. “Gui­tars are ­strummed, songs like ‘I live close to the Sea of ­Okhotsk’ are sung, and the sound of ­half-liter bot­tles rings out.”92 As a sub­ject of state con­dem­na­tion, sym­bol of ma­chismo and non­con­for­mity, and as an ob­ject of pop­u­lar cul­tural inter­est and ap­pro­pri­a­tion, the hoo­li­gan was both pa­riah and hero. For many, he was a char­ac­ter to be re­viled. Yet for some, he was a fig­ure to be em­u­lated and re­en­acted in san­it­ ized form via par­tic­u­lar ways of dress­ing, act­ing, sing­ing, and speak­ing.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Multi­ple Faces of Hoo­li­gan­ism: The Sta­tis­ti­cally Av­er­age So­viet Hoo­li­gan Quan­ti­ta­tive data on con­victed hoo­li­gans, and the sta­tis­tics de­rived from them, were an al­ter­na­tive in­stru­ment for en­vi­sion­ing the “av­er­age” hoo­li­gan. State agen­cies pro­duced sta­tis­tics that ­created, like media rep­re­sen­ta­tions, a sim­plified por­trait of hoo­li­gan­ism that the au­thor­ities used to under­stand the lo­ca­tion, class or­i­gin, and ed­u­ca­tional achieve­ ment of the typ­i­cal de­vi­ant. As with any sta­tis­ti­cal sam­ple, the ­state’s data had for­mid­able sam­pling bi­ases and me­thod­ol­ og­i­cal prob­lems that com­pro­mised its rep­re­sen­ta­tive­ness. State con­vic­tion sta­tis­tics left sev­eral ­streams of de­vi­ants out of the sam­ples they quan­tified by un­der­ re­port­ing juve­niles of­fend­ers, over­look­ing those pun­ished in­for­mally or ad­min­is­tra­tively out­side the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system, and fo­cus­ing (some­times ex­clu­sively) on more se­ri­ous cases of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism. De­spite these de­fects, how­ever, So­viet jur­ists and crim­i­nol­o­gists made ex­ten­sive use of these data sets to under­stand who the av­er­age hoo­li­gan was and where he came from. For a state ob­sessed with under­stand­ing so­cial re­al­ity ­through sup­pos­edly ob­jec­tive quan­ti­ta­tive

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

42



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

in­di­ca­tors (and one that was well aware that such nu­mer­i­cal in­for­ma­ tion was often dis­torted as it ­traveled up the ad­min­is­tra­tive hier­ar­chy), con­vic­tion sta­tis­tics—what­ever their ob­vi­ous and ­not-so-obvious er­rors—were the best means to ­create a com­pos­ite pic­ture of the sta­tis­ ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Class Break­down The clear ma­jor­i ty of hoo­l i­g ans who were con­v icted dur­i ng the Khrush­chev era were, ac­cord­ing to state sta­tis­tics, work­ers in terms of their oc­cu­pa­tional and class iden­tity (see table 2). In 1947, by ­contrast, the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan was not a ­worker. In­stead, a com­bi­na­tion of di­verse iden­tity cat­e­go­ries, from col­lec­tive farm­ers and ­white-collar ad­min­is­tra­tors to stu­dents, sol­diers, and the un­em­ployed, ac­counted col­lec­tively for the ab­so­lute ma­jor­ity of con­victed hoo­li­gans. By 1957, how­ever, the per­cent­age of pro­le­tar­ians in the con­vic­tion fig­ures for hoo­li­gan­ism had ex­ploded up­ward, with work­ers in that year tak­ing a ­greater than ­two-thirds ma­jor­ity in the con­vict sam­ple. ­Hooliganism’s up­ward pro­le­tar­ian trend con­tin­ued un­abated for most of the 1950s and early 1960s, with 74 per­cent of the ­USSR’s con­victed hoo­li­gans re­ported as work­ers in 1962.93 As So­viet sta­tis­tics make clear, the av­er­age con­victed hoo­li­gan was an in­dus­trial la­borer, and the ­blue-collar work­ing class was, by far, the ­biggest ­growth en­gine fuel­ing the rapid rise of hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions in the High Sta­lin­ist and Khrush­chev eras. Hoo­li­gan­ism com­mit­ted by col­lec­tive farm­ers and hoo­li­gan­ism com­mit­ted by ­white-collar ad­min­is­ tra­tors de­creased by two t­ hirds and one half re­spec­tively from 1947 to 1964. Dur­ing the same pe­riod, how­ever, ­worker hoo­li­gan­ism sky­ rock­eted up­ward ­nearly 50 per­cent, trans­form­ing the So­viet ­Union’s key class con­stit­u­ency into its pri­mary pro­ducer of crim­i­nal de­vi­ancy. In com­par­i­son with ­Union-wide fig­ures, the Rus­sian ­Republic’s (RSFSR’s) hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion sta­tis­tics show an even ­stronger pos­i­tive cor­re­la­ tion ­between the ­blue-collar work­ing class and high rates of hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions, with 84.5 per­cent of its con­victed hoo­li­gans being re­ported as work­ers in its 1961 sta­tis­tics.94 At the be­gin­ning of the Khrush­chev era, mem­bers of the ­blue-collar work­ing class were over­achiev­ers at get­ting ­caught and con­victed for hoo­li­gan­ism. Dur­ing this pe­riod, the pro­por­tion of work­ers among hoo­li­gan con­victs ex­ceeded the gen­eral per­cent­age of work­ers in the over­all So­viet pop­u­la­tion, sug­gest­ing that work­ers were out­per­form­ing

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

43



Table 2.  Social Composition of Hooligan Convicts in the USSR, 1947–1965 Year Workers (%) 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958–61** 1962 1963 1964 1965

49.3 53.5 63.1 65.4 69.6 70.5 72.9 73.8 72.1 71.8 71.3 — 74.0 72.7 72.0 72.3

White-Collar Administrators (%)

Collective Farmers (%)

Other* (%)

10.5 12.1 11.0 9.0 7.9 7.7 6.2 5.8 5.2 4.5 4.1 — 3.5 3.5 3.2 2.8

20.4 18.8 16.1 16.9 15.2 14.8 12.5 13.5 13.6 15.9 16.8 — 9.5 9.4 8.6 7.9

19.8 15.6 9.8 8.7 7.3 7.0 8.4 6.9 9.1 7.8 7.8 — 13.0 14.4 16.2 17.0

Source: GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 46. Data after 1962 from GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 150. *The other category, presumably, contained noncollectivized farmers, handicraft workers, students, soldiers, and the unemployed.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

**Aside from scattered anecdotal information, I have been unable to find systematic data on the social composition of convicted hooligans in the USSR for the years 1958 to 1961. Therefore, I have left these cells blank in the table.

their class peers in the out­put of de­vi­ants. In 1956, for ex­am­ple, ­bluecollar work­ers and ­white-collar ad­min­is­tra­tors com­prised 58 per­cent of the So­viet work­force, but ­blue-collar work­ers alone ac­counted for more than 72 per­cent of the con­vic­tions for hoo­li­gan ­crimes.95 More­over, few other crim­i­nal cat­e­go­ries ­showed such a ­strong ­working-class char­ac­ter as hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the early Khrush­chev era. In 1954, ­slightly over half of the peo­ple whom the USSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs (MVD) ­brought to crim­i­nal re­spon­sibil­ity were work­ers, while in the same year al­most two ­thirds of the con­victed hoo­li­gans were mem­bers of the work­ing class.96 By the end of the Khrush­chev pe­riod, the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age hoo­li­ gan was a So­viet every­man in terms of his class and oc­cu­pa­tional iden­ tity. In fact, by the close of the Khrush­chev pe­riod, the per­cent­age of

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

44



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

work­ers con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism al­most per­fectly mir­rored the per­cent­age of work­ers in the over­all labor force. In 1963, 74 per­cent of the So­viet labor force was com­posed of work­ers and ­white-collar ad­min­is­tra­tors and, in the same year, work­ers ac­counted for 73 per­cent of the hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions (only 4 per­cent of con­victs were ­white-collar ad­min­is­tra­tors).97 Far from being a so­cial mar­gi­nal, the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age hoo­li­gan was, as an in­dus­trial la­borer, at the cen­ter of an ideo­log­i­cal and eco­ nomic en­ter­prise pred­i­cated (at least in rhet­o­ric if not in re­al­ity) on ad­vanc­ing and bet­ter­ing the lives of ­blue-collar work­ers. As a rep­re­sen­ ta­tive of the ex­pand­ing in­dus­trial work­ing class, the av­er­age hoo­li­gan typ­ified the dy­namic eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment of the So­viet Union under Khrush­chev, which ­pulled mil­lions of rural mi­grants and la­bor­ers out of their homes and ­placed them in a mo­bile, anon­y­mous, and under­ ser­viced urban en­vi­ron­ment that was ripe for hoo­li­gan­ism. The fact that the ma­jor­ity of hoo­li­gans were work­ers tells us that the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­ity had jobs. They were not, save for a small mi­nor­ity, un­em­ployed out­casts who ­shunned so­cially use­ful labor. They were key parts of the mod­ern­iz­ing So­viet ­Union’s in­dus­trial econ­omy and of its ­skilled and un­skilled labor force. This com­pli­cated the task of ­anti-hooligan cam­ paign­ing, es­pe­cially in mass ac­tions, such as the one ­against petty hoo­li­ gan­ism. Tak­ing a mil­lion work­ers off the shop floor (even for rel­a­tively short ­prison stays) dis­rupted the labor pro­cess and, es­pe­cially in the case of ­skilled work­ers, threat­ened pro­duc­tion ­rhythms and out­put lev­els.98 In ad­di­tion, the roots of hoo­li­gan­ism in the work­ing class and in key in­dus­trial in­sti­tu­tions, such as the ­workers’ dor­mi­tory, ­shaped some of the ­government’s key ­anti-hooligan pol­i­cies, such as its ­stress on try­ing to build up the ­worksite’s infra­struc­ture of cul­tured lei­sure and its at­tempt to hold fac­tory di­rec­tors re­spon­sible for the ­after-hours lives of their labor force.99

Gen­der Dis­tri­bu­tion Even more than mem­ber­ship in the ­blue-collar work­ing class, male­ness de­fined ­hooliganism’s con­vict co­hort. As con­vic­tion sta­tis­tics and crim­i­ no­log­ical stud­ies made clear, So­viet hoo­li­gan­ism was a ­gender-specific crime that was com­mit­ted over­whelm­ingly by men. That men ­should dom­i­nate the con­vic­tion data on hoo­li­gan­ism is not, per­haps, sur­pris­ing. But, it did fly in the face of the So­viet ­Union’s ­skewed sex ratio that, as

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



45

a re­sult of mas­sive male war­time mor­tal­ity, made women the most nu­mer­ous mem­bers of So­viet so­ci­ety—es­pe­cially in the age co­horts most as­so­ciated with court­room con­vic­tions for hoo­li­gan­ism. Al­though men ac­counted for only 45 per­cent of the So­viet pop­u­la­tion dur­ing this pe­riod (and 43 per­cent in the cru­cial 25–50 age co­hort most ­closely cor­re­ lated with this crime), they reg­u­larly ac­counted for ap­prox­i­mately 98 per­cent of the hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions.100 Of ­course, women did com­mit and were con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism, and a fe­male var­i­ant of the word hoo­li­gan ex­isted in the So­viet lex­i­con (khu­li­ganka).101 How­ever, women were con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism in far less num­bers than their male counter­parts. As So­viet sta­tis­ti­cal data made clear, hoo­li­gan­ism was some­thing that men did; and, it was often some­thing that men did to women.102 As we shall see in chap­ter 2, women ­tended over­whelm­ingly to be ­hooliganism’s vic­tims ­rather than its ­agents. In the rare oc­ca­sions when they did com­mit hoo­li­gan­ism, there was a re­mark­able con­sis­tency ­between what fe­male hoo­li­gans did and where they did it. The fe­male hoo­li­gan was a do­mes­tic crea­ture who com­mit­ted her acts in the home in re­la­tion to her fam­ily or neigh­bors.103 She ­argued with her hus­band or neigh­bors or, no­to­ri­ously, con­tam­i­ nated their food in the com­mu­nal ­kitchen.104 The male hoo­li­gan also, in­creas­ingly, ­brought hoo­li­gan­ism into the home dur­ing the late 1950s and 1960s. But he main­tained a ­strong pub­lic pres­ence at the same time. The fe­male hoo­li­gan did not. She was nei­ther a ­street ­fighter, nor an ob­nox­ious sex­ual ha­rasser, nor a street­cor­ner drunk. She lim­ited her ac­tions, au­di­ence, and stage to the home. The stereo­typ­i­cal hoo­li­gan was a ­fighter and a ­drinker: a man with a ready fist, a rowdy shout, and a ­wicked ­tongue (the as­so­ci­a­tion of the hoo­li­gan with fight­ing was under­lined by the use of the word “boxer,” bok­ser, as a slang term for hoo­li­gan).105 Un­doubt­edly, women ­fought and drank, but they were, as a whole, much less ­likely to en­gage in the ­high-risk rough mas­cu­line be­hav­iors of pub­lic brawl­ing and ­bingedrinking that often ended in hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions for their male counter­ parts. In his ac­tions, de­meanor, and pres­en­ta­tion, the hoo­li­gan was coded male—and the So­viet ­state’s sta­tis­tics and rep­re­sen­ta­tions re­flected the cor­re­la­tion ­between hoo­li­gan­ism, urban in­dus­trial labor, and the com­mon­place (often ­alcohol-soaked) rit­u­als of rough mas­cu­lin­ity. In short, hoo­li­gan­ism was a mas­cu­line crime that grew out of the ma­chismo of male be­hav­ior, so­ci­abil­ity, and inter­ac­tion in the So­viet

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

46



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

in­dus­trial city. In the rough mas­cu­line cul­ture of these urban ­spaces, com­mon male lei­sure be­hav­iors, such as ­binge-drinking, often led to ugly con­se­quences that could eas­ily be read ­through the ­lenses of an ex­pand­ing and in­creas­ingly am­big­u­ous con­cep­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism as cases of crim­i­nal de­vi­ancy. Yet de­spite the over­whelm­ing cor­re­la­tion ­between male­ness and hoo­li­gan­ism, the ­state’s ­class-based ideol­ogy made it blind to the ­gender-biased as­pects of So­viet de­vi­ancy. For a state that often tried to mini­mize or deny gen­der dif­fer­ences in the name of ­women’s eman­ci­pa­tion and equal­ity, the male es­sence of So­viet hoo­li­gan­ism re­mained an ir­rel­e­vant and under­stud­ied cu­ri­os­ity.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Age Dis­tri­bu­tion Hoo­li­gan­ism in the West is typ­i­cally as­so­ciated with juve­nile de­lin­ quency. Sur­pris­ingly, how­ever, the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age con­victed So­viet hoo­li­gan was ­between the ages of 25 and 50, with the lat­ter part of the age range gain­ing in prom­i­nence through­out the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod. Dem­on­strat­ing the de­cid­edly adult char­ac­ter of hoo­li­gan of­fend­ers was the fact that the two larg­est ­growth dem­o­graph­ics for hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the 1945 to 1957 pe­riod were the 25 to 39 and the 40 and older age ­groups (see Ta­bles 3 and 4). These age ­ranges were the ­growth en­gines for hoo­li­gan­ism in the 1950s and 1960s, and their in­creas­ing ­weight in the data dem­on­strates a gray­ing of the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan. In 1951, the ma­jor­ity of hoo­li­gans (53 per­cent) were 25 years of age or ­younger. How­ever, the ma­jor­ity of hoo­li­gans, for every year from 1952 to 1957 and 1962 to 1965, were over the age of 25. More­over, the aging of the hoo­li­gan co­hort ac­cel­er­ated through­out the pe­riod, with the per­cent­age of hoo­li­gans aged 25 and over stead­ily in­creas­ing each year (with the only ex­cep­tions being minor drops in 1957 and 1964), from 52 per­cent in 1952 to 56 per­cent in 1954 and from 62 per­cent in 1956 to 65 per­cent in 1963. The sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan was, there­fore, get­ting older through­out the 1950s, mov­ing out of the early 20s age group and into the co­hort of late ­twenty-somethings and t­ hirty-somethings. This aging trend con­tin­ued into the 1960s, with the av­er­age hoo­li­gan mov­ing from the 25 to 29 age ­bracket to the 30 to 49 age ­bracket.106 For the years 1962, 1963, and 1964, this lat­ter age range was the sin­gle larg­est age group in the hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion data, sug­gest­ing an in­creas­ingly high me­dian age for the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age ­post-Stalinist hoo­li­gan. These age ­trends held true in the RSFSR as well, whose sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age hoo­li­gan

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Table 3.  Age Range of Convicted Hooligans in the USSR, 1945–1957 Years 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957

17 and Younger (%) 18–19 (%) 20–24 (%) 25–39 (%) 17.0 10.0 7.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 3.7 4.0 4.7 4.8 5.2 4.9 4.6

— — — — — — 14.3 11.4 11.8 12.8 14.4 14.2 14.9

— — — — — — 35.3 32.8 29.8 26.3 21.1 19.3 22.5

40 and Older (%)

— — — — — — 38.9 43.4 45.7 47.8 50.2 51.5 49.1

3.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 — — 7.8 8.4 8.0 8.3 9.1 10.1 8.9

Source: GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 58.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Table 4.  Age Range of Convicted Hooligans in the USSR, 1962–1965 Years 1962 1963 1964 1965

14–17 (%) 3.9 5.8 8.4 10.4

18–24 (%) 32.0 29.6 29.5 30.2

25–29 (%) 20.4 21.5 22.4 22.6

30–49 (%)

Over 50 (%)

40.2 39.5 36.4 33.9

Source: GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 152.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

3.5 3.6 3.3 2.9

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

48



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

in the 1950s was also lo­cated in the 25 and older age dem­o­graphic, with the 30 to 39 age range emerg­ing as the pre­dom­i­nant group­ing dur­ing the 1960s.107 The in­creas­ing ­weight of the over-25 age group in the con­vic­tion data is sur­pris­ing not only be­cause it goes ­against pop­u­lar stereo­types, but also be­cause it goes ­against the pre­vail­ing age struc­ture of So­viet males in the ­post-WWII pe­riod. Given the ex­tremely high mor­tal­ity among adult men dur­ing the war, the ma­jor­ity of So­viet males in the Khrush­chev era were under 25 years of age, with those over 25 years of age rep­re­sent­ing only 46 per­cent of the male pop­u­la­tion in the late 1950s.108 Dur­ing this same pe­riod, how­ever, this more ma­ture male mi­nor­ity com­prised over 60 per­cent of the ­country’s con­victed hoo­li­ gans. The in­creas­ing prev­a­lence of the 30 to 50 age group is es­pe­cially strik­ing given the es­sen­tial youth­ful­ness of So­viet male so­ci­ety and given how ­deeply the mass kill­ing of WWII im­pacted men in the mid­dle range of the age dis­tri­bu­tion. As the sta­tis­ti­cal data set makes clear, the ma­jor­ity of con­victed hoo­li­ gans were not juve­niles below the age of 18. In fact, the per­cent­age of con­victed hoo­li­gans age 17 and ­younger tied the 20 to 24 age group for the ­biggest de­cline in the 1950s-era con­vict data, drop­ping from a post­ war high of 17 per­cent in 1946 to 5 per­cent in 1957. Through­out the 1950s, men in their 40s were con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism at al­most twice the fre­quency of their ­under-18 counter­parts. By the end of the Khrush­chev era, how­ever, the juve­nile age range began to re­emerge in the con­vic­ tion sta­tis­tics as a grow­ing hoo­li­gan dem­o­graphic. How­ever, the ab­so­ lute ma­jor­ity of con­victed hoo­li­gans still re­mained above age 25, even dur­ing this time of juve­nile re­sur­gence. Of ­course, such ­age-related com­par­i­sons are com­pli­cated by the under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of juve­nile of­fend­ers in the data on age dis­tri­bu­ tion. Juve­niles were under­re­ported be­cause their de­vi­ancy was often dis­ci­plined out­side of the ­courts and did not ap­pear in sta­tis­ti­cal data drawn from court­room con­vic­tions. How­ever, the juve­nile data were not the only ones dis­torted down­ward. Be­cause al­ter­na­tive and “off the books” pun­ish­ment prac­tices were ap­plied ­across the en­tire age range of hoo­li­gan of­fend­ers (see chap­ter 5), they de­flated court­room con­vic­ tions ­across all age ­groups. Of ­course, there is good rea­son for be­liev­ing that the juve­nile group was de­flated more than any other co­hort. How­ ever, the dif­fe­ren­tial ­between juve­niles and the 30 to 39 age group was so great that even rel­a­tively large up­ward re­vi­sions in the juve­nile rate would not close the gap ­between these two co­horts. There­fore, there is

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



49

good rea­son to as­sume that these age com­par­i­sons are valid, but read­ers ­should keep in mind the dif­fi­cul­ties that cloud the ­data’s inter­pret­abil­ity on the issue of the av­er­age ­hooligan’s age.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Ed­u­ca­tional At­tain­ment Un­for­tu­nately, in­for­ma­tion on the av­er­age ­hooligan’s ed­u­ca­tional level is ­spotty and im­pres­sion­is­tic. Based on the non­system­atic data avail­ able on the con­victed hoo­li­gan ­cohort’s de­gree of ed­u­ca­tional at­tain­ment, the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan was a ­poorly ed­u­cated pri­mary or sec­on­dary ­school drop­out. A 1957 study of a local sam­ple of 745 peo­ple con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism found, for ex­am­ple, that al­most half of them (50 per­c ent) only had an ele­m en­t ary ed­u ­c a­t ion below the ­fourth-year (klass) level. Most of the rest (35 per­cent) had left ­school ­between the fifth and ­seventh year. In com­par­i­son to the over 85 per­ cent of the sam­ple who were pri­mary or sec­on­dary ­school drop­outs, the per­cent­age of sec­on­dary ­school grad­u­ates among these con­victs ­amounted to 13 per­cent. Only eigh­teen peo­ple, or 2 per­cent of the hoo­li­ gans in the sam­ple, had some level of ­higher ed­u­ca­tion.109 Avail­able data sug­gests that such low ed­u­ca­tional lev­els and high pri­mary and sec­on­dary ­school drop­out rates were typ­ic­ al of hoo­li­gan con­victs in the 1960s as well. The ab­so­lute ma­jor­ity (58 per­cent) of those con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism in the RSFSR in 1961 were re­ported to have only a pri­mary ­school ed­uc­ a­tion (nachal’noe ob­ra­zov­a­nie) or were ­listed as ­barely lit­er­ate (mal­o­gra­mot­nye).110 Like­wise, hoo­li­gan con­victs in 1962 through­out the USSR dis­played a sim­i­lar (though ­slightly im­proved) level of ed­uc­ a­tional at­tain­ment, with 46 per­cent re­ported as hav­ing ei­ther an ele­men­tary ed­uc­ a­tion or being il­lit­er­ate or being ­barely lit­er­ ate.111 Al­though over­all ed­u­ca­tional at­tain­ments were still low, the av­er­age con­victed hoo­li­gan ap­pears to have been get­ting bet­ter ed­u­ cated as the Khrush­chev pe­riod ­neared its end. In ad­di­tion, the re­ported de­gree of ed­u­ca­tional at­tain­ment among the con­vict co­hort began to dis­play a gen­er­a­tional di­vide ­between young and old of­fend­ers dur­ing this same pe­riod, with the lat­ter tend­ing to have less school­ing than their ­younger counter­parts.112 In com­par­is­ on to the over­all So­viet pop­u­la­tion, the av­er­age hoo­li­ gan con­vict was less ed­u­cated, had ­higher drop­out rates, and suf­fered from more sig­nif­i­cant ­amounts of il­lit­er­acy. In other words, he was less ­schooled than your av­er­age Ivan and Masha—but often not by much. In fact, the ed­u­ca­tional level of con­victed hoo­li­gans was often

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

50



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

un­com­fort­ably close to that of the gen­eral adult pop­u­la­tion. As we have seen, the 1957 sam­ple ­showed that 85 per­cent of hoo­li­gans had ­dropped out of ­school at or by the ­seventh class level. The cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure for RSFSR cit­i­zens was 72 per­cent and for USSR cit­i­zens as a whole it was 79 per­cent.113 Sur­pris­ingly when ed­uc­ a­tional lev­els are dis­ag­gre­gated ac­cord­ing to gen­der, the av­er­age hoo­li­gan had an ap­prox­i­mately equal, if not ­slightly bet­ter, ed­u­ca­tion than the av­er­age male cit­i­zen, even in com­par­a­tively more ad­vanced re­pub­lics, such as the RSFSR. For in­stance, 87 per­cent of men (ex­clud­ing pen­sion­ers and do­mes­tic ser­vants) in the RSFSR had ­dropped out of ­school at or be­fore the ­seventh class, com­pared to 85 per­cent in the 1957 hoo­li­gan sam­ple.114 Not only was the av­er­age hoo­li­ gan mar­gi­nally bet­ter ed­u­cated than the av­er­age So­viet adult male, he was also bet­ter ed­u­cated than the or­di­nary po­lice­men who were try­ing to catch him. In 1956, the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee noted that 93 per­cent of po­lice patrol­men had an in­com­plete ­secondary-level ed­u­ca­tion, a 10 per­cent ­higher drop­out rate than the 1957 hoo­li­gan sam­ple.115 There­ fore, in­stead of being an anom­aly or ex­cep­tion, the av­er­age ­hooligan’s rel­at­ ively low de­gree of ed­u­ca­tional at­tain­ment ­marked him yet again as a So­viet every­man—re­flect­ing the na­ture of a so­ci­ety that, while it was pro­gress­ing rap­idly, still had much to ­achieve in im­prov­ing the ed­u­ca­tional pro­file of its pop­u­la­tion.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Re­cid­i­vism The sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan was a ­first-time of­fender who had no prior crim­i­nal con­vic­tions on his ­record be­fore his ar­rest for hoo­li­gan­ism (see table 5). This, of ­course, does not mean that the av­er­age hoo­li­gan had never en­gaged in pre­vi­ous crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing. It only means that he was never ­caught and con­victed in a court for his past mis­deeds. As with the un­der­re­port­ing of juve­nile of­fend­ers, the wide­ spread pun­ish­ment of ­first-time, non­se­ri­ous of­fend­ers “off the books” ­through ad­min­is­tra­tive pun­ish­ments, ver­bal warn­ings, or spot fines (see chap­ter 5) prob­ably dis­torted re­cid­i­vism rates down­ward and under­stated the prev­a­lence of re­peat of­fend­ers in the con­vict sam­ple. Yet de­spite the ­skewed na­ture of the data set, the high num­ber of ­first-time of­fend­ers in the con­vict group was sig­nif­i­cant. In the early years of the Khrush­chev pe­riod, the num­ber of ­first-time of­fend­ers in the con­vict pool re­mained at or above 80 per­cent, peak­ing at a high of 89 per­cent in 1954 and hit­ting a low of 80 per­cent in 1957. Yet al­though

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

51



Table 5.  Recidivism Rate among Convicted Hooligans in the USSR, 1947–1957 Years

Convicted Previously for Hooliganism (%)

1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957

3.3 3.6 4.1 5.2 6.3 7.0 5.0 3.7 6.3 7.7 9.6

Convicted Previously for Other Crimes (%)

Total: Repeat Offenders (%)

8.2 10.1 12.6 15.0 14.6 12.6 8.1 7.3 9.9 9.8 10.2

11.5 13.7 16.7 20.2 20.9 19.6 13.1 11.0 16.2 17.5 19.8

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Source: GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 58.

the over­w helm­i ng ma­jor­i ty of hoo­l i­g ans dur­i ng the 1950s were ­ rst-time of­fend­ers, the pe­riod ­between 1947 and 1957 did see ­steady fi ­growth in the per­cent­age of re­peat of­fend­ers, es­pe­cially those who had an ear­lier con­vic­tion for hoo­li­gan­ism. While the per­cent­age of those pre­vi­ously con­victed of other ­crimes held ­steady or even de­creased, the per­cent­age of con­victs who had pre­vi­ous hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions more than trip­led ­between 1947 and 1957—sug­gest­ing that as the ­antihooligan cam­paign ­started in the mid-1950s and ­peaked ­between 1955 and 1957, many prior of­fend­ers were re­cap­tured and re­cy­cled ­through the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. The ­steady trend to­ward in­creased re­cid­i­vism ev­id ­ ent in the 1950s in­creased ­quickly and sud­denly in the early 1960s with the per­cent­age of re­cid­i­vist of­fend­ers jump­ing from 20 per­cent of the con­vict co­hort in 1957 to 37 per­cent in 1962, 34 per­cent in 1964, and 40 per­cent in 1966.116 When prior ad­min­is­tra­tive pun­ish­ments for minor of­fenses such as petty hoo­li­gan­ism were added to the es­ti­mates, stud­ies sug­gested that re­cid­i­vism rates among hoo­li­gans con­victed in the sec­ond half of the 1960s were as high as 50 per­cent.117 The ­growth in the re­cid­i­vism rate through­out the 1950s and 1960s ­showed that the ­state’s at­tempt to re­ha­bil­i­tate and re­in­te­grate hoo­li­ gans had pro­duced an in­creas­ing ­stream of ca­reer crim­in ­ als ­rather than

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

52



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

con­verts to the So­viet cause. Hav­ing been stig­ma­tized with a ­prison r­ ecord, pos­sible res­i­dency re­stric­tions, and an out­sider iden­tity that often hin­dered their abil­ity to find em­ploy­ment or re­in­te­grate suc­cess­ fully into or­di­nary so­ci­ety, a third to a half of hoo­li­gan ­ex-convicts in the 1960s fell back into old ­self-destructive hab­its and found their way back into the court and camp ­system fol­low­ing their re­lease.

Re­pub­li­can Dis­tri­bu­tion

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

In terms of his re­pub­li­can hab­i­tat, the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age con­victed So­viet hoo­li­gan re­sided in the RSFSR, the ter­ri­to­rial core of the old Rom­a­nov Em­pire. In re­la­tion to its sis­ter re­pub­lics, the RSFSR was an eco­nomic and cul­tural pow­er­house. It was also a con­sis­tent over­ prod­ucer of the ­country’s crim­i­nal de­vi­ants. While it con­tained ap­prox­i­ mately 55 per­cent of the ­USSR’s total pop­u­la­tion dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod, the RSFSR con­victed ap­prox­i­mately 70 per­cent of its hoo­li­gans over the same time span (1953: 74 per­cent, 1955: 73 per­cent, 1957: 70 per­cent, 1959: 70 per­cent, 1961: 68 per­cent, 1963: 70 per­cent).118 Con­ trol­ling for size dif­fer­ences ­between the more pop­u­lous RSFSR and its ­smaller peer re­pub­lics, the RSFSR con­tin­ued con­sis­tently to out­pace the oth­ers in the pro­duc­tion of hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions (see table 6). Al­though so many hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions were in the RSFSR, the au­thor­ities nei­ther re­stricted their ­anti-hooligan ef­forts to this area nor con­ceived of hoo­li­gan­ism as a ­uniquely Rus­sian crime. In fact, the

Table 6.  Distribution of Hooliganism (Simple and Malicious) by Republic, Measured in Number of Convicts per 100,000 People, 1961–1963 Republics RSFSR Kazakh SSR Georgian SSR Ukrainian SSR Belorussian SSR Uzbek SSR

1961

1962

1963

145.2 118.4 100.8 93.8 56.9 46.9

142.5 106.8 91.7 72.5 51.6 55.6

92.7 73.5 77.1 44.7 41.1 41.4

Source: GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 5.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



53

au­thor­ities made no at­tempt to iden­tify a na­tional di­men­sion in So­viet hoo­li­gan­ism or to pin the blame on Rus­sians for their multi­eth­nic ­society’s lin­ger­ing prob­lem with de­vi­ancy. De­spite the ample data that was col­lected on So­viet hoo­li­gans, the sta­tis­tics are si­lent on the na­tional or eth­nic iden­tity of con­victed of­fend­ers. Stud­ies of ­pre-Revolutionary hoo­li­gan­ism in the late Im­pe­rial pe­riod have made cau­sal con­nec­tions ­between crim­in ­ al de­vi­ancy and Rus­sian na­tional iden­tity or ­Slavic 119 eth­nic­ity. Be­cause of the lack of avail­able in­for­ma­tion on both na­tion­al­ ity and eth­nic­ity in the data, we can­not make sim­i­lar gen­er­al­iza­tions here.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Al­co­hol and Hoo­li­gan­ism The sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan was vir­tu­ally al­ways drunk when he com­mit­ted his crime—under­lin­ing the close con­nec­tion that ex­isted in the USSR ­between ­chronic in­ebri­a­tion, male mis­be­hav­ior, and hoo­li­gan­ism. To put it ­slightly dif­fer­ently, hoo­li­gan­ism was not just some­thing men did—it was some­thing that ­drunken men did. Typ­i­cally, re­ports found that ­between 80 to 90 per­cent of con­victed hoo­li­gans were under the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol when they com­mit­ted their acts of crim­i­nal de­vi­ancy.120 By com­par­i­son, crim­i­nals con­victed of rob­bery, pre­med­i­tated mur­der, and rape were drunk only 54 per­cent, 61 per­cent, and 63 per­cent of the time when they com­mit­ted their crime.121 As we have seen, this ­uniquely close link ­between ­bingedrinking and crim­i­nal de­vi­ance was well known to the au­thor­ities, who often ­treated al­co­hol abuse as a key cause of hoo­li­gan­ism and ­shaped their ­anti-deviance ef­forts ac­cord­ingly. Given the often close cor­re­spon­dence ­between drunk­en­ness and de­vi­ancy, it is tempt­ing to con­clude as well that the ma­jor­ity of hoo­li­ gans were al­co­hol­ics. How­ever, there is no re­li­able sta­tis­ti­cal data on this issue. Cer­tainly, some con­victed hoo­li­gans were prob­lem drink­ers who were prone to the c­ hronic, ­long-standing abuse of hard liq­uor. Oth­ers, how­ever, ap­pear to have been oc­ca­sional ­binge-drinkers who over­con­sumed al­co­hol pe­ri­od­i­cally, es­pe­cially on week­ends, pay­days, and pub­lic hol­i­days. ­Rather than out­right ad­dic­tion, drink­ing style or the pre­vail­ing cul­ture of So­viet al­co­hol con­sump­tion (which en­cour­ aged the over­drink­ing of ­strong al­co­holic bev­er­ages in a sin­gle sit­ting) ap­pears to be the key var­i­able that ­turned seem­ingly or­di­nary epi­sodes of drink­ing into crim­i­nal cases of hoo­li­gan­ism.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

54



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Party/Kom­so­mol Mem­ber­ship In this chap­ter, many ­things have been ­stated about who the av­er­age hoo­li­gan was. Now, we can make a gen­er­al­iza­tion about who he was not. The sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age con­victed So­viet hoo­li­gan was nei­ther a mem­ber of the Com­mu­nist Party nor of the Kom­so­mol. From a 1947 high of 5 per­cent of con­victed hoo­li­gans, the per­cent­age of Com­mu­nist Party mem­bers in the con­vict pop­u­la­tion de­creased stead­ily to ­around 1 per­cent in the 1950s and 1960s (see table 7)—mean­ing that over 98 per­cent of con­victed hoo­li­gan of­fend­ers were out­side the se­lect ­clique of Com­mu­nist Party mem­bers. Of ­course, one can­not con­clude from this that Party mem­bers were all par­ag ­ ons of good con­duct who ab­horred the com­mon­place bad be­hav­iors, such as ­binge-drinking, that drove other So­viet cit­i­zens into de­vi­ancy. As with rates of juve­nile hoo­li­gan­ism, the dis­ci­plin­ing of Party mem­bers “off the books” prob­ably under­stated the ­amount of de­vi­ancy ­within this com­mu­nity and kept their con­vic­tion rates for hoo­li­gan­ism down rel­a­tive to the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, the pres­ence of al­ter­na­tive, inter­nal ve­nues for dis­ci­plin­ing Party mem­ bers ­through Party Con­trol Com­mis­sions may have been ma­nip­u­lated to keep ­Party-affiliated mis­be­hav­ers out of reg­u­lar ­courts and off of crim­i­nal ­records. In ad­di­tion, Party bod­ies and pa­trons may have inter­ vened in the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system to ­shield fel­low mem­bers from pun­ish­ment. In the Azer­bai­jani SSR, for ex­am­ple, the po­lice did not press petty hoo­li­gan ­charges ­against Party mem­bers with­out the ap­proval of the local dis­trict Party com­mit­tee, giv­ing local ­bosses veto power over the pun­ish­ment of ­Party-affiliated of­fend­ers.122 In other cases, local ­judges threw out hoo­li­gan cases, in part be­cause of the ­defendant’s Party ­status.123 As the num­ber of Party mem­bers in the con­vict sam­ple de­creased dur­ing the 1950s, the per­cent­age of Kom­so­mol mem­bers, mov­ing in in­verse cor­re­la­tion, in­creased. In the pe­riod ­between 1947 to 1957, the size of the ­Komsomol’s share in the pop­u­la­tion of hoo­li­gan con­victs in­creased from 5 per­cent to 8 per­cent. Kom­so­mol hoo­li­gan­ism con­tin­ued to grow into the 1960s with the RSFSR re­port­ing that 9 per­cent of its 1961 hoo­li­gan con­victs were mem­bers of the youth ­league.124 In fact, hoo­li­gan­ism was one of the most pop­u­lar ­crimes for young Len­in­ists to com­mit, with every third Kom­so­mol mem­ber con­victed of a crime being con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism.125 The in­creas­ing cor­re­la­tion ­between

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

55



Table 7.  Rates of Party and Komsomol Membership among Convicted Hooligans, 1947–1957 Years

Percentage of Party Members

Percentage of Komsomol Members

1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1963

5.3 3.7 2.7 2.1 1.7 1.6 1.0 0.8 0.8 0.7 0.8 1.7

5.2 5.2 5.4 6.6 7.6 8.1 7.3 8.2 8.0 7.4 7.8 —

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Source: GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 58. For the 1963 information, see GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 157.

Kom­so­mol mem­ber­ship and crim­i­nal de­vi­ancy was satir­ized by a Krok­o­dil car­toon in which an in­ves­ti­ga­tor asks a ­well-dressed man ­whether he knows the tat­tooed, ­bruised, and blood­ied hoo­li­gan youth sit­ting be­fore him: “Of ­course, I do,” the man re­plies. “I col­lect his Kom­so­mol dues every month.”126 De­spite these iso­lated ex­am­ples of moral panic and mass media sen­sa­tion­al­ism, Party and Kom­so­mol mem­bers re­mained a rel­a­tively in­sig­nif­i­cant part of the co­hort of hoo­li­gan con­victs, ­rarely amount­ing to more than 10 per­cent of pros­e­cu­tions under this crim­i­nal cat­e­gory. Just as in his class iden­tity and level of ed­u­ca­tional at­tain­ment, the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age hoo­li­gan was a So­viet every­man in the sense that he did not be­long to the ­well-connected and priv­i­leged elite that com­prised the Com­mu­nist Party and its ­feeder or­gan­iza­tion in the Kom­so­mol. Like other or­di­nary So­viet work­ers, the av­er­age con­victed hoo­li­gan was a small cog in the com­plex, strat­ified ma­chine of So­viet so­cial­ism—a ma­chine that the Kom­so­mol and Party elite dom­i­nated sup­pos­edly on his be­half and for his ben­e­fit.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

one line short

56



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

Urban/Rural Split The sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan com­mit­ted his crime in a city. Hoo­li­gan­ism was an urban crime, with more than 60 per­cent of its in­ci­ dents oc­cur­ring in cit­ies and urban ­workers’ set­tle­ments (see table 8). It was ­closely cor­re­lated with the rap­idly chang­ing urban en­vi­ron­ment of the 1950s and 1960s. This era saw the built en­vi­ron­ment of the city trans­formed with the mass con­struc­tion of pre­fab­ri­cated apart­ment ­blocks. At the same time, the urban pop­u­la­tion ex­ploded as ­in-migrants ­flooded in from the shrink­ing vil­lages. In short, dur­ing the Khrush­chev era, the So­viet Union ­shifted de­fin­i­tively from being a rural so­ci­ety to em­bod­y­ing one vi­sion of mod­ern, urban, in­dus­trial civ­il­iza­tion. De­spite the ma­jor­ity of urban hoo­li­gan­ism in the con­vict pop­u­la­tion, rural hoo­li­gan­ism re­tained and even re­gained a sig­nif­i­cant share in the con­vict sam­ple in the 1950s as the in­ci­dence of urban hoo­li­gan­ism ­dropped from a post­war high of 67 per­cent in 1947 to a low of 59 per­cent in 1957. How­ever, the ­city’s pre­dom­i­nance in the pro­duc­tion of de­vi­ance was ­quickly re­gained in the 1960s. In 1961, the RSFSR Su­preme Court re­ported that the urban/rural ­spread had wid­ened to 67 per­cent and 33 per­cent.127 By 1963, the per­cent­age of urban hoo­li­gan­ism in the RSFSR had in­creased to 70 per­cent, turn­ing the city back into the pre­mier site of So­viet hoo­li­gan­ism.128

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Table 8.  Urban/Rural Distribution of Hooliganism in the USSR, 1947–1957 Years

Urban Area (%)

1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957

63.3 60.6 66.9 63.0 63.0 63.4 64.7 60.6 60.9 60.4 58.6

Rural Area (%) 36.7 39.4 33.1 37.0 37.0 36.6 35.3 39.4 39.1 39.6 41.4

Source: GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 58.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period



57

De­s pite the rapid ad­v ance of urban in­d us­t ri­a l­i sm dur­i ng the Khrush­chev pe­riod, hoo­li­gan­ism was con­sis­tently more urban than the coun­try in which it oc­curred. In 1953, for ex­am­ple, the urban pop­u­la­tion ­amounted to only 43 per­cent of the So­viet pop­u­la­tion, but more than 60 per­cent of the con­victed hoo­li­gan­ism in this year was com­mit­ted in a city. Like­wise, the urban pop­u­la­tion ac­counted for 52 per­cent of the So­viet cit­i­zenry in 1964, yet was the stage for ­nearly 70 per­cent of its con­victed hoo­li­gan ­crimes. Hoo­li­gan­ism was, there­fore, ur­ba­niz­ing at a rate that was even more ex­plo­sive than post­war So­viet so­ci­ety as a whole—re­flect­ing the close cor­re­la­tion ­between the en­vi­ron­ment of the ­fast-growing in­dus­trial city and hoo­li­gan­ism and plac­ing the hoo­li­gan at the ­avant-garde of So­viet urban ­change. In terms of so­cial con­text, the av­er­age con­victed hoo­li­gan was, by the end of Khrush­chev era, an ur­ban­ite who lived, ­worked, and com­mit­ted his crime in the brave new world of the stan­dard­ized So­viet fac­tory town.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Con­clu­sion: The Sta­tis­ti­cally Av­er­age So­viet Hoo­li­gan The sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age So­viet hoo­li­gan was a male ­between 25 and 50 years of age. He lived in a city in the RSFSR. He was an in­dus­trial ­worker and, as we shall see in the next chap­ter, often a mar­ried fam­ily man. He had an in­com­plete pri­mary or sec­on­dary level ed­u­ca­tion and no prior his­tory of crim­i­nal con­vic­tion. And, he was a sub­stance ­abuser whose drug of ­choice was al­co­hol. In many ways, the sta­tis­ti­cally av­er­age hoo­li­gan was the mir­ror of a rap­idly mod­ern­iz­ing So­viet so­ci­ety that was be­com­ing, like him, more urban, in­dus­trial, and ed­u­cated over the ­course of the ­post-Stalinist ­decade. ­Rather than being a mon­strous anom­aly, de­vi­ant other, or ex­ter­nal im­port, he was, in many re­spects, a So­viet every­man—only more male, more drunk, and more Rus­sian (in terms of re­pub­lic of res­i­ dence if not in na­tion­al­ity). In this way, the hoo­li­gan both was and was not a so­cial mar­gi­nal. He iso­lated him­self in his after­work hours from the col­lec­tive or­gan­iza­tions and ac­tiv­i­ties of cul­tured lei­sure that the So­viet civ­il­iz­ing pro­ject ­pushed. ­Rather than being an ac­ti­vist or an or­gan­iza­tion man, he mar­gi­nal­ized him­self from the of­fi­cial pro­grams and in­sti­tu­tions of So­viet power. How­ever, in terms of his so­cial class and oc­cu­pa­tional pro­file, he was the ideo­log­i­cal cen­ter of the So­viet so­ci­ety he was al­leg­edly dis­re­spect­ing with his crime. As the heart of the work­ing class, he was not an out­sider. He was born in the USSR and was a prod­uct of it—no mat­ter what the ­regime’s “sur­vi­vals of

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

58



Hooliganism and the Hooligan during the Khrushchev Period

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

cap­i­tal­ism” rhet­o­ric ­seemed to sug­gest about his alien or­i­gins. He was, seem­ingly, the core con­stit­u­ent of a So­viet pro­ject pred­i­cated on ­working-class em­pow­er­ment and ad­vance­ment. The hoo­li­gan was a ­worker, but not the model ­worker that the So­viet state ­wanted to pro­ duce. In the hoo­li­gan, the So­viet state saw the dark side of the work­ing class in whose name it ruled—and de­clared war on it.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:32:51.

2 Pri­vate Mat­ters or Pub­lic ­Crimes?

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Emer­gence of Do­mes­tic Hoo­li­gan­ism in So­viet Rus­sia

An il­lus­tra­tion in a 1956 issue of the So­viet sa­tir­ical mag­a­zine Krok­o­dil de­picted young men loi­ter­ing on the city ­streets and ha­rass­ing fe­male pe­des­trians.1 This was the stereo­type of hoo­li­gan­ism that many So­viet cit­i­zens en­coun­tered in films and read about in nov­els and news­papers. This stereo­typ­i­cal por­trait re­flected com­mon ideas about who hoo­li­gans were and what they did. It also re­flected con­tem­po­rary con­cerns over urban crime, youth cul­ture, al­co­hol­ism, and pub­lic ­safety. It re­flected many ­things. But, like most stereo­types, it did not re­flect re­al­ity fully. By the mid-1960s, the typ­i­cal So­viet hoo­li­gan was not an ad­o­les­cent loi­ter­ing on a city ­street and as­sault­ing pe­des­trians. He was a mar­ried man who ­stayed at home with his fam­ily and vic­ti­mized his wife and chil­dren. Re­ports on hoo­li­gan­ism in the early 1950s noted that “streets and court­yards (dvory)” were the most com­mon sites of hoo­li­gan­ism.2 How­ ever, the apart­ment began to dis­place the ­street and the court­yard as the cen­ter for hoo­li­gan ac­tiv­ity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, es­pe­cially in the So­viet ­Union’s ex­pand­ing urban cen­ters. This ­Khrushchev-era re­lo­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to the apart­ment trans­formed the iden­tity of both hoo­li­gan and vic­tim. Sur­pris­ingly, hus­bands and wives were 59

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

60



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

much more ­l ikely to be par­t ies to hoo­l i­g an­i sm dur­i ng the ­p ostStalin pe­riod than the stereo­typ­i­cal strang­ers in the night de­picted in Krok­o­dil. Do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism made abu­sive hus­bands and loud neigh­bors into a new class of de­vi­ants. It also made the pub­lic and the pri­vate into ob­jects of de­bate. In cases of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism, po­lice, ­judges, and pros­e­cu­tors were ­forced to de­fine the bor­ders of the pub­lic place. They also had to de­cide when ­events that went on be­hind ­closed doors, such as spou­sal abuse and fam­ily ar­gu­ments, ­stopped being pri­vate mat­ters and be­came pub­lic ­crimes. In this man­ner, the emer­gence of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism is more than just a story of the re­lo­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to the home. It is also a case study in the nego­ti­a­tion and trans­for­ma­tion of pub­lic/pri­vate boun­dar­ies in the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Pub­lic Par­a­digm of Hoo­li­gan­ism The ­People’s Com­mis­sar­iat of Mu­nic­i­pal Ser­vices of the Rus­sian Re­pub­ lic (Nar­komk­hoz RSFSR) and the ­People’s Com­mis­sar­iat of Jus­tice of the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (Nar­ko­miust RSFSR) ­launched the de­bate over do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism and the multi­ple mean­ings of “the pub­lic” by crim­i­nal­iz­ing mis­be­hav­ior in com­mu­nal apart­ments in a July 1935 cir­cu­lar. De­signed to ­change a com­mon site of inter­per­sonal con­flict into a zone of cul­tured liv­ing, the cir­cu­lar an­nounced that the pa­thol­o­gies that com­monly af­flicted com­mu­nal life, such as noisy drink­ing bouts and vi­o­lent ar­gu­ments, would now be con­sid­ered as hoo­li­gan­ism.3 In­ad­ver­tently, the Nar­komk­hoz/Nar­ko­miust RSFSR cir­cu­lar ­touched off a con­tro­versy about what hoo­li­gan­ism was and where it could occur that would trans­form hoo­li­gan pros­e­cu­tion pat­terns and chal­lenge the un­stable boun­dar­ies that sep­ar­ated pub­lic from pri­vate and in­di­vid­ual from col­lec­tive. The 1935 cir­cu­lar “On the Fight ­against Hoo­li­gan­ism in Apart­ments” ­brought hoo­li­gan­ism in­doors and, by de­cid­ing to treat pri­vate de­vi­ants in the same man­ner as their pub­lic counter­parts, ­created a new type of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism (by­tovoe khu­li­ganstvo). How­ever, the new cir­cu­lar ran into de­ter­mined op­po­si­tion from ­high-ranking mem­bers in the So­viet ju­di­ci­ary. The USSR Su­preme Court, in par­tic­u­lar, ­housed a num­ber of vocal crit­ics. In an April 1939 Ple­num, the court ­warned that the cir­cu­lar had, ­through ex­pand­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to new ­spaces, ­created a new type of hoo­li­ gan­ism that was not de­fined in re­pub­li­can crim­i­nal codes.4 By ena­bling

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



61

legal work­ers to read hoo­li­gan­ism into every­day do­mes­tic dra­mas, the court wor­ried that the cir­cu­lar had made hoo­li­gan­ism into a catch­all cat­e­gory and ob­scured the mean­ing of a crime al­ready no­to­ri­ous for its opac­ity, elas­tic­ity, and am­bi­gu­ity. This ­prompted crit­i­cism from jus­tices who com­plained: “[al­though] hoo­li­gan­ism is an ac­tion that ex­presses dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety we apply this ar­ti­cle when a quar­rel hap­pens ­between a hus­band and a wife in their homes.”5 They noted that the Nar­ko­miust/Nar­komk­hoz RSFSR cir­cu­lar, by trans­form­ing the com­mon­ place into the crim­i­nal, threat­ened to ­create a spike in hoo­li­gan cases that would over­whelm an over­stretched ju­di­cial infra­struc­ture with the every­day “squab­bles” that ­plagued life in over­crowded urban hous­ing.6 The USSR Su­preme ­Court’s re­sponse was to prom­ul­gate a pub­lic par­a­digm of hoo­li­gan­ism. In a de­cree is­sued at the same ple­num where they at­tacked the Nar­ko­miust/Nar­komkh­hoz cir­cu­lar, the USSR Su­ preme Court an­nounced the ex­pli­citly pub­lic pa­ram­e­ters of hoo­li­gan­ ism by de­fin­ing it as an “ac­tiv­ity that is con­nected with vi­o­lence, dam­age or de­struc­tion of prop­erty . . . that is com­mit­ted in a club, in a the­a­ter, or in other pub­lic ­places (obsh­chest­ven­nye mesta).”7 The USSR Su­preme So­viet re­in­forced the emerg­ing pub­lic par­a­digm with its Au­gust 1940 de­cree on petty theft and hoo­li­gan­ism. Like the USSR Su­preme ­Court’s ear­lier inter­pre­ta­tion, this de­cree ex­pli­citly ­linked hoo­li­gan­ism to a set of spe­cific sites in which it could be com­mit­ted, ­namely “en­ter­prises ( pred­pri­a­tiia), in­sti­tu­tions (uch­rezh­de­niia) and pub­lic ­places.”8 That this de­cree ­should have had the un­in­tended ef­fect of ce­ment­ing the Su­preme ­Court’s cor­re­la­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism with a de­fined set of pub­lic sites was ­ironic given that its pri­mary pur­pose was to re­duce labor mo­bil­ity ­rather than ex­clude the ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to ­hearth and home. As sev­eral schol­ars have noted, the Au­gust 1940 de­cree was in­tended to re­duce job turn­over, pro­mote labor dis­ci­pline, and im­prove eco­nomic pro­duc­tiv­ity in the face of the loom­ing war ­against fas­cism.9 The lan­guage on “pub­lic ­places” had been ­tacked on to the end of the de­cree as a sweet­ener tar­geted to win the sup­port of those con­cerned about re­ports of ris­ing urban dis­or­der and youth crime.10 Al­though writ­ten for dif­fer­ent pur­poses and mo­ti­vated by dif­fer­ent in­ten­tions, the 1939 USSR Su­preme Court and the 1940 USSR Su­preme So­viet de­crees both con­trib­uted to the crea­tion of a pub­lic par­a­digm of hoo­li­gan­ism. Each in its own way, they ­linked the le­git­i­mate ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to ex­pli­citly pub­lic lo­ca­tions and, in the pro­cess, made

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

62



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

the inter­pre­ta­tion of space cen­tral to the under­stand­ing and ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism. ­Whether to beat back an over­reach­ing def­i­ni­tion of de­vi­ant be­hav­ior, com­bat ris­ing urban dis­or­der, or re­duce labor turn­ over, both the USSR Su­preme Court and the USSR Su­preme So­viet tied the crim­i­nal cat­e­gory of hoo­li­gan­ism to the con­cept of the pub­lic place. Yet by doing so, they in­ad­ver­tently made every case of hoo­li­gan­ism into a po­ten­tial op­por­tu­nity for legal work­ers, crim­i­nol­o­gists, and or­di­nary cit­i­zens to argue over and re­im­a­gine what the “pub­lic” meant, es­pe­ cially in a so­cial­ist so­ci­ety where the bour­geois dis­tinc­tion ­between pub­lic and pri­vate ­spheres had long been de­rided as ideo­log­i­cally il­ le­git­i­mate and il­lu­sory.11 In an en­vi­ron­ment where the bor­ders ­between pub­lic and pri­vate were often en­tan­gled, ­ill-formed, and fluid, the at­tempt to link the am­big­u­ous and con­tested crim­i­nal cat­e­gory of hoo­li­ gan­ism to the ­equally ­open-ended and ­opaque con­cept of the pub­lic place added an­other seem­ingly in­sol­u­ble di­men­sion to the al­ready vex­ing ques­tion of iden­tify­ing and ap­ply­ing this elu­sive crime. Spa­tial­iz­ing hoo­li­gan­ism and tying it to a spe­cif­i­cally de­fined set of pub­lic ­places was, how­ever, only one means by which the USSR Su­preme Court ­sought to ­create a pub­lic par­a­digm that would pre­vent the trans­for­ma­tion of “petty apart­ment squab­bles” into hoo­li­gan­ism. To sep­ar­ate hoo­li­gan­ism from the ar­gu­ments and ­in-fighting that often ­marred the over­crowded So­viet home, the USSR Su­preme Court ­stressed the fact that hoo­li­gan­ism could only be mo­ti­vated by dis­re­spect for the So­viet so­cial col­lec­tive and its val­ues ­rather than by dys­func­tional per­sonal re­la­tion­ships. In the same April 1939 res­o­lu­tion in which it de­fined ­hooliganism’s pub­lic spa­tial pa­ram­e­ters, the Court as­serted that ­crimes, such as “beat­ings” and “in­sults” [os­kor­ble­niia], could be pros­e­cuted as hoo­li­gan­ism only if their “goal” was to “dis­play ex­plicit dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety and not when their mo­tives [were] con­nected with the per­sonal re­la­tion­ship ­between the ­guilty party and the vic­tim.”12 With this de­cree, the USSR Su­preme Court re­im­a­gined hoo­li­gan­ism as an anon­y­mous crime that oc­curred ­between strang­ers. Mo­ti­vated by con­tempt and dis­re­spect for the So­viet pro­ject, ­hooliganism’s true vic­tim was so­ci­ety and its col­lec­ti­vist mo­ral­ity ­rather than the ac­costed in­di­vid­ual. Like acts in non­pub­lic ­places, the USSR Su­preme Court de­nied pri­vate re­la­tion­ships con­sid­er­a­tion as pos­sible ­spaces for hoo­li­ gan­ism. Hoo­li­gan­ism was a crime ex­press­ing the ­deviant’s out­rage ­against the moral order and ac­tive con­tempt for So­viet so­cial val­ues and, there­fore, could not be mo­ti­vated by the de­press­ingly or­di­nary

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



63

ar­gu­ments and an­i­mos­ities that ­plagued the every­day inter­ac­tions of in­di­vid­ual fam­ily mem­bers, ­friends, neigh­bors, lov­ers, ac­quain­tances, and ­spouses. Like the in­clu­sion of the pub­lic place into the under­stand­ing and ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism, such a ­strict pub­lic con­struc­tion of the mo­tives and vic­tims of hoo­li­gan­ism was de­signed to de­leg­i­ti­mize the idea of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism. In ad­di­tion, such rul­ings were sup­posed to dif­fer­en­tiate this elas­tic catch­all cat­e­gory of de­vi­ance from ­closely re­lated ­crimes and limit its over­use and ex­pan­sive mis­inter­pre­ta­tion. How­ever, the pub­lic con­struc­tion of ­hooliganism’s mo­tives and vic­tims also, again like the link­age of pub­lic space and hoo­li­gan act, ­created an in­ad­ver­tent op­por­tu­nity for legal work­ers and cit­i­zens to argue over the elu­sive and inter­twined boun­dar­ies ­between the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen and the so­cial col­lec­tive. By mak­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism con­ tin­gent on amor­phous con­cepts such as the pub­lic place or the elu­sive boun­dary ­between in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive, the Su­preme Court and the state (how­ever in­ad­ver­tently) pro­vided legal work­ers, crim­i­nol­o­ gists, and cit­i­zens with a dif­fi­cult and daily op­por­tu­nity to de­fine these con­cepts in ref­er­ence to the messy and malle­able re­al­ities of So­viet life. And, in the pro­cess, the state ceded to ac­tors out­side its im­me­di­ate con­ trol the op­por­tu­nity to im­a­gine and re­im­a­gine some of the key terms of So­viet cul­ture in ways that some­times re­in­forced and some­times chal­ lenged the ­center’s pre­ex­ist­ing ideas and prac­tices. More than just an ex­pres­sion of moral panic or ­all-purpose crim­i­nal cat­e­gory, hoo­li­gan­ism acted as an en­try­way ­through which count­less local cit­i­zens and legal work­ers en­tered into an on­go­ing de­bate in ­postStalinist so­ci­ety over lo­cat­ing the un­stable and en­tan­gled boun­dar­ies ­between the elu­sive pri­vate world of the in­di­vid­ual and the ex­pan­sive pub­lic world of the so­cial col­lec­tive. By ap­ply­ing hoo­li­gan­ism to some cases and not to oth­ers, as well as inter­pret­ing hoo­li­gan­ism in nar­row or ex­pan­sive ways, cit­i­zens and so­cial con­trol ­agents were not only de­cid­ing which crim­i­nal la­bels to affix to which of­fenses, they were also, at the same time and in their quiet and un­co­or­di­nated ways, ar­guing for and call­ing into being new no­tions of pub­lic boun­dar­ies and re­spon­ sibil­ities. Sim­ply put, they were shap­ing the So­viet pub­lic ­sphere to match their local under­stand­ings, in­cli­na­tions, and inter­ests and, in the pro­cess, cu­mu­la­tively and grad­u­ally chang­ing the ways that other So­viet cit­i­zens, crim­i­nol­o­gists, ­courts, and legal work­ers im­a­gined the most in­ti­mate inter­ac­tions and areas of their do­mes­tic ­worlds.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

64



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Peel­ing Back the Pub­lic Par­a­digm After 1940, the pub­lic par­a­digm ­served as the main model for under­ stand­ing, ap­ply­ing, and lim­it­ing the eva­sive crim­i­nal cat­eg ­ ory of hoo­li­ gan­ism. How­ever, dur­ing the 1950s, new under­stand­ings of hoo­li­gan­ ism grad­u­ally chal­lenged and put pres­sure on the pub­lic par­a­digm, under­stand­ings that freed legal work­ers to apply hoo­li­gan­ism to ­onceforbidden res­id ­ en­tial and re­la­tional ­spaces. The roll­back of the pub­lic par­a­digm of hoo­li­gan­ism and the re­sur­gence of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism is, how­ever, not a sim­ple story of the lat­ter con­cept com­pletely over­tak­ing and trump­ing the for­mer. In­stead, it is a messy story of the col­li­sion of dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions of how to under­stand and apply hoo­li­gan­ism that gen­er­ated a great deal of local con­fu­sion and contra­dic­tory prac­tice. In this en­vi­ron­ment of un­cer­tainty with its lack of clear cen­tral sig­nals and di­rec­tives, local ac­tors were left to them­selves to ­create their own pol­i­cies and prec­ed ­ ents about how to apply hoo­li­gan­ism. Often re­spond­ing to ­victims’ com­plaints and to their own under­ stand­ings of what was and was not hoo­li­gan, more and more local po­lice­men, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges ig­nored the ­strict spa­tial and re­la­ tional de­mands of the pub­lic par­a­digm, con­victed hoo­li­gans for mis­ be­hav­ior in their homes tar­geted to­ward their fam­ily, ­friends, and neigh­bors, and drove the re­sur­gence of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism. More and more crim­i­nol­o­gists also read the am­bi­gu­ities of the pub­lic par­a­ digm in crea­tive and ex­pan­sive ways that al­lowed for the pros­e­cu­tion of do­mes­tic acts ­between in­ti­mates under an ex­panded under­stand­ing of the hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory. The dis­par­ate and un­co­or­di­nated ac­tions of these three ­groups (out­raged vic­tims, cru­sad­ing local legal work­ers, and crea­tive crim­i­nol­o­gists) led to the de facto do­mes­ti­ca­tion of hoo­li­ gan­ism in the Khrush­chev pe­riod and ­brought into being a new under­ stand­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism that saw this once ex­pli­citly pub­lic cat­e­gory morph into a new means to po­lice dis­or­dered do­mes­tic ­spaces and en­force ­proper per­sonal re­la­tion­ships in all areas of So­viet so­ci­ety. As we have seen, the pub­lic par­a­digm made de­ter­min­ing the mo­tive of the crim­i­nal a cen­tral part of iden­tify­ing and ap­ply­ing hoo­li­gan­ism. Ac­cord­ing to the re­stric­tive terms of the pub­lic par­a­digm, hoo­li­gan­ism could only be com­mit­ted in­ten­tion­ally and could only stem from the de­sire to show dis­re­spect and dis­dain for So­viet so­ci­ety and its col­lec­ ti­v­ist val­ues. Hoo­li­gan­ism could not orig­i­nate from ­within per­sonal re­la­tion­ships and could not be com­mit­ted ­against a per­son whom the hoo­li­gan knew, such as an ac­quain­tance, ­friend, wife, or rel­a­tive.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



65

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the im­por­tance of as­cer­tain­ing mo­tive in the pub­lic ­paradigm’s under­stand­ing and ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism, many de­fen­dants suc­cess­fully ­argued in court or ­through the ap­peals pro­cess that their ac­tions were not hoo­li­gan­ism be­cause they were in­volved in a per­sonal re­la­tion­ship with the vic­tim. By dem­on­strat­ing a per­sonal his­tory, the de­fen­dant could show that his ac­tions were mo­ti­ vated by an­i­mus to­ward a spe­cific in­di­vid­ual ­rather than by the dis­ re­spect to­ward the so­cial order that was the sine qua non of So­viet hoo­li­ gan­ism. The de­fen­dant, by pur­su­ing this strat­egy, could argue that his case, ­rather than being a pub­lic con­cern (obsh­chest­ven­noe delo) de­serv­ing crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, was a pri­vate mat­ter (lich­noe delo) or, as a law­yer ­argued in an ap­peal, “a typ­i­cal do­mes­tic quar­rel de­void of any ele­ment of hoo­li­gan­ism.”13 The case of Ivan pro­vides a good ex­am­ple of this ac­quit­tal strat­egy. While in his ­neighbor’s apart­ment, Ivan phys­i­cally at­tacked the man, ­knocked over a ker­o­sene stove, vom­ited in the ­neighbor’s room, and used foul lan­guage in the pres­ence of his chil­dren. In Au­gust 1953, Ivan was con­victed of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism by a Mos­cow re­gional court and sen­tenced to two years im­pris­on­ment. Fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion for hoo­li­gan­ism, Ivan ap­pealed his sen­tence to the USSR Su­preme Court. In his ap­peals let­ter, Ivan did not deny what he had done or argue that he did not com­mit a crime. He only ­argued that he had a mo­tive for his ac­tion and, there­fore, could not and ­should not have been pros­e­cuted for hoo­li­gan­ism. By ar­guing that his ac­tions ­stemmed from ha­tred for his neigh­bor ­rather than from ha­tred for So­viet so­ci­ety, he wrig­gled his way out of being la­beled a hoo­li­gan. This ver­dict contra­dicts the mean­ing of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism that is in the Crim­i­nal Code, which spec­ifies that hoo­li­gan ac­tions must be com­mit­ted with­out any mo­tive or rea­son. . . . But in my ac­tions, as you can see, there ­wasn’t ­motive-less hoo­li­gan­ism. In fact, it was quite to the ­contrary and I had a mo­tive. A long time be­fore this case, I was, on three oc­ca­sions, in bad per­sonal re­la­tions with my neigh­bor. . . . For the mo­tives given in the ­court’s ver­dict, the court could have ­evicted me from the apart­ment. But it ­should not have tried my case in the crim­i­nal ­sphere and ­charged me with hoo­li­gan­ism.14

In their ap­peals, hoo­li­gans, like Ivan, did not deny that they had done some­thing wrong. They de­nied that they did some­thing to so­ci­ety. “How is it pos­sible to agree with this ver­dict?” a hoo­li­gan who had been con­victed of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism for push­ing and curs­ing at his

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

66



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

­ other-in-law wrote in his ap­peals let­ter. “My ac­tions were con­nected m with ­purely fam­ily re­la­tion­ships and ­sprang from an inter­nal fam­ily ar­gu­ment with my wife [and could not, there­fore, be hoo­li­gan­ism].”15 By con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing their ac­tions, em­bed­ding them in re­la­tion­ships, and por­tray­ing them as mo­ti­vated and di­rected to­ward par­tic­u­lar peo­ple, such con­victs used the pub­lic ­paradigm’s loop­holes to es­cape heavy hoo­li­gan sen­tences and argue their way into ac­quit­tals or ­lighter sen­tences. In­stead of being legal il­lit­er­ates, hoo­li­gans such as Ivan were well ­schooled in the sub­tle­ties of the law and its re­la­tional re­stric­tions. They knew that the type of re­la­tion­ship that ex­isted ­between crim­i­nal and vic­tim was, for So­viet jur­ists, vital to de­ter­min­ing if a crim­i­nal act was hoo­li­gan­ism, and they ma­nip­u­lated it to their ad­van­tage. “An ex­pe­ri­ enced hoo­li­gan, es­pe­cially one who has spent time in a place of de­ten­ tion and has re­ceived suit­able in­struc­tions or one who has con­sulted with a dis­hon­est law­yer,” a judge noted in a let­ter to the jour­nal Sot­sia­ lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’, “al­ways tries to dis­cover and show in court some kind of mo­tive for his ac­tions. Thus, they al­ways talk about jeal­ousy, re­venge, and about per­sonal mat­ters and to sup­port their story they bring wit­nesses, who are ­mostly rel­a­tives or ­friends.”16 The ap­peals strat­egy these hoo­li­gans im­ple­mented took ad­van­tage of the un­cer­tain and am­big­u­ous boun­dary that sep­ar­ated such ­closely re­lated crim­i­nal cat­e­go­ries as ­crimes ­against the in­di­vid­ual from ­crimes ­against the so­cial order. As we have dis­cussed, the pub­lic par­a­digm made a clear dis­tinc­tion ­between ­crimes mo­ti­vated by and di­rected ­against in­di­vid­u­als and ­crimes mo­ti­vated by and di­rected ­against so­ci­ety and its code of val­ues. In the messy re­al­ities of prac­ti­cal case­work, how­ever, it was ex­tremely dif­fi­cult to draw such ­clean-cut dis­tinc­tions, es­pe­cially in a so­cial­ist so­ci­ety where the boun­dar­ies ­between cit­i­zen and so­cial col­lec­tive were often en­tan­gled or de­lib­er­ately dis­missed as ar­ti­fi­cial bour­geois con­structs. In a pol­ity where the per­sonal was the po­lit­i­cal and where the so­cial col­lec­tive often sub­sumed the in­di­vid­ual, the pub­lic ­paradigm’s in­sis­tence that ­crimes could be ­neatly com­part­ men­tal­ized as ei­ther ­against the in­di­vid­ual or ­against the so­cial col­lec­ tive over­looked the fact that many hoo­li­gan of­fenses had an im­pact on both. ­Crimes ­against in­di­vid­u­als often had ­larger spill­over con­se­ quences that af­fected so­cial order. ­Crimes ­against so­ci­ety, like­wise, often af­fected the sep­ar­ate in­di­vid­u­als ­within it. ­Looked at in all their messy multi­di­men­sion­al­ity, the hoo­li­gan ­crimes that legal au­thor­ities and local cit­i­zens con­fronted often l­ acked

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



67

c­ lear-cut ei­ther/or cat­eg ­ or­iza­tion. In­stead, most hoo­li­gan acts con­ tained inter­lock­ing so­cial and in­di­vid­ual di­men­sions that strad­dled both w ­ orlds and, there­fore, ­blurred the bor­ders b ­ etween them. ­Forced by the ei­ther/or logic of the pub­lic par­a­digm to dis­tin­guish and sep­ar­ate what was often multi­di­men­sional, murky, and ca­pable of being inter­ preted in var­i­ous ways, legal au­thor­ities were put in the dif­fi­cult po­si­ tion of de­cid­ing (using their own dis­cre­tion) when of­fenses ­against in­di­vid­u­als ­ceased being per­sonal mat­ters and ­started be­com­ing hoo­li­ gan ­crimes ­against so­ci­ety as a whole. Not sur­pris­ingly, am­bi­gu­ity arose over where to sit­u­ate the un­cer­tain and ­ill-formed line ­between the or­di­nary bad re­la­tion­ship and the over­sized of­fense of hoo­li­gan­ism—an am­bi­gu­ity that em­pow­ered con­cerned local cit­i­zens and law en­forc­ers to under­stand and apply hoo­li­gan­ism in their own ways and that savvy hoo­li­gans could try to ex­ploit to es­cape con­vic­tion. In this con­fus­ing and am­big­u­ous sit­u­a­tion, local po­lice­men, pros­e­cu­ tors, and ­judges could and did inter­pret sim­i­lar (and, in some in­stances, the same) cases in dif­fer­ent ways de­pend­ing on their inter­ests and under­stand­ings. Take the case of a man who ­cursed at a woman who re­fused to dance with him on a pub­lic ­park’s dance floor and ­slashed her face with a ra­zor­blade. Was this crime best char­ac­ter­ized as a case of as­sault in­flicted ­against the in­di­vid­ual woman? Or, was it a case of hoo­li­gan­ism that vi­o­lated so­cial order and ex­pressed bra­zen con­tempt for So­viet val­ues? Who was the vic­tim of the crime, the woman or So­viet so­ci­ety? The Iv­a­novo po­lice who ar­rested the man inter­preted his crime as an of­fense ­against So­viet so­cial order and, ac­cord­ingly, ­charged the man with ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism. The Iv­a­novo city court, how­ever, ­looked at the same case, inter­preted it as a crime ­against the in­di­vid­ual, threw out the hoo­li­gan ­charge, and con­victed the man of sim­ple as­sault. Fol­low­ing the dic­tates of the pub­lic par­a­digm that hoo­li­gan­ism could not stem from per­sonal mo­tives, the court rea­soned “that the ac­tions of the ac­cused did not have as their goal the ex­pres­sion of clear dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety but were di­rected ­against the girl as a re­sult of a quar­rel with her aris­ing from their per­ sonal re­la­tions.” The Iv­a­novo re­gional court, hear­ing the case on ap­peal, inter­preted the same crime yet again as an of­fense ­against the So­viet so­cial order. De­spite the im­pec­cable pub­lic par­a­digm logic of the lower ­court’s sen­tence, the re­gional court threw out their rul­ing and con­victed the man of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism.17 The var­ied, ­flip-flopping inter­pre­ta­tions these local Iv­a­novo law en­ forc­ers gave to the same crime were any­thing but rare and dem­on­strated

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

68



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

the state of con­fu­sion and contra­dic­tory prac­tice that sur­rounded hoo­li­ gan­ism at the dawn of the Khrush­chev era. How­ever, this case also hints at how the com­bi­na­tion of un­cer­tainty and in­con­sis­tent prac­tice ­created an open and op­por­tu­nis­tic en­vi­ron­ment that local law en­force­ ment could use to apply their own novel under­stand­ings of hoo­li­gan­ ism to local cases often in­de­pen­dent of the ­center’s dic­tates and con­trol. The re­gional ­court’s rul­ing also pro­vided ­glimpses of a new under­ stand­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism that was be­gin­ning to chip away at the re­la­ tional re­stric­tions of the pub­lic par­a­digm—an under­stand­ing that was of­fer­ing local ac­tors a way to see (de­spite the di­rec­tives of the 1939 USSR Su­preme Court de­cree) ­crimes ­against in­di­vid­u­als si­mul­ta­ne­ously as hoo­li­gan as­saults on the so­cial order. In the ­months be­fore ­Stalin’s death, crim­i­nol­o­gists and local pros­e­ cu­tors began crit­i­ciz­ing the pub­lic par­ad ­ igm in the pages of the lead­ing So­viet legal jour­nals.18 Blam­ing the in­con­sis­tency and con­fu­sion that sur­rounded the ques­tion of how to apply hoo­li­gan­ism on the “un­clear,” “out­moded,” and “in­suf­fi­ciently com­pre­hen­sive” char­ac­ter of the 1939 USSR Su­preme Court de­cree, these pi­on ­ eer­ing pros­ec­ u­tors and crim­i­ nol­o­gists at­tacked what they saw as the ­overly nar­row and il­le­git­i­mate ei­ther/or logic of the pub­lic par­a­digm. ­Rather than in­sist­ing that ­crimes could only be ei­ther ­against the in­di­vid­ual or ­against so­ci­ety, these crit­ics ­argued that, under cer­tain circum­stances, ­crimes could be ­against both the in­di­vid­ual and ­against the so­cial order at the same time. With this both/and logic, these local pros­e­cu­tors and crim­i­nol­o­gists im­plied that the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen and the so­cial col­lec­tive were inter­ twined en­tities that could eas­ily slide or shade into each other. More cru­cially for our story, they also im­plied that the ­crimes ­against these en­tan­gled en­tities were ­equally slip­pery and ex­pan­sive con­structs that were also ca­pable of shift­ing eas­ily and im­per­cept­ibly from one to an­other. In par­tic­u­lar, these crit­ics ­argued that if a crime ­against a per­son was com­mit­ted “in a pub­lic place, in the pres­ence of other cit­i­zens and in vi­o­la­tion of the ele­men­tary rules of so­cial­ist com­mu­nal­ism,” then that crime (re­gard­less of ­whether it was mo­ti­vated by per­sonal ar­gu­ ments or an­i­mos­ities) also si­mul­ta­ne­ously vi­o­lated pub­lic order.19 In this sense, it ­shifted from being a di­rect crime ­against the in­di­vid­ual into an in­di­rectly mo­ti­vated as­sault ­against the val­ues of the So­viet so­cial col­lec­tive that could le­git­i­mately be tried as hoo­li­gan­ism.20 ­Through this model of in­di­rect and in­ci­den­tal hoo­li­gan­ism, these crim­i­nol­o­gists and local law en­forc­ers found a way to hoo­lig­a­nize hei­nous, pub­lic ­crimes ­against in­di­vid­u­als that arose out of the per­sonal re­la­tion­ships

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



69

­ etween of­fend­ers and vic­tims. It could now be ­argued that when a b man, mo­ti­vated by per­sonal an­i­mus, com­mit­ted as­sault with the pri­mary in­ten­tion of in­flict­ing vi­o­lence on the in­di­vid­ual, he was si­mul­ta­ne­ously (al­beit in­di­rectly and un­in­ten­tion­ally) com­mit­ting an act of sym­bolic vi­o­lence ­against the So­viet moral order that trans­formed his crime into hoo­li­gan­ism. The in­di­rectly mo­ti­vated model of hoo­li­gan­ism dem­on­strated, in a strik­ing way, how inter­woven and perme­able the boun­dar­ies were be­com­ing ­between bad inter­per­sonal re­la­tion­ships and hoo­li­gan of­fenses and how eas­ily the for­mer could be trans­lated and ­folded into an ex­pan­ sive under­stand­ing of the lat­ter. By mak­ing vir­tu­ally any pub­lic of­fense ­against a So­viet per­son into an in­ci­den­tal and in­di­rect form of hoo­li­ gan­ism, this new model ­served as a con­ven­ient in­tel­lec­tual de­vice for read­ing a whole new set of in­ti­mate acts and inter­per­sonal re­la­tion­ships into the re­stricted do­main of hoo­li­gan de­vi­ance. Of ­course, local ­courts had tried of­fenses ­against fam­ily, ­friends, neigh­bors, and ac­quain­t­ances as hoo­li­gan­ism be­fore. Now, how­ever, such ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived a new in­tel­lec­tual jus­tifi­ca­tion and theo­ret­i­cal re­spect­abil­ity that ­helped set the stage for the ­post-Stalinist spike in ­home-based hoo­li­gan­ism. In ad­di­tion to ad­vanc­ing a new under­stand­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism that en­larged the do­main of de­vi­ance to in­clude dys­func­tional and abu­sive re­la­tion­ships, the ar­ti­cles also put pres­sure on the USSR Su­preme Court to issue a new rul­ing on hoo­li­gan­ism to re­place the 1939 de­cree. In par­tic­u­lar, they lob­bied for “a spe­cial de­cree of the Su­preme Court Ple­num” to “de­cide this ques­tion [of de­fin­ing ju­di­cial prac­tice to­ward hoo­li­gan­ism],” ar­guing that a “cor­rect and po­lit­i­cally sharp rul­ing would cor­rect the ­courts’ fre­quent mis­takes on this issue.”21 These crit­ics did not have to wait long for the Su­preme Court to make it­self heard on the hoo­li­gan ques­tion. Less than a year later, a ple­nary ses­sion of the USSR Su­preme Court de­creed ­changes to the April 1939 di­rec­tives on hoo­li­gan­ism that ap­peared to leg­i­ti­mize the model of in­di­rectly mo­ti­vated hoo­li­gan­ism and to re­verse the ­court’s ear­lier in­sis­tence that hoo­li­gan­ism could not be mo­ti­vated by in­di­vid­ual re­la­ tion­ships.22 As we have seen, the April 1939 USSR Su­preme Court de­cree in­structed ­courts that ­crimes such as “beat­ings” [nan­e­se­niia po­boev] and “in­sults” [os­kor­ble­niia] could be pros­e­cuted as hoo­li­gan­ism only if their “goal” was to “dis­play ex­plicit dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety and not when their mo­tives [were] con­nected with the per­sonal re­la­tion­ship ­between the of­fender and the vic­tim.”23 The March 1953 de­cree de­leted the en­tire sec­ond half of the state­ment deal­ing with the issue of per­sonal re­la­tion­ships and

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

70



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

the or­i­gin of hoo­li­gan­ism. Now, after the de­le­tion man­dated by the March 1953 re­vi­sion, the law read only that “crimes can be pros­e­cuted [as hoo­li­gan­ism] if their mo­tive is to dis­play ex­plicit dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety.”24 With the March 1953 USSR Su­preme Court re­vi­sion, one of the key ­planks of the late 1930s pub­lic par­a­digm of hoo­li­gan­ism was re­moved and sud­denly ­called into ques­tion. In­stead of per­sonal re­la­tion­ships and in­ti­mate inter­ac­tions ­between fam­ily, ­friends, and neigh­bors being ­treated as in­ad­mis­sible ­grounds for the com­mis­sion of hoo­li­gan­ism, the 1953 re­vi­sion made the rich every­day world of inter­per­sonal dis­agree­ ments and dys­func­tion into a po­ten­tial fer­tile new fron­tier for the ex­pan­ sion of an in­creas­ingly de­nuded and ­open-ended def­i­ni­tion of hoo­li­ gan­ism. The “fam­ily squab­bles” that the court had tried to ­shield from hoo­li­gan­ism in the late 1930s could now be seen, à la the ar­gu­ments of the in­di­rectly mo­ti­vated model, not as in­di­vid­ual cases of as­sault or in­sult but as in­di­rect and in­ci­den­tal acts of hoo­li­gan­ism ­against the So­viet moral com­mu­nity as a whole. Pur­pose­fully or in­ad­ver­tently, the 1953 de­cree ap­peared to leg­i­ti­mize the res­ur­rec­tion and re­sur­gence of the con­tested con­cept of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism. “Ap­peared” is the key word be­cause, al­though the March 1953 de­cree re­moved the ob­sta­cles to treat­ing inter­per­sonal dis­or­der as a cause of hoo­li­gan­ism, it did not ex­pli­citly ­endorse this view or in­struct ­courts to use ­anti-hooligan laws to po­lice do­mes­tic dis­or­der or reg­u­late the in­ti­ mate world of inter­per­sonal re­la­tion­ships. In­stead, the USSR Su­preme Court sim­ply de­leted a key part of the ear­lier con­sen­sus on how to under­stand and apply hoo­li­gan­ism and re­mained si­lent about its ­larger im­pli­ca­tions. Wait­ing for the new fed­eral and, later, re­pub­li­can crim­i­ nal law codes (then being ­slowly ­drafted and de­bated), the USSR Su­preme Court sat on its hands and, in the mean­time, is­sued vague su­deb­nye prak­tiki (guides to ju­di­cial prac­tice) that ­merely re­peated out­ dated prior under­stand­ings.25 ­Through both its ac­tions and its in­ac­tions, the USSR Su­preme Court de­volved de­ci­sion mak­ing down­ward to local ac­tors and in­creased the al­ready sig­nif­i­cant inter­pre­ta­tional free­dom that they could ex­er­cise in ap­ply­ing, under­stand­ing, and iden­tify­ing hoo­li­gan­ism ­within the con­text of their own com­mu­nities. The re­sult was a hodge­podge of in­ con­sis­tent and some­times contra­dic­tory local prac­tices. Some local ac­tors per­sisted in fol­low­ing the fa­mil­iar ­planks of the em­bat­tled pub­lic par­a­digm by con­tin­u­ing to in­sist that hoo­li­gan­ism could not orig­i­nate

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



71

in inter­per­sonal re­la­tion­ships. In ar­ti­cles, they at­tacked the model of in­di­rectly mo­ti­vated hoo­li­gan­ism, ar­guing that this con­cept threat­ened to in­crease the num­ber of hoo­li­gan con­victs un­jus­tifi­ably and to di­lute this form of de­vi­ance it into an even more mean­ing­less catch­all cat­e­gory. One re­gional pros­e­cu­tor, writ­ing in a lead­ing legal jour­nal, wor­ried that: “Such a prac­tice would lead to the un­lim­ited ex­pan­sion of the mean­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism and, in the end, to the ground­less con­vic­tion of those who ­should not be in­cluded in the num­ber of hoo­li­gans.”26 Like­wise, con­cerned local law en­forc­ers ­argued that the in­di­rect model threat­ened to ef­face the dis­tinc­tion ­between var­io ­ us crim­i­nal cat­e­go­ries and to trans­form every pub­lic of­fense into a va­riety of hoo­li­gan­ism. Such crit­ics ­feared that the fuzzy bor­ders ­between hoo­li­gan­ism and other ­crimes and the grow­ing ex­pan­sion of hoo­li­gan­ism into the dis­ tinct do­mains of other crim­in ­ al cat­e­go­ries “will lead to un­be­liev­able con­fu­sion in the op­er­a­tion of the ­courts.”27 Other local mem­bers of the legal ­system, how­ever, used the am­bi­ gu­ity and con­fu­sion that the March 1953 de­cree ­created as an op­por­tu­ nity to ex­pand their ap­pli­ca­tion of ­anti-hooligan laws to new areas and ac­tions in­volv­ing dis­or­dered do­mes­tic­ity and dys­func­tional in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ships. Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the ­center’s si­lence to im­ple­ment their own under­stand­ings of hoo­li­gan­ism, these local ac­tors in­creas­ingly ap­plied the hoo­li­gan label to con­flicts ­between fam­ily, ­friends, and neigh­bors and, in the pro­cess, grad­u­ally do­mes­ti­cated the ­post-Stalinist under­stand­ing of de­vi­ance.28 One com­men­ta­tor, for ex­am­ple, ob­served that local ju­di­cial prac­tice in his area had come to a “firm con­clu­sion” that cases of inter­per­sonal con­flict ­between in­ti­mates ­should be tried as hoo­li­gan­ism “in­de­pen­ dent of the mo­tives of such ac­tions” as long as they were com­mit­ted in a pub­lic place and ex­hib­ited dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety.29 Not only were ­courts shift­ing their prac­tices in re­la­tion to hoo­li­gan­ism, crim­in ­ ol­o­gists and legal text­books were also chang­ing their pres­en­ta­tion of hoo­li­gan­ ism to match emerg­ing local prac­tices and ideas.30 After com­ment­ing that “court prac­tice is rich in cases of hoo­li­gan­ism that arise on the ­grounds of the per­sonal re­la­tion­ship ­between the hoo­li­gan and his vic­tim,” a text­book au­thor ­opened his sec­tion on hoo­li­gan­ism by vir­ tu­ally copy­ing the in­di­rectly mo­ti­vated ­model’s ar­gu­ment that “when a per­son ­starts a quar­rel in a pub­lic place and dur­ing this shows clear dis­ re­spect for so­ci­ety then, in­de­pen­dent of the mo­tives of these acts, this per­son must be ­charged with hoo­li­gan­ism. His acts have ­crossed the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

72



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

boun­dar­ies and ex­hib­ited dis­re­spect not to­wards the per­son but to­ward so­ci­ety and the col­lec­tive.”31 As these ex­am­ples of con­flict­ing local prac­tices and opin­ions make clear, the March 1953 de­cree did not re­place one sin­gle, uni­form way of under­stand­ing and ap­ply­ing hoo­li­gan­ism (the pub­lic par­a­digm) with an­other. In­stead, the de­cree ­created a hole in the pre­dom­i­nant def­i­ni­ tion of hoo­li­gan­ism that local ac­tors ­filled with a pleth­ora of local prac­ tices, ap­pli­ca­tions, and under­stand­ings. ­Rather than creat­ing a uni­form con­cep­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to op­pose to the pub­lic par­a­digm, the March 1953 ­decree’s si­lences ­opened a space for legal ac­tors to fol­low their own in­di­vid­ual and idio­syn­cratic vi­sions of a hoo­li­gan­ism that con­formed to the in­creas­ingly mini­mal and malle­able di­rec­tives of the cen­ter as well as to their own local under­stand­ings, inter­ests, and agen­das. It also gave an op­por­tu­nity for local ac­tors to ad­vo­cate and ad­vance new mod­els of in­di­rect mo­ti­va­tion that gave in­tel­lec­tual am­mu­ni­tion to local ac­tors who ­wanted to ex­pand the do­main of de­vi­ance by re­la­bel­ing inter­per­sonal con­flicts as hoo­li­gan ­crimes ­against so­ci­ety at large. In this at­mos­phere of am­bi­gu­ity, in­con­sis­tency, new ideas, and local in­itia­ tive, do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism began to take off as some local ac­tors ­across the coun­try began (in an un­co­or­di­nated and un­planned way) to apply ­anti-hooligan laws to ­home-based of­fenses in in­creas­ing num­bers and, in this way, trans­formed ­hooliganism’s ­ever-evolving mean­ing. Dur­ing the 1950s, the first plank of the pub­lic par­ad ­ igm, that hoo­li­ gan­ism could not occur ­between par­ties in­volved in a per­sonal re­la­tion­ ship, had been re­moved. ­Slowly, hoo­li­gan­ism ­shifted from being a crime of anon­y­mous vi­ol­ ence ­between strang­ers that was mo­ti­vated by ha­tred of So­viet val­ues to be­com­ing a crime of in­ti­mate vi­o­lence in­flicted ­against loved ones and aris­ing out of the toxic re­la­tion­ships ­between es­tranged neigh­bors, fam­ily mem­bers, and ­friends that typ­ified the urban every­day. In the Khrush­chev era, cases of in­ti­mate dys­func­tion in the do­mes­tic realm, such as a hus­band beat­ing his wife or a ­father curs­ing at his chil­dren, trans­formed from un­touch­able pri­vate mat­ters (lich­nye dela) to pub­lic mat­ters (obsh­chest­ven­nye dela) that de­manded the ex­ten­sion of hoo­li­gan­ism to the So­viet home. How­ever, be­fore the con­ cept of hoo­li­gan­ism could be fully im­ported from the ­street cor­ner to the ­kitchen table and used as a way to po­lice dys­func­tion in dis­or­dered do­mes­tic ­spheres, the sec­ond plank of the pub­lic par­a­digm (the 1940 USSR Su­preme ­Soviet’s link­age of hoo­li­gan­ism to pub­lic ­places) had to be re­ex­am­ined, re­thought, and ex­pan­sively re­de­fined.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



73

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Hoo­li­gan­ism and the Boun­dar­ies of Pub­lic Space As we have seen, the 1940 USSR Su­preme So­viet de­cree had spec­ified that hoo­li­gan­ism could occur only in spe­cif­i­cally “pub­lic” sites, such as “en­ter­prises, in­sti­tu­tions, and pub­lic ­places.” By de­mand­ing that hoo­li­ gan­ism be inter­preted as a pub­lic crime com­mit­ted in a pub­lic place, the Su­preme So­viet, how­ever, also si­mul­ta­ne­ously en­sured that hoo­li­ gan­ism be­came a crime that pro­blem­a­tized the very con­cept of “the pub­lic.” By con­front­ing legal au­thor­ities with the need to think about the spa­tial dis­tinc­tion ­between pub­lic and pri­vate, hoo­li­gan­ism f­ orced each of them (whether they ­wanted or not) to de­cide for them­selves, in their daily case­work, what a pub­lic place was and con­tin­ua­ lly to con­ front the di­lemma of dis­en­tan­gling the pub­lic from the pri­vate in ­spaces where these two sup­pos­edly sep­a­ra­ble con­cepts were often in­ex­tri­cably inter­woven. Be­cause the pub­lic par­a­digm de­manded that hoo­li­gan­ism could only hap­pen in pub­lic ­places, how ­judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and po­lice­men read the ­status of ­spaces often de­ter­mined the out­come of cases. The USSR Su­preme Court, for ex­am­ple, over­turned a hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion in the case of a man who had as­saulted a ­traveler be­cause its chair­man con­ sid­ered that the de­serted rural road on which the in­ci­dent hap­pened was not a pub­lic place and there­fore not a valid site of hoo­li­gan­ism.32 In the city of Sta­lin­grad, the po­lice re­fused to ­charge a man with hoo­li­gan­ ism be­cause they de­ter­mined that the dor­mi­tory court­yard in which he com­mit­ted his crime was not a pub­lic place and, there­fore, was ­off-limits to hoo­li­gan­ism ac­cord­ing to the re­stric­tive spa­tial rules of the pub­lic par­a­digm.33 How­ever, read­ing the ­status of So­viet ­spaces was often any­thing but easy or un­prob­le­matic, es­pe­cially in a so­ci­ety whose so­cial­ist ideol­ogy and Sta­lin­ist her­it­ age re­mained sus­pi­cious of the pub­lic/pri­vate dis­ tinc­tion. In prac­tice, the pub­lic ­paradigm’s sim­plis­tic model of the pub­lic/pri­vate dis­tinc­tion was ­ill-matched to the messy and com­pli­ cated re­al­ities of the So­viet spa­tial world. As we have seen, the Su­preme So­viet and Su­preme ­Court’s pub­lic par­ad ­ igm sug­gested that the pub­lic and the pri­vate ex­isted in So­viet space as ­cleanly de­mar­cated and eas­ily sep­a­ra­ble ter­ri­to­ries with a fixed bor­der de­fin­ing them. Far from being eas­ily dis­cern­able and dif­fer­en­tiated, how­ever, the pub­lic and the pri­ vate often oc­cu­pied and over­lapped the same site in So­viet space. In other words, pub­lic and pri­vate were in­nately en­tan­gled cat­eg ­ o­ries that

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

74



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

often co­ex­isted in a super­im­posed ­rather than a ­neatly sep­a­ra­ble state. As hy­brid sites ­within which the pub­lic and pri­vate co­in­hab­ited in var­i­ous vague and fluid con­fig­u­ra­tions, the com­plex na­ture of So­viet space often be­lied local ­actors’ at­tempts to par­cel it off into pure pub­lic and pri­vate parts. ­Rather than being ­stable or sin­gu­lar, So­viet ­spaces could be read in multi­ple (even con­flict­ing) ways si­mul­ta­ne­ously ac­cord­ing to the shift­ing inter­ests, agen­das, and per­spec­tives of the inter­preter and ac­cord­ing to which part of the pub­lic/pri­vate mix the in­di­vid­ual inter­preter chose to ­stress. Was the So­viet home a pri­vate site? As we shall see, the an­swer could be (and often was) both yes and no at the same time. In such an en­tan­gled spa­tial en­vi­ron­ment, the pub­lic ­paradigm’s in­sis­tence that law en­forc­ers make clear dis­tinc­tions ­between pub­lic and pri­vate sites (and apply ­anti-hooligan laws only to the for­mer) ­opened up both prob­lems and pos­sibil­ities. The do­mes­tic site whose spa­tial ­status ­proved most trou­ble­some to read using the sim­plis­tic ei­ther/or logic of the pub­lic par­a­digm was the com­mu­nal apart­ment. With its com­plex multi­fam­ily com­po­si­tion, its crowd­ing, its areas of com­mon use, and its nosy neigh­bors, the com­mu­ nal apart­ment was the quin­tes­sen­tial hy­brid space of “pub­lic pri­vacy.”34 The si­mul­ta­ne­ous ex­is­tence of over­lap­ping pub­lic and pri­vate di­men­ sions in the super­im­posed space of the com­mu­nal apart­ment made it pos­sible for inter­pret­ers to gen­er­ate con­flict­ing inter­pre­ta­tions of its elu­sive pub­lic/pri­vate na­ture that led to di­ver­gent local prac­tices in the ap­pli­ca­tion of the hoo­li­gan label to com­mu­nal apart­ment con­flicts. For ad­vo­cates of the pub­lic par­a­digm, how­ever, the spa­tial ­status of the com­mu­nal apart­ment was un­prob­le­matic. It was not a pub­lic place. “Why was their un­worthy and ­anti-social con­duct not ­brought be­fore the court?” a 1955 Li­ter­a­tur­naia ga­zeta ar­ti­cle re­marked about a pair of apart­ment hoo­li­gans. “Cer­tainly no one can dis­pute that their con­duct is anti­so­cial. But, you see, it takes place in a [com­mu­nal] apart­ment and, in the minds of some jur­ists, the [com­mu­nal] apart­ment is not a pub­lic place and there­fore it is im­pos­sible to pros­e­cute them for hoo­li­gan­ ism.”35 De­scrib­ing an­other com­mu­nal apart­ment ­tenants’ fight ­against a pair of “apart­ment trou­ble­mak­ers,” a 1955 ar­ti­cle in Krok­o­dil also la­mented the fail­ure of local pros­e­cu­tors to try such cases as hoo­li­ gan­ism: “The rea­son is al­ways the same: the hoo­li­gan ac­tiv­ity has not oc­curred in a pub­lic place, but in an apart­ment and be­hind ­closed doors.”36 In op­po­si­tion to this re­stricted read­ing, crit­ics of the pub­lic par­a­digm ­pointed to the com­mon areas of the com­mu­nal apart­ment, such as the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



75

­ itchen, cor­ri­dors, and bath­rooms, and ­argued that they con­sti­tuted a k pub­lic place that over­lapped and co­ex­isted with the pri­vate areas in the com­plex space of the com­mu­nal apart­ment. By iden­tify­ing the pub­lic ­niches that dot­ted the com­mu­nal ­apartments’ do­mes­tic con­tours and con­firm­ing their ­status as spa­tially en­tan­gled sites, they ­argued for the ex­ten­sion of hoo­li­gan­ism to ­home-based mis­be­hav­iors.37 How­ever, other com­men­ta­tors sim­ply re­versed the pub­lic ­paradigm’s read­ing of the spa­tial na­ture of the com­mu­nal apart­ment and la­beled it unproblematically as a pub­lic place. Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the elas­tic and am­big­u­ous na­ture of So­viet space and the power to de­fine the pub­lic do­main that the pub­lic par­a­digm gave them, more and more local law en­force­ment per­son­nel were com­ing to the same con­fi­dent con­clu­sion as an of­fi­cial at the RSFSR Min­is­try of Jus­tice who, not­ing and ap­prov­ing the local rise of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions in a 1957 re­port, re­marked un­am­big­u­ously that “the com­mu­nal apart­ment in which a great num­ber of cit­i­zens live is a pub­lic place (obsh­chest­ven­noe mesto) and the afore­ men­tioned ac­tions have been ruled cor­rectly as mat­ters of pub­lic ­rather than pri­vate (chast­nyi) inter­est.”38 The sep­ar­ate apart­ment, which was grad­u­ally re­plac­ing the com­mu­ nal apart­ment as the main res­i­dence of urban So­viet cit­i­zens be­gin­ning in the 1950s and 1960s, also ­emerged as a con­tested ob­ject of spa­tial anal­y­sis.39 As stan­dard­ized units ­within ­larger multi­fam­ily struc­tures and with no­to­ri­ously thin walls, the sep­ar­ate apart­ment was a pub­lic/ pri­vate hy­brid whose am­big­u­ous spa­tial ­status could, like the com­mu­ nal apart­ment, be read in multi­ple ways.40 In ad­di­tion to those inter­ pret­ers who ­viewed the apart­ment as out­side the realm of the pub­lic, there were in­creas­ing num­bers who, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the elas­tic­ity of the ­center’s ter­mi­nol­ogy and the fuzzy mean­ing of the “pub­lic” in an en­tan­gled spa­tial en­vi­ron­ment, uni­lat­er­ally la­beled the do­mes­tic as a vital part of pub­lic space open to ­anti-hooligan po­lic­ing. These local ac­tors would have ­agreed with the chief jus­tice of the Mos­cow City Court who, be­fore a skep­ti­cal USSR Su­preme Court, as­serted: “I think that we need to apply the same pun­ish­ments to do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism as we do to hoo­li­gan­ism in a pub­lic place, be­cause the apart­ment is also a pub­lic place.”41 What al­lowed for the ex­panded ap­pli­ca­tion of the hoo­li­gan label to do­mes­tic de­vi­ance and for the con­fi­dent clas­sifi­ca­tion of the com­mu­nal and sep­ar­ate apart­ment space as a pub­lic site was a new and ex­panded inter­pre­ta­tion of the mean­ing of “pub­lic place.” In the mid-1950s ­crimi­nologists’ writ­ings on hoo­li­gan­ism began to de­velop a se­man­ti­cally

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

76



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

ex­pan­sive under­stand­ing of the pub­lic space that en­com­passed areas of res­i­dence, rest, and re­lax­a­tion. For ex­am­ple, legal schol­ars I. G. Fil­a­novs­kii and I. I. So­lod­kin, in their 1957 mono­graph on hoo­li­gan­ism, de­fined “pub­lic place” so ­broadly that it cov­ered the do­mes­tic as well as the “clubs, the­a­ters, en­ter­prises, and in­sti­tu­tions” orig­i­nally out­lined in the de­crees of the USSR Su­preme Court and USSR Su­preme So­viet. By iden­tify­ing as pub­lic “those ­places where peo­ple work, spend their lei­sure time and inter­act with one an­other, for ex­am­ple en­ter­prises, in­sti­tu­tions, the­a­ters, movie ­houses, clubs, ­streets, back­yards (dvory), stair­wells, mar­kets, ­trains, street­cars, parks, apart­ments, and ­places of study,” Fil­a­novs­kii and So­lod­kin leg­i­ti­mized do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism by push­ing the elas­tic boun­dar­ies of the un­de­fined con­cept of the “pub­lic place” out­ward to en­com­pass do­mes­tic areas once re­garded as ­off-limits to hoo­li­gan pros­ec­ u­tion.42 A text­book, like­wise, ­argued ex­pan­sively for a novel con­cep­tion of the “pub­lic place” as a moral ­rather than a spa­tial site or as any place where it was nec­es­sary to “ob­serve the rules of so­cial­ist com­mu­nal­ism.” This ­open-ended def­i­ni­tion pried open the spa­tial strait­jacket of the pub­lic par­a­digm and al­lowed “apart­ments and col­lec­tive farm ­fields” to be con­sid­ered pub­lic ­places that were open to the ap­pli­ca­tion of ­anti-hooligan laws.43 Sim­i­larly, crim­i­nol­o­gist N. F. Kuz­net­sova in her 1963 mono­graph on hoo­li­gan­ism de­clared that hoo­li­gan­ism must take place in pub­lic, but de­fined the pub­lic in an ex­pan­sive way that ef­faced the pub­lic/pri­vate di­vide and made mean­ing­less the lim­it­ing ei­ther/or logic of the pub­lic par­a­digm. She ­argued that: “The def­i­ni­tion of pub­ lic en­com­passes multi­ple ­spheres of a So­viet ­citizen’s life and ac­tiv­ity and a hoo­li­gan can dis­turb it ­wherever he is lo­cated, for ex­am­ple in a com­mu­nal or a sep­ar­ate apart­ment, in a park, in a hos­pi­tal, at work, in a sta­dium, or even in the for­est.”44 In­stead of being a pri­vate realm, a grow­ing body of legal the­ory ­argued that the home was a pub­lic place that, in re­la­tion to hoo­li­gan­ism, was no dif­fer­ent from a ­street, work­ site, park, or the­a­ter. By ex­pan­sively re­de­fin­ing the no­tion of “pub­lic place,” these crim­i­nol­o­gists were able to argue for the ex­is­tence of a pub­lic ­within the in­ti­mate do­mes­tic­ity of the apart­ment where the hoo­li­ gan could be found and to leg­i­ti­mize the ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to the home. The am­big­u­ous and en­tan­gled na­ture of the pub­lic place and its in­creas­ingly ex­pan­sive re­def­i­ni­tion in the spa­tial imag­i­na­tion of So­viet legal lit­er­a­ture were key driv­ers of the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism. The re­lo­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to the home, how­ever, was also ­fueled by

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



77

­from-below pe­ti­tion­ing and de­nun­ci­a­tion as well as mass media lob­by­ing. ­Rather than being ob­jects of the do­mes­ti­ca­tion drive, angry cit­i­zens and cru­sad­ing jour­nal­ists were ac­tive ­agents in­volved in the re­nego­ti­a­tion of pub­lic ­places and po­lice re­spon­sibil­ities. With their let­ters, they lob­bied local po­lice to crim­i­nal­ize do­mes­tic dys­func­tion under the elas­tic hoo­li­gan label and, in the pro­cess, ­helped move the ­hooligan’s hab­i­tat from the ­street cor­ner to the ­kitchen table. Con­cerned cit­i­zens, be­gin­ning in the mid-1950s, began at­tack­ing the no­tion that con­tested con­cepts like “pub­lic” and “place” were es­sen­tial pre­req­ui­sites for pros­e­cut­ing hoo­li­gan­ism. Ar­guing that ­anti-hooligan laws ­should be ap­plied ­across spa­tial sites, a ­worker from the Khab­a­ rovsk re­gion asked the USSR Pro­cu­racy at a 1955 pub­lic meet­ing to “ex­pand the cir­cle of ac­tiv­i­ties that can be con­sid­ered as hoo­li­gan­ism so that any ac­tion that ex­presses clear dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety can be de­fined as hoo­li­gan­ism ­wherever it oc­curs.”45 A rail­way ­worker, like­wise, re­marked to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the USSR Pro­cu­racy that “it is im­pos­sible to tol­er­ate such peo­ple as hoo­li­gans in our so­ci­ety and it ­shouldn’t mat­ter ­whether they com­mit hoo­li­gan­ism at home or in any other place.”46 By de­mand­ing that hoo­li­gan­ism be de­cou­pled from re­stric­tive pub­lic pa­ram­e­ters, con­cerned cit­i­zens ­opened up its ap­pli­ca­tion and ex­panded the do­main of de­vi­ant be­hav­ior to cover do­mes­tic ­spaces and dys­func­ tional fam­i­lies. Like their legal counter­parts, local cit­i­zens ­called on the state to crim­i­nal­ize dis­or­derly and dis­re­spect­ful be­hav­ior in both pub­lic ­places and pri­vate ­realms. A man from Ros­tov, not­ing that the ­threat of apart­ ment hoo­li­gan­ism was not ad­dressed by cur­rent laws, ­chided the state on its hypo­crit­i­cal dif­fe­ren­ti­a­tion ­between pros­e­cut­able pub­lic and ­non-prosecutable pri­vate forms of hoo­li­gan be­hav­ior. “If a per­son com­ mit­ted an un­dig­nified, hoo­li­gan, slan­der­ous act in a pub­lic place, a po­lice­man would im­me­di­ately lead him off to the local pre­cinct. The hoo­li­gan would then re­ceive for his ac­tions a pun­ish­ment based on the law. But why is there no law or no ar­ti­cle in the crim­i­nal code for apart­ ment hoo­li­gan­ism? Why do these hoo­li­gans re­main out­side the law and with­out pun­ish­ment? Why? Who gave them the right to com­mit hoo­li­gan­ism?”47 The ­coupling of hoo­li­gan­ism to pub­lic ­places and strang­ers, ac­cord­ing to many cit­i­zens, had trans­formed the apart­ment into a space in which trou­ble­mak­ers could act with im­pu­nity. “Ap­par­ently,” Krok­o­dil com­ plained wryly in an ar­ti­cle about apart­ment hoo­li­gan­ism “at home you can fight as much as you want.”48 The sep­ar­a­tion of the pub­lic place

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

78



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

from the apart­ment, these crit­ics main­tained, had ­created a dou­ble stan­dard on how the law ­treated inter­ior and ex­te­rior be­hav­ior. A woman, for ex­am­ple, wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet: “You write about es­tab­lish­ing crim­i­nal re­spon­sibil­ity for ap­pear­ing drunk on the ­street and in pub­lic ­places. But what about in the home? Is it per­mis­sible to act like a hoo­li­gan at home? A drunk ­thinks that when he is at home he is the mas­ter of every­thing. He can break the ­dishes. He can bust the fur­ni­ture. He can fight with his fam­ily and with the neigh­bors.49 To lobby po­lice and pros­e­cu­tors to take ac­tion ­against what they saw as hoo­li­gan­ism in the home, let­ter writ­ers ­shared their sto­ries of vic­tim­ iza­tion at the hands of de­vi­ant apart­ment dwell­ers. A Mus­co­vite, for ex­am­ple, told the USSR Su­preme So­viet of his 62­-­year-old sis­ter whose neigh­bor as­saulted her. The neigh­bor, a Party mem­ber, broke the rules of the apart­ment by wash­ing his dog in the com­mon bath­room and al­low­ing the dog to re­lieve it­self in the com­mu­nal ­apartment’s toi­let. The eld­erly sis­ter “could not agree with such dis­or­der” and com­plained to the po­lice. After the po­lice inter­vened and re­moved the dog from the apart­ment, the Party mem­ber, “tak­ing ad­van­tage of the fact that the apart­ment had only two rooms and there were no wit­nesses,” ­barged into the eld­erly ­sister’s room dur­ing the hol­i­day of No­vem­ber 7, ­grabbed her by the ­throat, and ­struck her “with great force.” The man ended his let­ter by at­tack­ing the law’s in­sis­tence on the pub­lic and the pres­ence of strang­ers in hoo­li­gan cases, try­ing to shame the au­thor­ities ­through an un­fa­vor­able com­par­i­son to the (im­a­gined) state of af­fairs under the tsars. This is how a com­mu­nist ­wished a ­non-Party mem­ber a happy hol­i­day dur­ing the an­ni­ver­sary of the Great Oc­to­ber Rev­o­lu­tion. Now she, an old and ­sickly per­son, is ­forced to wan­der ­around all day long be­cause she can’t even be in her own apart­ment be­cause she fears she will be ­beaten again. Such a case is not sol­i­tary but is wide­spread. This is ­proved by the ar­ti­cles in the news­papers. Even in old, rot­ten Tsar­ist Rus­sia it was con­sid­ered a great shame to ­strike a woman and now it ­doesn’t mean a thing. You can do it as long as it’s done in­doors and there are no wit­nesses ­around.50

Let­ter writ­ers often ap­pealed to the ­state’s inter­ests in an at­tempt to at­tract inter­ven­tion. Speak­ing to the ­state’s pro­duc­ti­vist ideol­ogy, a Mos­cow man ­claimed that an apart­ment hoo­li­gan de­prived him of sleep, ad­versely af­fected his labor out­put, and ul­ti­mately under­mined the tar­gets of the ­planned econ­omy. He also ac­cused the hoo­li­gan of dis­rupt­ing his ­children’s stud­ies and wast­ing the re­sources that the state had in­vested in youth ed­u­ca­tion.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line long

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



79

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Why are these apart­ment hoo­li­gans harm­ful and dan­ger­ous? This is very clear. After I re­turn home from work, I don’t have the right to rest and relax as I want in my own apart­ment. In the morn­ing, I have to go to work tired, ir­ri­tated, and with an ach­ing head. And on the job, my work suf­fers. My chil­dren can­not pre­pare their les­sons. My boy is in his ­fourth year at the in­sti­tute but he can­not study well. He needs to be able to rest and to be able to work in order to be­come a use­ful and knowl­edge­able spe­cial­ist for the Moth­er­land. His train­ing is cost­ing the state more than forty thou­sand ru­bles. That apart­ment hoo­li­gan is ham­per­ing and sab­ot­ ag­ing his prog­ress. He is de­creas­ing the knowl­edge of our chil­dren. This is hap­pen­ing to us right in the heart of the moth­er­land and the state is in­dif­fer­ent. When a neigh­bor is walk­ing and fid­dling with his ­record ­player or watch­ing TV at full vol­ume, he is par­al­ yz­ing all of fam­ily life. Isn’t this per­son a dan­ger­ous and harm­ful hoo­li­gan? Such apart­ment hoo­li­gans are ham­per­ing the Seven Year Plan.51

Many let­ters ­stressed the neg­a­tive im­pact apart­ment hoo­li­gans had on their qual­ity of life in an ef­fort to impel state ­agents into ac­tion. A Mos­cow woman wrote to the USSR Su­preme Court in 1956 com­plain­ ing that bad neigh­bors, whom she ­wanted pros­e­cuted as hoo­li­gans, were “system­at­ic­ ally poi­son­ing the lives of their fel­low res­i­dents with their dirty and petty ­tricks.”52 “How am I sup­posed to live under the same roof,” a woman re­marked rhe­tor­i­cally to the au­thor­ities, “with a per­son who de­nies me the pos­sibil­ity of liv­ing and work­ing nor­mally?”53 An­other woman wrote to the Su­preme So­viet: “Com­rades, you can­not im­a­gine what hap­pens in apart­ments. There are peo­ple who are com­ pletely cut off from the good life and held in their com­mu­nal apart­ ments like hos­tages.”54 The con­cern over the ­safety and sanc­tity of the fam­ily and the home wit­nessed in many let­ters ­echoed the ­themes of the fam­ily melo­drama that was be­com­ing a dom­i­nant genre in the film and lit­er­a­ture of the Khrush­chev pe­riod.55 The style and nar­ra­tive struc­ture of many ­lobbyists’ let­ters share with fam­ily melo­drama its Man­i­chaean char­ac­ters, its focus on do­mes­tic inter­i­ors, its aes­thetic of suf­fer­ing, its inter­mix­ing of the pub­lic and pri­vate, and its de­pic­tion of women and chil­dren as help­less ob­jects of vic­tim­iza­tion await­ing out­side male pro­tec­tion or res­cue.56 Let­ter writ­ers often used the mel­o­dra­matic theme of the fam­ily in dan­ger to ap­peal for pub­lic inter­ven­tion into pri­vate af­fairs. A let­ter from a 7­-­year-old boy ad­dressed to Khrush­chev and read in the Le­nin­ grad City Party Com­mit­tee ( gor­kom) at­tracted the spe­cial at­ten­tion of pa­ter­na­lis­tic Party mem­bers with its grim aes­thetic of fam­ily suf­fer­ing. Fol­low­ing the mel­o­dra­matic nar­ra­tive of the im­per­iled fam­ily, the young boy ­played on Party ob­ses­sions, such as hy­giene, so­briety, and

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

80



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

ed­uc­ a­tional ad­vance­ment, in a par­tic­ul­ arly ef­fec­tive way: “Com­rade Khrush­chev! My ­father comes home drunk and uses bad words. He is dirty. Our home is a mess. It is not ­cleaned. We live in filth. We sleep with bed­bugs. There is noth­ing to eat. He threat­ens that he will tear out ­mother’s eyes and kill her. I am ­afraid that mama will die. I can­not study be­cause of him.”57 The Party com­mit­tee im­me­di­ately re­solved to inter­vene in the ­family’s af­fair. Re­spond­ing to the mel­o­dra­matic tone and the boy’s nar­ra­tive skill, the sec­re­tary of the Party com­mit­tee re­marked “what ma­te­rial this would make for a ­writer.” The boy’s skill at mak­ing his ­real-life sit­u­a­ tion read like fic­tion and the Party com­mit­tee ­secretary’s abil­ity to read lit­er­ary ele­ments into it point to the power of ­low-brow melo­drama as a ­ready-made means ­through which vic­tims and au­thor­ities ­sought to ex­press and under­stand the so­cial pa­thol­ogy of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. In the 1950s, the mean­ing of the pub­lic ­changed from the pub­lic ­paradigm’s lim­ited list of “pub­lic” sites and ­spilled out­ward to en­ve­lope areas once seen as ­off-limits to ­anti-hooligan laws. Local law en­force­ ment, crim­i­nol­o­gists, con­cerned cit­i­zens, and cru­sad­ing jour­nal­ists (act­ing as the ­agents of this ­change) took ad­van­tage of the un­de­fined am­bi­gu­ity of the pub­lic. They used the op­por­tu­nity that the pub­lic par­a­digm of hoo­li­gan­ism af­forded them to enact their own inter­pre­ta­ tion of the ­status of ­spaces and de­ployed a so­phis­ti­cated con­cep­tion of pub­lic and pri­vate as in­nately en­tan­gled cat­e­go­ries. And, ­through these re­lated means, they grad­ua­ lly re­im­a­gined the ­status of the So­viet home in in­clu­sive terms that rec­og­nized the ex­is­tence of pub­lic di­men­sions even ­within this seem­ingly most in­ti­mate and pri­vate of areas. If ad­vo­ cates of the pub­lic par­a­digm de­manded an ar­ti­fi­cial and un­work­able dis­tinc­tion ­between pub­lic and pri­vate ­spaces for the pur­poses of pros­e ­cut­ing hoo­li­gan­ism, then these local ac­tors were in­creas­ingly de­ny­ing the boun­dar­ies that sup­pos­edly sep­ar­ated these over­lap­ping spa­tial cat­e­go­ries and de­mand­ing that hoo­li­gan­ism be used to po­lice cor­rect con­duct ­equally through­out the inter­woven pub­lic/pri­vate ma­trix that ­marked the So­viet spa­tial world. As in the con­tro­versy over ­whether vi­o­lence ­within per­sonal re­la­ tion­ships could be la­beled as hoo­li­gan­ism, the USSR Su­preme Court re­sponded to the ca­coph­ony of local inter­pre­ta­tions ­largely by stay­ing si­lent over the di­lemma of de­fin­ing a pub­lic place—de­spite in­sis­tent pleas from lower ­courts for guid­ance on this issue.58 Dur­ing the mid1950s, an inter­agency com­mit­tee en­gaged in for­mu­lat­ing ­anti-crime pol­i­cies cir­cu­lated a draft de­cree that pro­posed ex­pand­ing the def­i­ni­tion

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



81

of the pub­lic place in cases of hoo­li­gan­ism to in­clude such com­mu­nal ­spaces as multi­fam­ily apart­ments and dor­mi­to­ries. How­ever, this draft de­cree was not en­acted and the pub­lic par­a­digm re­mained in­tact.59 The Su­preme Court seems to have been wait­ing for the re­lease of the new re­pub­li­can crim­i­nal codes, hop­ing that the draft­ing com­mit­tees would de­cide the issue for them.60 As the draft­ing ­committees’ de­lib­er­a­ tions ­dragged on until the re­lease of the ­RSFSR’s new code in 1960, local legal au­thor­ities were ef­fec­tively left to de­cide for them­selves how to in­stan­tiate the ab­stract and ­open-ended terms of the ­center’s legal stat­ utes on hoo­li­gan­ism. How­ever, when the legal code was re­leased, it did not end the con­tro­versy that ­swirled ­around the di­ver­gent local inter­ pre­ta­tions of the ­ill-defined laws on hoo­li­gan­ism. In­stead, it in­ten­sified the am­bi­gu­ity and, hence, the inter­pre­ta­tional free­dom that the law’s elu­sive­ness and elas­tic­ity gave to local ac­tors to de­fine hoo­li­gan­ism for them­selves. ­Rather than de­fin­ing a pub­lic place, the new RSFSR crim­i­nal code de­leted all ref­er­ences to it and re­moved the key pub­lic par­a­digm re­quire­ ment that hoo­li­gan­ism had to occur in a pub­lic place. Com­men­ta­tors on the new RSFSR crim­i­nal code were quick to re­gard this de­le­tion as a sig­nal that “any ac­tiv­ity that is ­rudely dis­rup­tive of so­cial order and ex­presses ex­plicit dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety re­gard­less of the place of its com­mis­sion” could now be pros­e­cuted as hoo­li­gan­ism.61 By im­ply­ing that what made hoo­li­gan­ism a crime was the ­offender’s mo­tive ­rather than the place of oc­cur­rence, the de­cree ap­peared to sig­nal a vic­tory for local lob­by­ists and to leg­i­ti­mize the ap­pli­ca­tion of ­anti-hooligan laws to an un­bounded do­main of sites that in­cluded “homes, com­mu­ nal apart­ments, pri­vate apart­ments, and rooms.”62 This def­i­ni­tional shift re­in­forced the move­ment of hoo­li­gan­ism from out­door areas to apart­ments. Com­men­tar­ies on the new 1960 RSFSR crim­i­nal code were ex­plicit that, as one put it, “the law is not lim­ited by the ­places where hoo­li­gan­ ism is com­mit­ted.”63 An ar­ti­cle on the new RSFSR crim­i­nal code and its treat­ment of hoo­li­gan­ism noted: “In ­contrast with the [ear­lier] RSFSR Crim­i­nal Code . . . ar­ti­cle 206 of the new code [hoo­li­gan­ism] does not con­tain an in­di­ca­tion of the ­places where this act can be com­mit­ted. By this means, it ­brings to an end the long quar­rel about ­whether a rude dis­rup­tion of so­cial order ac­com­pa­nied by clear dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety that takes place in homes, in com­mu­nal apart­ments and in sim­i­lar ­places is hoo­li­gan­ism. Ac­cord­ing to the new code, such acts . . . fall under hoo­li­gan­ism.”64

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

82



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

Yet de­spite the un­equiv­ocal con­clu­sions of these legal com­men­ tar­ies, some local po­lice­men, pros­ec­ u­tors, and ­judges con­tin­ued to be wary of ap­ply­ing hoo­li­gan­ism to do­mes­tic ­spaces. ­Sharp-eyed ob­serv­ers would have no­ticed that nei­ther the new crim­i­nal code nor sub­se­quent Su­preme Court rul­ings ex­pli­citly ­endorsed the ­once-forbidden con­cept of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism. They would also have no­ticed that su­deb­nye prak­tiki is­sued after 1960 took pains to limit the ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ ism to the home only in sit­u­a­tions where the crime hap­pened in the pres­ence of un­re­lated peo­ple or when it vi­ol­ ated the peace and quiet of other res­i­dents.65 In the wake of the 1960 re­lease of the RSFSR crim­i­nal code, local law en­force­ment did not col­lec­tively aban­don one set of prac­tices for an­other. As be­fore, the mixed sig­nals and si­lence of the cen­ter gave local ­judges, po­lice­men, pros­e­cu­tors, and cit­i­zens the abil­ity to fol­low their own under­stand­ings of de­vi­ance. Some con­tin­ued to stick to a pub­lic par­a­digm that had seem­ingly dis­ap­peared, while many oth­ers began (or con­tin­ued) to apply an in­creas­ingly de­nuded and ex­pan­sive under­ stand­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism to an en­larged list of en­tan­gled pub­lic/pri­vate sites. As late as 1966, such an ad­vo­cate of do­mes­ti­cat­ing de­vi­ance as the head of the USSR Pro­cu­racy, R. A. Ru­denko, was ar­guing that “vi­o­la­ tions of pub­lic order in apart­ments ­should be ­treated as hoo­li­gan­ism” and urg­ing the USSR Su­preme Court to do some­thing about the do­mes­ tic hoo­li­gan­ism “that is wor­ry­ing our cit­i­zens so much.” How­ever, his pleas were coun­tered by crit­ics, such as Chair­man of the USSR Su­preme Court A. F. Gor­kin, who coun­tered that leg­i­ti­miz­ing do­mes­tic hoo­li­ gan­ism would “di­lute the mean­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism” and flood the ­courts with triv­ial cases.66 As be­fore, cen­tral ac­tion (by de­let­ing the ob­sta­cles to de­ploy­ing ­antihooligan laws to deal with do­mes­tic prob­lems) and cen­tral in­ac­tion (by fail­ing to ­endorse the con­tested con­cept of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism ex­pli­citly) ­created new ques­tions and con­flicts of opin­ion at the same time as it ­opened up new op­por­tu­nities and av­e­nues for local ac­tors and au­thor­ities to under­stand and de­ploy hoo­li­gan­ism in their own way. As in 1953, a hole had been ­opened in the heart of the pub­lic par­a­digm and local law en­forc­ers began to fill in the ­center’s si­lence with local under­stand­ings and ap­pli­ca­tions built out of local inter­ests, agen­das, and pres­sures and out of new ideas con­cern­ing the ex­pan­sive and en­ tan­gled es­sence of the So­viet pub­lic space. The stage was set for the 1960s surge in do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism con­vic­tions as the last legal ob­sta­cles of the pub­lic par­a­digm were re­moved and as en­dur­ing am­bi­gu­ity, new

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



83

ideas, and local pres­sures em­pow­ered will­ing local ac­tors to apply hoo­li­ gan­ism to cases of do­mes­tic dis­or­der through­out the var­i­ous hy­brid sites of the So­viet spa­tial world—de­spite the ob­jec­tions that some con­tin­ued to hold about this con­tro­ver­sial issue. The grow­ing prev­a­lence of do­mes­tic de­vi­ance in con­vic­tion sta­tis­tics for hoo­li­gan­ism tes­tifies to the fact that more local law en­forc­ers ­agreed with Ru­denko and his po­si­tion that some­thing had to be done about do­mes­tic de­vi­ance than with ­Gorkin’s con­cern for pre­serv­ing ­hooligan-­ ism’s def­i­ni­tional pur­ity. Start­ing from a low level in the mid-1950s, hoo­li­gan­ism in apart­ments began to be pros­e­cuted in in­creas­ingly large num­bers through­out the late 1950s and early 1960s.67 A USSR Su­preme Court study found that 17 per­cent of hoo­li­gan­ism in 1957 was com­mit­ted in apart­ments and dor­mi­to­ries, com­pared to 35 per­cent in ­streets, parks, and out­door danc­ing pa­vil­ions (tant­splosh­chadki).68 How­ever, dis­ag­gre­ gated fig­ures show that apart­ment hoo­li­gan­ism oc­curred with ­greater reg­u­lar­ity in sev­eral urban lo­cal­ities. In 1957, the Pro­cu­racy re­ported that 25 per­cent of the hoo­li­gan­ism com­mit­ted in ­Moscow’s Kras­nog­ var­diia and Bau­man dis­tricts hap­pened in apart­ments. ­Whereas in the city of ­Gor’kii and in the ­Iaroslavl’ re­gion, the per­cent­age of apart­ment hoo­li­gan­ism was 21 per­cent and 19 per­cent re­spec­tively.69 How­ever, the ­amount of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism con­vic­tions grew rap­idly through­out the sec­ond half of the 1950s. As a judge from the Mos­cow re­gion city of Lu­blino noted in 1956: “Cases of do­mes­tic hoo­li­ gan­ism that used to be rel­a­tively rare are now grow­ing ­quickly.”70 In some re­gions, such as the Bash­kir ASSR, local au­thor­ities, even in the late 1950s, re­ported to the RSFSR Min­is­ter of Jus­tice that “hoo­li­gan­ism is com­mit­ted more in apart­ments than in pub­lic ­places.”71 In the 1960s, the num­ber of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions rose yet more rap­idly as the final ­planks of the pub­lic par­a­digm were re­moved. The city of Iv­a­novo, for in­stance, re­ported that in 1961, hoo­li­gan­ism had in­creased 100 per­cent and that “the ma­jor­ity of these acts oc­curred in the home dur­ing drink­ing ­sprees.”72 A 1963 re­port of the Sar­a­tov Col­lege of Law­yers sim­i­larly noted that more cases of hoo­li­gan­ism hap­pened in apart­ments (404 cases) than on s­ treets (327 cases), dorms (152 cases), or en­ter­prises (139 cases).73 Even in the show­case cit­ies, do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism was on the rise. In 1964, the USSR Su­preme Court re­vealed that half of all ­Moscow’s cases of hoo­li­gan­ism were com­mit­ted in apart­ments.74 The Tatar ASSR re­ported, in the same year, that “the ma­jor­ity of hoo­li­gan acts were com­mit­ted in apart­ments.”75 The con­cept of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism had be­come so ac­cepted and

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

84



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

main­stream by the be­gin­ning of the 1960s that the jour­nal Ag­i­ta­tor in an ar­ti­cle on hoo­li­gans ­listed as one of their typ­i­cal ­crimes that “they start scan­dal­ous ar­gu­ments in com­mu­nal apart­ments.”76 By 1966, a re­port from the Kal­i­nin re­gion found that 50 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan­ism took place in apart­ments or ­places of res­id ­ ence.77 The RSFSR Su­preme Court like­wise re­ported in 1966 that the apart­ment was the main site of re­peat petty hoo­li­gan of­fenses.78 An­a­lyz­ing fig­ures from the sec­ond half of 1966, noted crim­i­nol­o­gist A. A. Gert­sen­zon re­ported that 41 per­cent of hoo­li­gan­ism oc­curred in “liv­ing quar­ters,” al­most dou­ble the ­amount that oc­curred in “streets and court­yards.” He also noted that every third act of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism took place in a com­mu­nal apart­ment.79 Show­ing a sim­i­lar trend to­ward de­fin­ing do­mes­tic de­vi­ance as hoo­li­gan­ism, the Mor­do­vian ASSR re­ported that over 60 per­cent of the hoo­li­gan­ism that took place in the re­pub­lic in 1967 oc­curred in apart­ments.80 The in­creas­ing move­ment of hoo­li­gan­ ism from com­mon ­spaces, such as the com­mu­nal apart­ment ­kitchen, to pri­vate rooms and ­single-family apart­ments ­prompted a no­tice­ably wor­ried Dep­uty Chair­man of the USSR Su­preme Court to an­nounce anx­iously in a 1964 re­port that: “There oc­curs not only ­so-called do­mes­tic and apart­ment hoo­li­gan­ism but now room hoo­li­gan­ism (kom­na­toe khu­li­ganstvo) has begun to ap­pear. . . . It has ­reached the point that any in­fringe­ment ­against a per­son com­mit­ted in a sep­ar­ate and pri­vate room is tried as hoo­li­gan­ism.”81 ­Through high­light­ing the es­sen­tially inter­woven na­ture of the pub­lic and the pri­vate in the So­viet imag­i­na­tion, the ­growth in pros­e­cu­tions for do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism not only chal­lenged the idea that do­mes­tic ­spaces were ­cleanly sep­a­ra­ble from pub­lic ­places, it also col­lapsed the dis­tinc­tion ­between pri­vate af­fairs and pub­lic con­cerns. As the do­mes­ ti­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism in­jected the pub­lic into ­realms and re­la­tion­ships some con­sid­ered pri­vate, it ­opened a space for some local legal work­ers and lob­by­ists to re­con­cep­tu­al­ize pri­vate mat­ters, such as do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, and turn them into pub­lic con­cerns pros­e­cut­able under an ex­pan­sive inter­pre­ta­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism. ­Through their local pros­e­cu­tory prac­tices, these local po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, ­judges, and ac­ti­vist cit­i­zens made abu­sive hus­bands and nasty neigh­bors into hoo­li­gans and trans­ formed de­vi­ance by giv­ing it a le­git­i­mate do­mes­tic face. What, in 1955, had been a pri­vate mat­ter that ­stayed “be­hind ­closed doors” was, by 1964, a pub­lic con­cern that was being tried ­openly as a crime ­against the so­cial order of the So­viet Union.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



85

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Pri­vate Mat­ters or Pub­lic ­Crimes? De­spite the de­mand of many vic­tims that they use ­anti-hooligan laws to con­trol do­mes­tic dis­or­der, many po­lice and court or­gans in the early 1950s were re­luc­tant to han­dle per­sonal and, es­pe­cially, fam­ily re­la­tion­ ships under the cat­e­gory of crim­i­nal de­vi­ance. ­Rather than using crim­i­nal law to inter­vene in the world of in­ti­mate af­fairs, au­thor­ities down­ played do­mes­tic abuse and rec­om­mended in­for­mal meth­ods of con­flict res­o­lu­tion in cases of fam­ily mis­be­hav­ior. A sol­dier, writ­ing to the USSR Su­preme So­viet, re­marked about law ­enforcement’s un­will­ing­ness to wade into do­mes­tic dis­tur­bances: “Ex­pe­ri­ence shows that in such cases the po­lice or ­courts re­fuse in gen­eral to in­ves­ti­gate these cases on the ­grounds that these are fam­ily mat­ters and that fam­i­lies can work them out them­selves.”82 La­bel­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and abuse as “fam­ily mat­ters,” local po­lice­men often re­fused to ar­rest do­mes­tic de­vi­ants and be­lit­tled their vic­tims. Con­cerned about a neigh­bor who was un­em­ployed, drank too much, and hung ­around with sus­pi­cious peo­ple, a rail­road ­worker told Pro­cu­racy rep­re­sen­ta­tives at a pub­lic meet­ing about the dif­fi­culty of get­ting the po­lice in­volved in do­mes­tic dis­tur­bances. “I in­formed the po­lice about my ­neighbor’s ac­tiv­i­ties. But, they only ­laughed at me and said that if I ­wanted some­thing done I had to bring them the hoo­li­gan my­self.”83 The in­dif­fer­ent, in­com­pe­tent, and in­sen­si­tive po­lice­man, un­ con­cerned about the do­mes­tic abuse and crime ­around him, was not only the sub­ject of cit­i­zen anger; he was also the sub­ject of so­cial ­satire, as shown by a 1956 Krok­o­dil car­toon in which a woman com­plains to a po­lice­man that her neigh­bor is on a “hoo­li­gan ram­page” and is threat­ en­ing to beat her. “When he kills you,” the po­lice­man re­sponds, “then come and see me.” The ­cartoon’s title (“It Often Hap­pens that Way”) high­lighted the fact that such a re­sponse was any­thing but rare.84 Ac­cord­ing to crit­ics, local law ­enforcers’ re­fu­sal to ar­rest and try fam­ily de­vi­ants as hoo­li­gans ­created an at­mos­phere of im­pu­nity ­around the issue of fam­ily vi­o­lence. Con­fi­dent that they were im­mune from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, do­mes­tic hoo­li­gans were em­bold­ened by this ­hands-off at­ti­tude and con­tin­ued or es­ca­lated their abu­sive be­hav­ior. “I am not ­afraid of any­body,” an apart­ment hoo­li­gan told the neigh­bor who threat­ened to turn him in to the po­lice. “No­body will dare do any­thing to me.”85 Some­times, this could lead to ­tragic con­se­quences, as in the case of Ser­gei—a man who re­port­edly “drank system­at­i­cally,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

86



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

in­sulted his fam­ily, threat­ened to kill his wife, and de­prived his neigh­ bors of peace and quiet.” At first, the neigh­bors ­turned to the po­lice for help. When no help was forth­com­ing, the neigh­bors ­turned to ­Sergei’s fac­tory di­rec­tor for help. The di­rec­tor ­passed the case on to the ­comrades’ court and ­failed to fol­low up on it. After the ­comrades’ court did noth­ing, Ser­gei bru­tally mur­dered his wife on New ­Year’s Day 1959 by ­cutting off her head.86 Often when the po­lice did inter­vene in cases of spou­sal abuse, they pre­ferred, much to the dis­like of the vic­tim, not to use cus­to­dial pun­ish­ ments and crim­in ­ al cat­e­go­ries to ad­dress the prob­lem. In some in­ stances, the po­lice ex­tracted abu­sive hus­bands from the apart­ment, took them to the sta­tion to sober up, and then re­leased them with a warn­ing and a ­pledge to im­prove their be­hav­ior. A bat­tered wife from Mos­cow wrote of how the po­lice re­sponded to the “scan­dal” her al­co­ holic hus­band ­created one night in their com­mu­nal apart­ment: “They [the po­lice] took away my hus­band. At the sta­tion they had him prom­ise that this would not hap­pen again. They asked me to write a state­ment to the local di­rec­tor of the po­lice. I ­thought that now they would fi­nally help me. In­stead, I saw that in the morn­ing they re­leased my hus­band ­scot-free. I went to the po­lice sta­tion to make an in­quiry and they ­laughed at me quite mer­rily. I was sob­bing and they ­laughed.87 An­other frus­trated woman com­plained to the USSR Su­preme So­viet about the meth­ods, or lack ­thereof, that the po­lice used in her case of do­mes­tic bat­tery. She de­scribed her usual night­time rou­tine when her hus­band drank: “Often at mid­night or at 2 AM or 3 AM I have to go and sum­mon the po­lice or leave the house for the en­tire night. The po­lice ar­rive. They take him away. But at 6 AM they free him and the case is ­closed. It ­doesn’t mat­ter what I do. The po­lice won’t do any­thing.”88 When not ­passed off as fam­ily mat­ters, po­lice and pros­ec­ u­tors often ­argued that minor cases of as­sault, def­am ­ a­tion (kle­veta), and in­sults ­between apart­ment res­i­dents and fam­ily mem­bers were cases of pri­vate com­plaint (dela chast­nogo ob­vi­ne­niia) ­rather than crim­i­nal cases of hoo­li­ gan­ism. Such cases were in­itiated only after the vic­tim filed a com­plaint and could be ter­mi­nated by rec­on­cil­i­a­tion ­between the par­ties.89 As the ten­dency to treat fam­ily vi­o­lence as cases of per­sonal com­plaint makes clear, the pro­po­nents of do­mes­ti­cat­ing de­vi­ance had to strug­gle ­against ­larger so­cial at­ti­tudes that re­fused to see spou­sal abuse and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence as or­di­nary ­crimes. Many Rus­sian cit­i­zens (both now and then) would have ­agreed with the Kui­by­shev re­gion man who, while on trial

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



87

for ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism for the “system­atic” abuse of his wife “in the pres­ence of other ­people’s chil­dren,” de­clared: “I do not need a law­yer. I don’t need to de­fend my­self. What kind of crime is it to beat a wife? She is my wife after all and we are one fam­ily.”90 There­fore, in ad­di­tion to butt­ing heads with in­dif­fer­ent po­lice­men, ac­ti­vists for the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of de­vi­ance also had to con­vince skep­tics that do­mes­tic de­vi­ance was in­deed a crime in the first place. After wit­ness­ing the case in which an abu­sive hus­band re­ceived a light non­ cus­to­dial pun­ish­ment for beat­ing his wife, a man felt com­pelled to write and re­mind the USSR Su­preme So­viet that “we ­really do think it is a crime to beat one’s wife.”91 By cit­ing cases of egre­gious do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and ar­guing for their in­clu­sion under an ex­pan­sive under­stand­ing of crim­i­nal de­vi­ance, such ad­vo­cates ­sought to col­lapse the dis­tinc­tion ­between so­cial dis­or­der and do­mes­tic dis­or­der by la­bel­ing both as ­equally valid in­stances of hoo­li­gan­ism. Tell­ing the story of a drunk who sad­is­ti­cally “mocked his sick wife” by “put­ting vomit and rub­bish in her food and by forc­ing her to wash his feet and then drink the ­filthy water,” a local judge pres­sured his col­leagues to re­think their re­stricted vi­sion of hoo­li­gan­ism by ask­ing rhe­tor­i­cally in the pages of a lead­ing So­viet legal jour­nal: “Isn’t this hoo­li­gan­ism?”92 Pro­p o­n ents of do­m es­t i­c at­i ng de­v i­a nce ­a rgued that “apart­m ent hoo­li­gans are no less dan­ger­ous than the hoo­li­gan on the ­street.”93 Hoo­li­gan­ism in the home, they main­tained, often had sig­nif­i­cant spill­ over ef­fects that trans­formed pri­vate inter­per­sonal scan­dals into le­git­i­ mate is­sues of pub­lic con­cern and po­lice inter­ven­tion. More­over, crit­ics of the “hands off” ap­proach to the pa­thol­o­gies of the pri­vate world ­argued that such a ­stance ­rested on a dis­cred­ited bour­geois ideol­ogy of pri­vacy and a sharp sep­ar­a­tion of do­mes­tic and pub­lic ­spheres that were at odds with both so­cial­ist col­lec­ti­vism and the en­tan­gled na­ture of the So­viet pub­lic and pri­vate. “The be­hav­ior of a per­son in so­ci­ety can­not contra­dict his be­hav­ior in every­day life (byt), at home, and in his re­la­tion­ship with in­di­vid­ual per­sons,” a local judge ­argued in So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia. “In So­viet so­ci­ety there is not and must not be any bour­geois sep­ar­a­tion of mo­ral­ity into pub­lic and pri­vate.”94 Such ad­vo­cates of ap­ply­ing ­anti-hooligan laws to the do­mes­tic would have ­agreed whole­ heartedly with the opin­ion of a man who wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet crit­i­ciz­ing “those who de­fend the rot­ten, vul­gar, and ­pettybourgeois (me­shans­kaia) be­lief that a fam­ily ­should not air its dirty linen in pub­lic (sor iz izby ne ­vynosit’). . . . It is pre­cisely these acts which must

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line short

88



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

be ­brought out of the house and the scoun­drels and vul­gar­ians ­dragged to the court. . . . We will never suc­ceed in im­prov­ing pub­lic order if we don’t de­vote the nec­es­sary at­ten­tion to this.”95 Cen­tral to the ar­gu­ment of those who ­sought to crim­i­nal­ize pri­vate mat­ters was the idea that the fam­ily was an in­te­gral part of So­viet so­ci­ety, ­rather than a sep­ar­ate space of do­mes­tic auton­omy. Like the spa­tial sites of pub­lic and pri­vate, fam­ily and so­ci­ety ex­isted in the imag­i­na­tion of these ad­vo­cates as en­tan­gled and inter­woven en­tities that could not be sep­ar­ated and dis­tin­guished. There­fore, the laws that gov­erned so­cial inter­ac­tion ­should also reg­u­late re­la­tions ­within the space of the fam­ily. Ar­guing that the fam­ily was an in­te­gral and con­stit­u­ tive part of the So­viet so­cial world, the Kui­by­shev re­gional court sent a let­ter to the dep­uty chair­man of the USSR Su­preme Court de­mand­ing that ­anti-hooligan laws be freed to op­er­ate in fam­ily set­tings and ac­cus­ing the court of fol­low­ing a dou­ble stan­dard in re­la­tion to ­streetbased and ­home-based hoo­li­gan­ism.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

When we con­sider leg­is­la­tion re­gard­ing mar­riage and the fam­ily, we cor­ rectly pro­ceed from the po­si­tion that the fam­ily is the fun­da­men­tal build­ing block of our so­ci­ety, in which the inter­ests of in­di­vid­ual cit­iz­ ens and the state are ­closely con­nected. But when we con­sider cases of im­proper con­duct that take place ­within the fam­ily, in par­tic­u­lar cases of hoo­li­gan­ism, then sud­denly this fam­ily is no ­longer con­sid­ered the build­ing block of our so­ci­ety. Rude vi­o­la­tions of fam­ily peace and in­ten­tional acts that in­sult or hu­mil­i­ate fam­ily mem­bers, rel­a­tives, or ­friends ­should be con­sid­ered as ar­ti­cle 206 (hoo­li­gan­ism). And this ­should not de­pend on ­whether the neigh­bors were dis­turbed or ­whether any strang­ers were ­present.96

The de­bate over do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism ­gained par­tic­ul­ ar ­strength and mo­men­tum from the mid-1950s be­cause it par­alleled other so­cial dis­courses that ­sought to re­de­fine the bor­der­line ­between the per­sonal and the pub­lic. In par­tic­u­lar, it ­echoed a ­larger moral dis­course that ­sought to con­fig­ure pri­vate do­mes­tic mat­ters in pub­lic terms and to look for pub­lic help to deal with per­sonal prob­lems—the dis­course on communist mo­ral­ity. This ­Khrushchev-era mo­ral­ity dis­course ­sought to in­volve the col­lec­tive in reg­u­lat­ing the ­individual’s life in both pub­lic areas and pri­vate ­spheres. The communist mo­ral­ity dis­course spoke ­through press ar­ti­cles that con­demned not only adul­ter­ers and child abus­ers but also their co­work­ers and neigh­bors who ­failed to inter­vene in the be­hav­ior of their neigh­bors and co­work­ers based on the false be­lief that it was “none of their busi­ness.” By erod­ing the boun­dar­ies

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



89

that sep­ar­ated pri­vate mat­ters from pub­lic con­cerns, new ideas on communist mo­ral­ity ­helped trans­form do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism from a per­sonal prob­lem to a pub­lic crime. Communist mo­ral­ity ­changed fam­ily mat­ters from ­nobody’s busi­ness to all of ­society’s busi­ness and, in the pro­cess, ­helped make do­mes­tic de­vi­ance into a valid ob­ject of pub­lic inter­ven­tion and crim­i­nal pros­ec­ u­tion.97 The com­bi­na­tion of legal ­change, grass­roots lob­by­ing, and the ­regime’s moral cam­paign­ing ­opened a win­dow for local ac­tors to shift the way hoo­li­gan­ism was under­stood and ap­plied in re­la­tion to the in­ti­mate and the inter­per­sonal. It ­worked. In 1962, it was re­ported that 43 per­cent of the peo­ple who were con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism in the city of Ir­kutsk com­mit­ted their crime ­against a fam­ily mem­ber. In many other re­gions, the per­cent­age of con­victed hoo­li­gan acts that were di­rected ­against fam­ily mem­bers ­ranged from 33 to 40 per­cent.98 The RSFSR Su­preme Court re­ported in 1966 that over 40 per­cent of those con­victed of petty hoo­li­gan­ism had been de­tained for acts ­against their fam­il­ ies.99 In 1967, the Mor­do­vian ASSR re­ported that fam­ily mem­bers were the typ­ic­ al vic­tims of local hoo­li­gans.100 The ex­pan­sion of the def­i­ni­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to en­com­pass in­ti­mate as well as anon­y­mous re­la­tion­ships ­changed ­hooliganism’s typ­i­cal vic­tim and per­pe­tra­tor. ­Rather than a young ­street tough, the typ­i­cal hoo­li­gan was a fam­ily man. The ­hooligan’s pri­mary vic­tim was not a ­stranger, but his wife, his child, his neigh­bor, his ­friend, or his rel­a­tive. ­Gertsenzon’s fig­ures show, for ex­am­ple, that 66 per­cent of hoo­li­gans knew their vic­tims, and that they vic­ti­mized their wives more than any other cat­e­gory group­ing.101 The dis­si­dent An­drei Amal­rik also es­ti­ mated that half of the peo­ple con­victed for hoo­li­gan­ism were sen­tenced, not for dis­rup­tive be­hav­ior in pub­lic sites, but for spou­sal abuse.102 Like­wise, the ­writer Iurii Dom­brovs­kii noted that among the petty hoo­li­gans with whom he was im­pris­oned: “Al­most all the ­crimes . . . are iden­ti­cal: a quar­rel (ssora) with the neigh­bor, a quar­rel with the wife, apart­m ent squab­b les (skolki ).” 103 In­s tead of being an anon­y ­m ous ­stranger on the ­street, hoo­li­gans were the peo­ple who their vic­tims lived, inter­acted, and slept with on a daily basis. The ­growth of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism con­vic­tions in the mid-1960s grew out of a com­bi­na­tion of local pros­e­cu­tion prac­tices, ­from-below pres­sure, def­i­ni­tional ­change, and the ­regime’s dis­course on so­cial­ist mo­ral­ity. But, it also ­stemmed from the ­post-Stalinist ­elite’s will­ing­ness in the late 1950s and 1960s to pro­ject state power into dis­or­dered do­mes­tic sites. The ques­tion of how peo­ple be­haved in their homes

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

90



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

be­came in­creas­ingly im­por­tant for state of­fi­cials as the rise of the ­single-family apart­ment rev­o­lu­tion­ized the or­di­nary So­viet ­citizen’s sense of pri­vacy.104 In­stead of being a space of re­lax­a­tion and cul­tured lei­sure, of­fi­cials noted that the sep­ar­ate apart­ment was, in some in­stances, a prom­i­nent space of un­reg­u­lated vice and vic­tim­iza­tion. Hav­ing (in their minds) ex­pe­ri­enced some suc­cess in rid­ding So­viet ­streets of crime, these of­fi­cials ­argued that the pub­lic (obshchestvennost’) and the po­lice ­should turn their at­ten­tion to the final fron­tier of crime and human cor­rup­tion: the dis­or­dered home. After not­ing that the do­mes­tic ­sphere was the place where “hoo­li­gan­ism and other sur­vi­vals of the past flour­ish most ­freely,” L. F. ­Il’ichev, the Sec­re­tary of the Cen­tral ­Committee’s De­part­ment of Ideol­ogy, ­argued at a June 1963 Cen­tral Com­mit­tee Ple­num: “it is time to ex­pand the wide front for the strug­gle to ­strengthen and de­velop com­mu­nist norms in do­mes­tic life and to run a fresh ­breeze into its back al­leys.”105 The First Sec­re­tary of the Kui­by­shev Re­gional Party Com­mit­tee, A. M. Tok­a­rev, was even more ex­plicit in in­sist­ing that the do­mes­tic ­should be open to pub­lic po­lic­ing, de­clar­ing at the same Ple­num: “Such vices as drunk­en­ness, hoo­li­gan­ism, and re­li­gious ob­scu­rant­ism occur most of all in the fam­ily. There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to at­tack these vices there in the home.”106 As So­viet home life re­lo­cated to the sep­ar­ate apart­ ment, these state of­fi­cials ­wanted to end the dou­ble stan­dard that con­ demned bad be­hav­ior in pub­lic ­spaces but con­doned it in pri­vate. By dis­ci­plin­ing cit­i­zens in the home as well as in the work­place, they ­wanted to per­fect So­viet byt and get rid of the vices that threat­ened to spoil life and labor in the ­workers’ par­a­dise. As the state be­came in­creas­ingly inter­ested in pro­ject­ing its power into the pri­va­tized do­main of ­single-family life, the ­top-down inter­ests of of­fi­cials and the ­from-below de­mands of local vic­tims co­in­cided and re­sulted in the take­off of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism in the 1960s. Em­pow­ered by state ­anti-crime pol­icy, bat­tered wives, po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges used the crim­i­nal label of hoo­li­gan­ism to draw pub­lic agen­cies into pri­vate quar­rels. In the pro­cess, they ­shifted hoo­li­gan­ism from a crime that dur­ing the Sta­lin pe­riod had ­served pri­mar­ily as a means to en­force cor­rect pub­lic con­duct into a way to crim­i­nal­ize do­mes­tic ­spaces and abu­sive fam­ily re­la­tions once con­sid­ered as ­off-limits. By ar­guing that spou­sal bat­tery was ­everyone’s busi­ness ­rather than ­nobody’s busi­ness, ­abused wives and am­bi­tious of­fi­cials chal­lenged pre­vail­ing or­tho­dox­ies on the pub­lic/pri­vate di­vide and under­lined the in­creas­ ingly prob­le­matic na­ture of the dis­tinc­tion that sep­ar­ated pub­lic mat­ters from pri­vate af­fairs.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



91

The re­lo­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to the home not only ­created a new mean­ing for hoo­li­gan­ism in the ­post-Stalin world, it also ­created a new vi­sion of pub­lic re­spon­sibil­ity that was more in­tru­sive and ex­pan­sive than the Sta­lin­ist one it re­placed. In­stead of try­ing to keep the state out of their pri­vate lives, many cit­i­zens in­vited it in and asked it to po­lice the dis­or­der it found there. In this way, do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism fol­lowed a ­Khrushchev-era ten­dency for ex­tend­ing pub­lic ac­count­ abil­ity to pri­vate acts and open­ing the in­ti­ma­cies of the pri­vate world to the scru­tiny of the pub­lic gaze.107 One fam­ily, for ex­am­ple, re­quested that the Su­preme So­viet ­create a spe­cial group of pub­lic in­spec­tors who would “system­at­i­cally visit ­residents’ apart­ments . . . in order to ob­serve the norms of be­hav­ior of apart­ment res­i­dents and, in case of ne­ces­sity, to spend the night in order to see and eval­u­ate the be­hav­ior of peo­ple.” 108 Many of these let­ter writ­ers ­wanted to ex­pand the ­Khrushchev-era pol­icy of using pub­lic (obsh­chest­ven­nyi ) agen­cies (such as the ­comrades’ ­courts and the dru­zhina) to po­lice the pri­vate re­la­tion­ ships of the every­day.109 A ­worker in ­Moscow’s Poly­tech­ni­cal Mu­seum, for in­stance, ­called for local ­comrades’ ­courts to make a pe­ri­odic tour of all the apart­ments to see “how peo­ple live.”110 Such let­ter writ­ers, by craft­ing a more in­tru­sive func­tion for state and pub­lic agen­cies in the po­lic­ing and sur­veil­lance of the do­mes­tic every­day, ­helped to under­mine the ­status quo sep­ar­at­ ion of pri­vate mat­ters from pub­lic con­cerns. At heart, these cit­i­zens de­nied that pri­vate life was a ­purely per­sonal mat­ter. As a man from the Ud­murt ASSR wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet: “So­viet do­mes­tic life (byt), the So­viet fam­ily, these are not the pri­vate mat­ters of in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens or fam­i­lies. These are the di­rect duty of pub­lic or­gan­iza­tions.”111 In this way, the cat­e­gory of the do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan ­blurred the lines ­between the per­sonal and the pub­lic. As one let­ter ­writer ad­vised the USSR Su­preme So­viet: “It is time to re­mem­ber the fa­mous po­si­tion of Lenin that in our So­viet so­cial­ist so­ci­ety there is noth­ing pri­vate (chast­nyi ) and there­fore it is nec­es­sary to use state means in the fight ­against all types of crime, in­clud­ing ­crimes in apart­ ments: ­crimes which we work­ers think are nei­ther petty nor pri­vate.”112 Just as it had ­forced jur­ists and cit­i­zens to re­think the pub­lic and pri­vate as spa­tial cat­e­go­ries by call­ing into ques­tion where the pub­lic ­sphere ended and pri­vate space began, do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism chal­lenged pre­ vail­ing con­cep­tions con­cern­ing per­sonal pri­vacy and pub­lic ac­count­ abil­ity. By trans­form­ing the sub­ject of how one ­treated fam­ily and ­friends in the home from ­nobody’s busi­ness to all of ­society’s busi­ness, it ­pushed the ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism out­ward and ex­panded the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

one line long

92



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

­state’s pu­ni­tive reach ­deeper down into the every­day world of home and ­hearth.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Dis­ci­plin­ing the Do­mes­tic Hoo­li­gan Al­though the label of hoo­li­gan­ism was now being ap­plied to acts of both in­ti­mate and anon­y­mous vi­o­lence, sig­nif­i­cant asym­me­tries ex­isted ­between the ju­di­cial treat­ment of do­mes­tic and pub­lic hoo­li­gans. Sen­ tences were ­harsher for the lat­ter ­rather than the for­mer. ­People’s Judge K. ­Bel’skii, for in­stance, be­moaned the fact that apart­ment hoo­li­gans re­ceived ­lighter sen­tences than hoo­li­gans com­mit­ting ­crimes in other ­places, ­served their sen­tences in ­less-severe “gen­eral re­gime” col­o­nies, and were usu­ally pa­roled after serv­ing only half of their sen­tence.113 Just as they had ­argued for col­laps­ing the dis­tinc­tion ­between pub­lic and pri­vate mis­be­hav­ior, con­cerned cit­i­zens also ­argued for eras­ing sen­tenc­ing dif­fe­ren­tials by in­creas­ing the pun­ish­ments of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gans. The chair­man of a ­comrades’ court in Mos­cow sug­gested to the Su­preme So­viet that apart­ment hoo­li­gans be sen­tenced to hard phys­i­cal labor or to fines of two to three hun­dred ru­bles.114 Other ac­ti­v­ ists and out­raged cit­i­zens ­argued for the phys­i­cal ex­trac­tion and sep­ar­a­ tion of the hoo­li­gan from So­viet so­ci­ety. An oil ­worker in the Tatar ASSR wrote that hoo­li­gans who com­mit their ac­tions in s­ treets, pub­lic ­places, and in apart­ments ­should be sen­tenced to “twenty-five years penal ser­vi­tude (ka­torga) with con­fis­ca­tion of all prop­erty.”115 In order that “hon­est peo­ple will have a nor­mal life,” an anon­y­mous let­ter sug­ gested that after two or three con­vic­tions, apart­ment hoo­li­gans ­should be ex­iled to the Far North “with­out pos­sibil­ity of re­turn.”116 An­other irate cit­i­zen rec­om­mended that, in ad­di­tion, the rel­a­tives of con­victed apart­ment hoo­li­gans “should be sub­ject to exile in the ­far-off ­places of the USSR” as well.117 A man from Mos­cow, writ­ing to the Su­preme So­viet in 1955, ­argued that apart­ment hoo­li­gans ­should re­ceive the ul­ti­mate pun­ish­ment for the harm that they in­flict on their neigh­bors. De­ploy­ing pseudo­med­ic­ al ter­mi­nol­ogy to give his “mod­est pro­po­sal” sci­en­tific le­git­i­macy, the man ­stated: Apart­ment hoo­li­gan­ism dam­ages the ­health ­greatly. The ner­vous ­system is im­paired and ­shaken. The or­gan­ism is over­come by var­io ­ us ill­nesses and, in the end, system­atic tyr­anny leads to in­va­lid­ity. They don’t allow a per­son to rest in his own bed. They won’t let you close your eyes and go to sleep. This

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



93

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

­ rings the sick per­son ­closer to death. . . . An apart­ment hoo­li­gan is an evil b per­son and a mur­derer. Here in the So­viet Union there is a law that for in­ten­ tional mur­der the death pen­alty is given. I thank the govern­ment for this law. I ask you, ­couldn’t we apply this law to apart­ment hoo­li­gans, who, by their ac­tions, in­ten­tion­ally and system­at­i­cally mur­der peo­ple ­within the walls of their home and ­shorten the lives of peo­ple who are not ­guilty of any­thing?118

The pun­ish­ment of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism was often com­pli­cated in cases of spou­sal abuse. Wives often ­wanted their hus­bands to be pun­ished. But few ­wanted to have their hus­bands in­car­cer­ated and ­thereby to lose the fi­nan­cial sup­port of the ­family’s main wage ­earner. For ex­am­ple, a pros­e­cu­tor from the As­tra­khan re­gion wrote to the jour­ nal Sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’ that ­abused wives ­rarely seek legal re­dress ­against their abu­sive hus­bands “not only to pre­serve the fam­ily, but be­cause the ­court’s ver­dict would pun­ish them again, ma­te­ri­ally, by de­priv­ing the fam­ily of a bread­win­ner.”119 Many women were, there­fore, re­luc­tant to press for the pros­e­cu­tion of their abu­sive ­spouses. A let­ter ­writer told the Su­preme So­viet of the dou­ble bind bat­tered wives faced in using the ­courts ­against their abus­ers: “Wives usu­ally en­dure this abuse for a long time but when they lose pa­tience then they come and re­quest: ‘Put him in jail for ­twenty four hours.’ Then you ex­plain that such a meas­ure of pun­ish­ment does not exist and that their hus­band can only be sent to ­prison for an ex­tended pe­riod. Some wives agree to this and off he goes to ­prison. The ma­jor­ity, how­ever, ask that you call in­stead and give him a warn­ing or they come back after a few days and ask you to drop the case.”120 The Vo­logda Col­lege of Law­yers sim­i­larly com­plained that bat­tered wives “put the guilt ­solely or par­tially on them­selves, ­shower their ­torturer-husbands with pity for some rea­son and ask the court to l­ ighten the pun­ish­ment or not to de­prive the hus­ band of his free­dom, ex­press­ing their full faith in his re­form­abil­ity.”121 As such cases il­lus­trated, many bat­tered wives ­failed to re­port cases of abuse or, to main­tain fam­ily fi­nances, con­vinced law en­force­ment of­fi­cials not to jail their abu­sive hus­bands. This makes the rise in the num­ber of abuse cases pros­e­cuted as hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing this pe­riod even more re­mark­able given the in­cen­tives many wives faced not to re­port cases of abuse. None­the­less, de­spite the phys­i­cal and eco­nomic risks as­so­ciated with in­form­ing on their ­abuser, these vic­tims still lob­bied the state to get in­volved in their in­ti­mate do­mes­tic lives and, by doing so, under­mined any at­tempt to keep pri­vate acts from being tried and po­liced as pub­lic con­cerns.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

94



Private Matters or Public Crimes?

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Home Is Where the Hoo­li­gan Is The prev­a­lent image of the ­street hoo­li­gan in jour­nals such as Krok­o­dil ob­scured the do­mes­tic or­i­gins of a great deal of hoo­li­gan ac­tiv­ity and mis­rep­re­sented ­hooliganism’s per­pe­tra­tors and vic­tims. It ­taught So­viet cit­i­zens to fear hoo­li­gan­ism from ­strange men on the ­streets, ­rather than from the hus­bands and male rel­a­tives who ­shared their homes. In the late 1950s and 1960s, hoo­li­gan­ism ­shifted from the ­street cor­ner to the ­kitchen table, and the typ­i­cal hoo­li­gan trans­formed from the ­stranger in the ­street to the fam­ily mem­ber sit­ting at one’s side. The re­lo­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to the home gave po­lice­men, ­judges, and local pros­e­cu­tors the op­por­tu­nity to de­bate the prob­le­matic pub­lic/ pri­vate di­chot­omy and its rel­e­vance or ir­rel­e­vance to the en­tan­gled spa­tial and re­la­tional en­vi­ron­ment of So­viet so­cial­ism. Be­cause of ­hooliganism’s link to the am­big­u­ous con­cept of the “pub­lic place,” hoo­li­ gan cases pro­vided ideal ­grounds for re­think­ing what the pub­lic meant in So­viet so­ci­ety and for ar­guing about where its bor­ders ought to lie. Like­wise, cases of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism ­opened a space to de­bate pre­vail­ing dis­tinc­tions ­between pri­vate mat­ters and pub­lic con­cerns. By ap­ply­ing the con­tested cat­eg ­ ory of hoo­li­gan­ism to new con­texts and con­cerns, local lob­by­ists, po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges ­created new mean­ings for it that were ex­pan­sive and in­tru­sive. Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the am­bi­gu­ity of the pub­lic place, local au­thor­ities ex­tended the law’s mean­ing to in­clude com­mu­nal and pri­vate apart­ments. ­Through la­bel­ing do­mes­tic de­vi­ants like abu­sive hus­bands as hoo­li­gans, the pro­po­nents of crim­i­nal­iz­ing do­mes­tic dys­func­tion leg­i­ti­mized the pub­lic po­lic­ing of the home and ob­scured the prob­le­matic dis­tinc­tion ­between pri­vate mat­ters and pub­lic con­cerns. In a more gen­e ral way, the do­m es­t i­c a­t ion of hoo­l i­g an­i sm gave crim­i­nol­o­gists a new way of think­ing about the or­ig ­ ins of crime. It iden­ tified the fam­ily home as the site where vi­o­lence and vic­tim­iza­tion were prac­ticed and ­taught to the next gen­er­a­tion. Pre­vi­ously, crim­i­nol­o­gists ­argued that be­cause class ex­ploi­ta­tion did not exist in the So­viet Union, there was no inter­nal rea­son for crime ex­cept “sur­vi­vals of cap­i­tal­ism.” Far from being only a safe haven from so­cial in­stabil­ity, the So­viet fam­ily could also serve as a ­source of dis­or­der, dys­func­tion, and crime—as the in­creas­ing rate of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions in the 1950s and 1960s dem­on­strated.122 The crea­tion and grow­ing con­vic­tion of do­mes­tic de­vi­ants saw the move­ment of hoo­li­gan­ism out of tra­di­tional spa­tial frame­works and

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Private Matters or Public Crimes?



95

into new sites. This pro­cess of dis­plac­ing de­vi­ance onto new con­texts and con­cerns can also be seen in re­gard to the new ­Khrushchev-era phe­nom­e­non of radio hoo­li­gan­ism. Am­a­teur un­of­fi­cial radio broad­ casts, some with ­ranges of thou­sands of miles, ­beamed mod­ern music, ­off-color jokes, and, oc­ca­sion­ally, ­anti-Soviet prop­a­ganda to a wide range of So­viet cit­i­zens in the 1950s and 1960s. As the state ­seized radio fre­quen­cies for its own use and de­cided to clamp down on this in­de­ pen­dent me­dium of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, am­a­teur radio broad­cast­ers found them­selves in­creas­ingly crim­i­nal­ized and ­crowded out of the ether. In their ef­forts to find an ap­pro­pri­ate crim­i­nal cat­e­gory for this of­fense, the state fell back on the con­ven­ient hoo­li­gan catch­all. In July 1963, the USSR Su­preme Court de­creed that un­au­thor­ized radio broad­cast­ing would be pun­ished as hoo­li­gan­ism.123 Like the crea­tion of do­mes­tic de­vi­ance dur­ing the same pe­riod, the crea­tion of radio hoo­li­gan­ism shows the eman­ci­pa­tion of de­vi­ance dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod from its ­Stalin-era spa­tial strait­jacket and its novel ap­pli­ca­tion to an un­ likely cast of ac­tors and areas. ­Lastly, the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod tells us some­thing about ­change in the So­viet Union. In­stead of com­ing from ­big-shot bu­reau­crats, the under­stand­ing and ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism was trans­formed by the prac­tices of po­lice­men, pros­e­cu­ tors, and ­judges scat­tered ­across the So­viet Union. Em­pow­ered by the ­anti-hooligan cam­paign and freed by the ­center’s in­abil­ity to take a clear and con­sis­tent po­si­tion on major pol­icy ques­tions, these legal work­ers, pres­sured by pe­ti­tion­ing cit­i­zens and vic­tims, ­mapped hoo­li­ gan­ism onto the home. ­Hooliganism’s new mean­ing and mis­sion did not come sud­denly from above in the form of a cen­tral de­cree or di­rec­ tive; it was ­created grad­ua­ lly ­through the local and un­or­tho­dox map­ ping prac­tices of these ac­tors, ­through their daily rou­tine of ap­ply­ing am­big­u­ous crim­i­nal cat­e­go­ries to the re­al­ities of con­crete cases, and ­through their some­times en­thu­sias­tic and some­times re­luc­tant re­sponses to per­sis­tent cit­i­zen com­plaints.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:33:09.

3 Mak­ing Hoo­li­gan­ism on a Mass Scale

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Cam­paign ­against Petty Hoo­li­gan­ism Khrushchev’s Thaw is often pre­sented as a pe­riod of in­creased ex­per­i­ men­ta­tion and of­fi­cial tol­er­a­tion. In many ways, this inter­pre­ta­tion is un­de­ni­ably true, es­pe­cially in the cul­tural ­sphere. Khrush­chev may have aimed his at­tack on the Sta­lin­ist cult of per­son­al­ity to dis­credit his re­main­ing ri­vals and ac­cel­er­ate his rise to po­lit­i­cal power. But, his cri­tique also gen­er­ated sig­nif­i­cant col­lat­eral dam­age by chal­leng­ing and in­ad­ver­tently dis­cred­it­ing en­trenched ­Stalin-era or­tho­dox­ies and au­thor­ity fig­ures in a va­riety of ­fields out­side of elite pol­i­tics.1 In the at­mos­phere of ex­cite­ment, anx­iety, and ideo­log­i­cal un­cer­tainty that ­emerged, ­spaces ­opened for am­bi­tious ac­tors to chal­lenge their ­shellshocked eld­ers and to ex­peri­ment with and argue about al­ter­na­tives to es­tab­lished modes of Sta­lin­ist being, be­liev­ing, and be­hav­ing. Tak­ing ad­ van­tage of the mixed mes­sages and frus­trat­ing si­lences of ­Khrushchev’s ­stop-and-go ­de-Stalinization, art­ists re­dis­cov­ered and re­vived the for­merly re­pressed move­ments of the ­avant-garde from the New Eco­ nomic Pol­icy era, from con­struc­ti­vism and su­pre­ma­tism to ­Meyerhold’s bio­me­chan­ics. Using the new open­ness of the era of peace­ful co­ex­is­tence, they began to ad­vo­cate and ex­peri­ment with the for­bid­den ­fruits of West­ern mod­ern­ism, from ato­nal­ity and non­rep­re­sen­ta­tional ab­strac­ tion to the the­a­ter of the ab­surd. Un­of­fi­cial sub­cul­tures and per­for­mance sites, fea­tur­ing jazz musi­cians and beat poets, pro­life­rated and ­spread 96

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



97

t­ hrough a rap­idly ur­ba­niz­ing ­post-Stalinist so­ci­ety hun­gry for the es­cap­ism, en­ter­tain­ment, and com­mod­ities of West­ern con­su­mer­ism and pop cul­ture.2 A new cul­tural en­vi­ron­ment of hes­i­tant plu­ral­ism and ­highly lim­ited auton­omy arose as So­viet cit­i­zens ­argued out the mean­ings of a Thaw whose lim­its of­fi­cial state­ments often left un­de­fined and amor­phous.3 How­ever, the Thaw was more than a time of in­creased of­fi­cial tol­er­ ance and rel­a­tive cul­tural ex­per­i­men­ta­tion. It was also a time of in­creas­ ing of­fi­cial in­tol­er­ance and in­ten­sified so­cial dis­ci­pline dur­ing which a uto­pian state ac­cel­er­ated its ef­forts to civ­il­ize So­viet so­ci­ety (rid­dled in the eyes of state ac­tors by con­tin­ued cap­i­tal­ist sur­vi­vals and alien ­ideals) ­around a uni­form code of com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity.4 In ad­di­tion to cau­tious lib­eral pol­i­cies that prom­ised lim­ited cul­tural plu­ral­ism and so­cial­ist le­gal­ity, the ­de-Stalinizing state was also ac­tively en­gaged in par­allel il­lib­eral pro­jects dur­ing the mid- to late 1950s that en­tailed iden­tify­ing the moral “oth­ers” who ex­isted out­side its civ­il­iz­ing mis­sion and sub­ject­ing these stig­ma­tized so­cial ­groups to forms of in­creased po­lice per­se­cu­tion and re­for­ma­tive re­ed­u­ca­tion that often vi­o­lated the ­regime’s new leg­i­ti­miz­ing rhet­o­ric of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity. For young art­ists, stu­dents, and in­tel­lec­tu­als chaf­ing under the stale or­tho­dox­ies and au­thor­ities left over from the Sta­lin era, the sec­ond half of the 1950s was (in ­retrospect if not in re­al­ity) a ­golden age of rel­a­tive ar­tis­tic free­dom and in­tel­lec­tual re­birth. For those in­di­vid­u­als who were un­lucky ­enough to be la­beled “par­as­ ites,” “gyp­sies,” or “petty hoo­li­gans,” the same pe­riod was an era ­marked by an em­pha­sis on in­creased re­pres­ sion, ar­bi­trary state power, and un­re­strained po­lic­ing that, seem­ingly, had lit­tle to do with so­cial­ist le­gal­ity or per­mis­sive plu­ral­ism. Co­ex­ist­ing with lib­eral ­Thaw-era pol­i­cies, there­fore, was an il­lib­eral ex­er­cise in re­press­ing moral de­vi­ants and ­state-defined un­de­sir­ables. And at the heart of this il­lib­eral pro­ject was a cam­paign ­against petty hoo­li­gan­ism that ­seemed to contra­dict many of the pol­i­cies as­so­ciated with the ­de-Stalinizing so­ci­ety of the Khrush­chev re­forms. If ­deStalinization prom­ised to roll back the dis­cred­ited pol­i­cies of the dead dic­ta­tor, the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign sig­naled a par­tial re­vi­val of Sta­lin­ ist po­lic­ing tac­tics and their ex­ten­sion to pre­vi­ously un­pun­ished minor of­fenses. If ­de-Stalinization prom­ised a so­ci­ety that re­spected Len­in­ist norms of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity, the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign in­stead threw legal over­sight and pro­tec­tions over­board in the name of ex­pand­ing and ac­cel­er­at­ing a pun­ish­ment pro­cess from which no de­vi­ant, no mat­ter how seem­ingly in­sig­nif­i­cant, was sup­posed to es­cape.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

98



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

By em­pow­er­ing them to go after minor forms of mis­be­hav­ior, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree gave po­lice­men a pow­er­ful and flex­ible new ­weapon in the So­viet ­state’s on­go­ing bat­tle to en­force and in­still good be­hav­ior in its human sub­jects. For ­besides being a ­crime-fighting tool, the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign also ­served as a tool for sculpt­ing a more civ­il­ized so­cial body out of the rough man­ners and mores of a work­ing class that the ­Party-state loved more in the­ory than re­al­ity. Help­ing to so­cially en­gi­neer the new So­viet man, the petty hoo­li­gan cat­eg ­ ory acted as a flex­ible catch­all for dis­ci­plin­ing the every­day in­de­cen­cies of ­post-Stalinist so­ci­ety. It also prom­ised to bring order to urban ­spaces de­sta­bi­lized by ­decades of rapid in­dus­tri­al­iza­tion, rural ­in-migration, and the nox­ious mix of mo­bile men, sim­ple peas­ants, and so­cial dis­ or­der that these pro­cesses un­leashed on the show­case world of the so­cial­ist city. In ad­di­tion, such so­cial cleans­ing would begin in the cru­cial ­months be­fore the 1957 World Youth Fes­ti­val, when the eyes of the world would be fo­cused on a Mos­cow tem­po­rar­ily ­scrubbed (hope­ fully) of its phys­i­cal and human im­per­fec­tions and ­turned into a suit­ able plat­form for tri­um­phant prop­a­ganda.5 ­Through this am­bi­tious cam­paign, the ­post-Stalinist state would, its of­fi­cials be­lieved, bring into being a so­ci­ety pop­u­lated by po­lite, pro­duc­tive, and po­lit­i­cally lit­er­ate cit­i­zens and ­purged of the qual­ity of life ­crimes that threat­ened to spoil the ris­ing liv­ing stan­dards of the 1950s. ­Through the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign, the ­Party-state would show that con­struct­ing com­mu­nism and win­ning the Cold War were about more than max­imiz­ing pig iron pro­duc­tion and ac­quir­ing more weap­ons ­systems. It was also about over­tak­ing the dis­so­lute and de­ gen­er­ate world of West­ern cap­i­tal­ism in the pro­duc­tion of cul­tured cit­i­zens—cit­i­zens whose true mark of civ­il­iza­tional super­ior­ity would re­side in their ­strict and un­swerv­ing em­bodi­ment of com­mu­nist mo­ral­ ity. By means of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree, the Khrush­chev re­gime would get its cit­i­zens to stop curs­ing, in­sult­ing, and pes­ter­ing each other and, in the pro­cess, build the im­pec­cably ­well-behaved and sober so­cial­ist so­ci­ety of their ­dreams.

A More Hu­mane ­Anti-Hooligan Cam­paign? The de­cree on petty hoo­li­gan­ism was one of the many meas­ures that bod­ies from the Su­preme So­viet to the Pre­sid­ium had ­drafted in the mid-1950s to deal with the per­ceived prob­lem of ris­ing ­post-Stalinist so­cial dis­or­der and the moral panic that it gen­er­ated among both state

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



99

a­ gents and or­di­nary cit­i­zens.6 To fight a seem­ingly ­out-of-control epi­demic of urban de­vi­ancy, the de­cree de­cided to tar­get the most minor and main­stream of in­de­cent and un­cul­tured be­hav­iors, such as spit­ting, swear­ing, shout­ing, or pes­ter­ing other peo­ple. These com­mon every­day acts of in­de­cency would be la­beled under a new cat­e­gory of hoo­li­gan be­hav­ior and sub­ject to new forms of cus­to­dial cor­rec­tion. By cat­eg ­ o­riz­ing mass forms of minor mis­be­hav­ior as petty hoo­li­gan­ ism, the de­cree on petty hoo­li­gan­ism ef­fec­tively de­crim­i­nal­ized the least se­ri­ous forms of hoo­li­gan­ism by mak­ing them into a new and ex­pan­sive type of ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fense. The de­cree also re­duced the sen­tence im­posed on the most minor de­vi­ants ­through of­fer­ing an al­ter­na­tive to the harsh ­one-year ­prison sen­tence found in the crim­i­nal codes for the slight­est types of sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism. Re­plac­ing ­longer term in­car­cer­a­tion with short ­prison stays, the de­cree ­created a new ­three- to ­fifteen-day pe­riod of ad­min­is­tra­tive de­ten­tion for petty hoo­li­ gans, which was to be spent apart from the or­di­nary crim­in ­ al pop­u­la­ tion and in the daily per­for­mance of man­da­tory phys­i­cal labor.7 Un­ bur­dened with a crim­i­nal ­record and with his job held for him dur­ing his de­ten­tion, the petty hoo­li­gan would ­emerge from his short ­prison stay as a chas­tened, re­formed, and re­deemed mem­ber of the so­cial col­lec­ tive who had, hope­fully, ­learned the les­son of his minor mis­con­duct. ­Through the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree, the So­viet re­gime de­cided to crack down on the hoo­li­gan prob­lem not by giv­ing a small num­ber of peo­ple heavy ­prison sen­tences, but by giv­ing a large num­ber of peo­ple light ones. By de­creas­ing pun­ish­ments ­rather than in­creas­ing them, the archi­tects of the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign took a counter­in­tui­tive ap­ proach to ris­ing crime rates and re­versed their for­mer ap­proach to ­antihooligan cam­paign­ing. In the mid-1930s, the state had ­created a more se­ri­ous form of de­vi­ance (ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism) and ­heavier ­prison terms (three to five years) to com­bat dan­ger­ous forms of hoo­li­gan­ism in­volv­ing phys­i­cal as­saults and knife fight­ing.8 With the pas­sage of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree, they did the op­po­site. They ­created a less se­ri­ous form of hoo­li­gan­ism and a less se­ri­ous form of hoo­li­gan pun­ish­ment to com­bat this mul­ti­va­lent crim­i­nal ­category’s most minor and mun­dane man­i­fes­ta­tions. In the ­months fol­low­ing the ­RSFSR’s De­cem­ber 19, 1956, de­cree, all the union re­pub­lics ­passed sim­i­lar petty hoo­li­gan leg­is­la­tion.9 Be­fore the crea­tion of the petty hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory, minor a­ nti-social of­fenses were often al­lowed to slide ­through the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system un­pun­ished be­cause local po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges ­lacked len­ient

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

100



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

sen­tenc­ing op­tions under the cur­rent hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory or were un­will­ ing to de­vote ­scarce in­ves­ti­ga­tive and ju­di­cial re­sources to non­se­ri­ous of­fenses.10 Prior to petty hoo­li­gan­ism, local po­lice of­fi­cers, op­er­at­ing under a July 1940 Sov­nar­kom de­cree, could im­pose ­twenty-five ruble spot fines for “hoo­li­gan acts” that were not pun­ish­able under the ex­ist­ing crim­i­nal cat­eg ­ ory. Ar­guing that they “did not ex­er­cise the nec­es­sary in­ flu­ence on of­fend­ers,” of­fi­cials in the ­Khrushchev-era law en­force­ment bu­reau­cracy ques­tioned the ef­fic­ acy of such small fines in end­ing minor forms of every­day de­vi­ancy. Con­cerned over the ris­ing tide of hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions, they ­created the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram as a suit­able so­lu­ tion to the So­viet ­Union’s per­sis­tent prob­lem with bad be­hav­ior.11 End­ing the at­mos­phere of im­pu­nity ­around minor mis­be­hav­ior was im­por­tant be­cause un­pun­ished mis­de­mean­ors were, in the minds of many jur­ists, one of the root ­causes of major crime.12 “It is well known,” the crim­i­nol­o­gist N. F. Kuz­net­sova noted, “that the vast ma­jor­ity of ­crimes begin with sim­ple in­dis­ci­pline, with seem­ingly harm­less and in­ of­fen­sive im­mo­ral be­hav­iors.”13 Un­pun­ished minor of­fend­ers, they ­argued, were em­bold­ened to try more se­ri­ous of­fenses, slid far­ther down the slip­pery slope of de­vi­ancy, and de­vel­oped into ­tomorrow’s hard­ened crim­i­nals. As what some com­men­ta­tors ­called the com­mon “source” of more se­ri­ous of­fenses, hoo­li­gan­ism was im­a­gined as a gate­ way crime that, in the words of A. A. Kru­glov, the Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor of the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic, “fre­quently leads to the most se­ri­ous and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal acts.”14 By al­low­ing po­lice and ­judges to go after the lit­tle in­de­cen­cies of daily life, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree al­lowed them to inter­vene early in the de­vi­ant ca­reer of of­fend­ers and stop the seem­ingly small mis­deeds from which se­ri­ous dis­tur­bances and crim­i­ nal­ity later arose.15 Minor mis­be­hav­ior not only de­vel­oped into fu­ture crim­i­nal­ity, it also ­spoiled the daily lives of So­viet cit­i­zens who ­wanted to work and relax in an en­vi­ron­ment of civ­il­ized ur­ban­ity. In the 1950s, the So­viet com­mand econ­omy and ­Khrushchev’s more ­consumer-friendly re­gime were lift­ing liv­ing stan­dards for the av­er­age Ivan and rais­ing pop­u­lar ex­pec­ta­tions for in­creased ma­te­rial and cul­tural im­prove­ments.16 In an en­vi­ron­ment of in­creased ex­pec­ta­tions and Cold War com­pe­ti­tion, the every­day de­vi­ance that petty hoo­li­gan­ism sym­bol­ized threat­ened to frus­trate pop­u­lar hopes for prog­ress and draw un­wel­come at­ten­tion to the ugly under­side that stub­bornly and in­ex­pli­cably per­sisted in so­cial­ist so­ci­ety. ­Decades be­fore ­inner-city Amer­ica em­braced “broken win­dows”

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



101

po­lic­ing tac­tics, the So­viet Union (through the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram) em­barked on a sim­i­lar po­lic­ing ex­peri­ment that ­sought to lift liv­ing stan­dards and re­duce se­ri­ous crime by con­cen­trat­ing on and cor­rect­ing the seem­ingly minor ­quality-of-life of­fenses that ­helped cause it.17 The de­cree on petty ­hooliganism’s focus on de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion, sen­tence re­duc­tion, and on break­ing the slip­pery slope that ­linked hoo­li­ gan­ism to hard crime ­seemed to ­herald the intro­duc­tion of a ­kinder and gen­tler ­system of up­hold­ing so­cial order in­debted to the new ­soft-line tac­tics of ­Khrushchev’s Thaw. Em­pha­siz­ing the key ­soft-line word the re­form­ist re­gime used to dif­fer­en­tiate it­self from the Sta­lin­ist past and the cap­i­tal­ist West, the archi­tects of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree ­stressed its “hu­mane” ( gu­man­nyi ) na­ture.18 Schol­ars of So­viet law have, like­ wise, inter­preted the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree as a lib­er­al­iz­ing re­form of the Thaw pe­riod: one in a se­ries of mid-1950s lib­er­al­iza­tion meas­ures in the legal ­sphere that in­cluded re­duc­ing pun­ish­ments for petty theft of state and pub­lic prop­erty (1955) and de­crim­i­nal­iz­ing no­to­ri­ous ­Stalin-era laws ­against abor­tion (1955) and leav­ing one’s work with­out per­mis­sion (1956).19 How­ever, this read­ing ob­scures the fact that the petty hoo­li­gan de­gree was a par­tial re­vi­val ­rather than a com­plete re­jec­tion of pre­vi­ous Sta­lin­ ist ­anti-hooligan pol­i­cies and po­lic­ing tac­tics. ­Rather than mark­ing a clean break with the Sta­lin­ist past, the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign con­ tin­ued many of the meth­ods of the last major ­anti-hooligan ef­fort in 1940 and ex­panded their ap­pli­ca­tion. The po­lice in the 1940 ­anti-hooligan cam­paign used stream­lined pro­ce­dures de­signed to ­fast-track the hoo­li­ gan pun­ish­ment pro­cess. ­Judges tried ar­rested hoo­li­gans under an ac­cel­er­ated pro­cess and tight time­line, using spe­cial quar­ters out­side the nor­mal court cham­ber for the im­me­di­ate hear­ing and sen­tenc­ing of hoo­li­gan cases.20 As we shall see, the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign used sim­i­lar stream­lined and ­fast-track pro­cesses to by­pass con­ven­tional and ­time-consuming reg­u­lar po­lice and ju­di­cial rou­tines. The petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign also heard petty hoo­li­gan cases out­side of the court­ room and with­out ac­cess to pros­e­cu­to­rial over­sight or legal safe­guards. As moral panic ac­cel­er­ated in the mid-1950s, some local law en­ forc­ers de­manded that the state re­spond to per­ceived in­creases in so­cial dis­or­der by res­ur­rect­ing the in­sti­tu­tions and pro­ce­dures of the 1940 ­anti-hooligan cam­paign.21 There­fore, the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign was not so much a re­form or re­pu­di­a­tion of dis­cred­ited Sta­lin­ist ­antideviancy tac­tics; in­stead, it was a re­turn to ­fast-tracked, un­reg­u­lated,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

102



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

and stream­lined 1940 Sta­lin­ist meth­ods writ large and ap­plied to the more ex­pan­sive and more ­densely pop­u­lated plane of or­di­nary, every­ day de­vi­ancy. For its fram­ers, the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram was about much more than sim­ple sen­tence re­duc­tion. It was also about erect­ing a so­ci­ety of ­all-compassing in­tol­er­ance in which every ap­pear­ance of ­anti-social be­hav­ior would be iden­tified and ad­dressed ­quickly using stream­lined pun­ish­ment pro­cesses and con­ven­iently ex­pan­sive cat­e­go­ries of de­vi­ ance that en­com­passed the en­tire pos­sible range of ­wrong-doing. By giv­ing law en­force­ment the means to go after all forms of mis­be­hav­ior, in­clud­ing the most seem­ingly in­sig­nif­i­cant, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree was sup­posed, as a sen­ior con­sul­tant for the RSFSR Min­is­try of Jus­tice wrote in a pop­u­lar jour­nal, “to or­ga­nize the strug­gle ­against hoo­li­gan­ ism in such a way that not one hoo­li­gan act re­mains hid­den and not one hoo­li­gan is able to evade pun­ish­ment.”22 ­Through creat­ing such a so­ci­ety of ­all-encompassing in­tol­er­ance to­ward every im­ag­in­able type of de­vi­ancy, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree was in­tended to re­place a ­system of slow, se­lec­tive, and se­vere pun­ish­ ment. In its place, it would erect a ­system of in­ev­i­ta­ble and in­es­ca­pable pun­ish­ment in which all of­fend­ers could eas­ily be fit­ted into a flex­ible grid of ­finely dif­fer­en­tiated de­vi­ant cat­e­go­ries and pun­ished in pro­por­ tion to the se­ri­ous­ness of their of­fense. Seen from this per­spec­tive, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree was about clos­ing off legal loop­holes and uni­ ver­sal­iz­ing pun­ish­ment. It was about build­ing a bet­ter cit­i­zenry by ex­pand­ing the hoo­li­gan label to both the triv­ial and the ter­rible. With the de­cree on petty hoo­li­gan­ism, the state de­clared war on the en­tire spec­trum of ­anti-social be­hav­ior—from se­ri­ous hoo­li­gan ­crimes to the em­bar­rass­ingly ­all-too-common in­ci­vil­ities that the au­thor­ities be­lieved bred fur­ther crime, ­spoiled So­viet byt, and gen­er­ated neg­a­tive pub­lic­ity in the Cold ­War-era clash of civ­il­iza­tions.23 In the pro­cess, it also in­au­gu­ rated a new era of ­post-Stalinist so­cial dis­ci­pline and con­trol fo­cused on fight­ing crime and dis­or­der by rig­idly en­forc­ing cor­rect con­duct at the level of the mun­dane, the or­di­nary, and the every­day. In the 1956 RSFSR Su­preme So­viet de­cree, petty hoo­li­gan­ism was de­fined as a “vi­o­la­tion of pub­lic order and peace, in­so­lent (oskorbitel’noe) dis­re­spect to other cit­i­zens, the use of foul lan­guage (skver­nos­lo­vie), and other in­de­cent acts.”24 In am­big­u­ous lan­guage, the de­cree an­nounced the ­state’s de­sire to pun­ish any­thing it inter­preted as in­cor­rect con­duct. The ­open-ended tag ­phrase (“and other in­de­cent acts”) ­hinted at the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



103

­ rogram’s po­ten­tial for un­checked ex­pan­sion and abuse. It set the stage p for petty hoo­li­gan­ism to grow from an am­bi­tious ­anti-deviancy pro­gram into a mass per­se­cu­tory pro­cess that would e­ nvelop mil­lions of So­viet cit­i­zens an­nu­ally.25

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Creat­ing an Av­a­lanche of New Of­fend­ers Tri­um­phant ar­ti­cles and im­ages in the mass media ac­com­pa­nied the un­veil­ing of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree, warn­ing po­ten­tial of­fend­ers about the new ­weapon in the ­state’s ­anti-deviancy ar­senal and tes­tify­ing to the power of the de­cree in stop­ping so­cial dis­or­der.26 Jour­nals, such as Krok­o­dil and ­Iunost’, ­printed car­toons show­ing the de­vi­ant being ­carted off for in­car­cer­a­tion and cau­tious hoo­li­gans hid­ing in their homes or vol­un­tar­ily gag­ging them­selves in order to es­cape the long arm of the new law.27 By nip­ping even the most triv­ial mis­be­hav­ior in the bud, the de­cree ­seemed to prom­ise an end to hoo­li­gan­ism, a sen­ti­ ment ­echoed by a Krok­o­dil car­toon show­ing So­viet zoo pa­trons in the ­not-too-distant fu­ture lin­ing up to buy tick­ets for an ex­hibit en­ti­tled “The Last Hoo­li­gan.”28 In the short term, how­ever, the ­state’s de­sire to wage a ­full-spectrum war on minor mis­be­hav­ior in­flated ­hooligan-related ar­rests to un­ prec­e­dented pro­por­tions. In the mid-1950s, hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion rates in the USSR had in­creased rap­idly, but they had risen above the level of 200,000 con­vic­tions per year only once, in 1958. By ­contrast, the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram re­sulted in the de­ten­tion of over 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple an­nu­ally in the USSR dur­ing the first few years of its en­force­ment and the num­bers of ­yearly ar­rests there­af­ter only fell below the mil­lion mark once in the USSR, in 1960. Be­fore the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree, hoo­li­gan­ ism was a com­mon crime. After it, it be­came a mass crime in­volv­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tive ar­rest of mil­lions. Those mil­lions ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism were, like their crim­i­nal counter­parts, gen­er­ally drunk, urban, male work­ers over the age of 25 with an in­com­plete ­secondary-level ed­u­ca­tion, no prior crim­in ­ al ­record, and a res­i­dence in the RSFSR.29 In­stead of being mar­gi­nals ex­ist­ing at the out­skirts of civ­il­ized so­ci­ety, petty hoo­li­gans, in terms of their dem­o­ graphic and oc­cu­pa­tional pro­file, were ­fairly typ­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the dy­namic in­dus­tri­al­iz­ing and ur­ba­niz­ing so­ci­ety of the Khrush­chev pe­riod. It was not their iden­tity that set them apart from civ­il­ized So­viet so­ci­ety. It was the com­mon­place, every­day in­de­cen­cies that were a part

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

1,092,637 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 1,449,303

RSFSR Ukrainian SSR Kazakh SSR Belorussian SSR Uzbek SSR Lithuanian SSR Latvian SSR Azerbaijani SSR Moldavian SSR Georgian SSR Kirghiz SSR Estonian SSR Armenian SSR Turkmen SSR Tadzhik SSR USSR Total

1,015,678 180,098 54,614 34,127 27,672 18,256 17,620 11,746 10,763 10,597 10,003 8,422 7,354 4,794 4,111 1,415,855

1958 841,315 132,623 49,175 36,113 21,265 18,251 14,764 8,340 9,797 9,360 7,230 7,968 5,323 4,733 2,572 1,168,829

1959 559,350 98,697 22,342 31,349 11,469 10,080 10,173 5,375 5,606 5,632 3,013 3,992 4,112 2,326 1,494 775,010

1960 937,531 153,858 50,394 37,530 22,471 14,710 17,493 9,092 7,867 8,456 5,564 6,899 5,379 4,510 2,514 1,284,268

1961 1,135,395 156,881 58,924 41,166 25,644 14,946 19,620 11,263 8,720 9,498 5,600 8,086 6,255 4,666 3,128 1,509,792

1962 957,366 129,752 56,517 38,444 22,134 9,425 16,341 7,557 6,419 9,017 5,830 7,088 4,023 3,783 3,775 1,277,471

1963

850,238 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

1964

Source: GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 20. The 1957 USSR total is taken from GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5659, l. 28. Unfortunately, numbers of arrests and other petty hooligan punishments vary. The USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and the USSR Supreme Court gave different numbers for total arrests. An alternative 1957 USSR total, including arrests carried out by the transport police, was given by the Ministry of Internal Affairs as 1,524,855. For this number, see GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 505, l. 398. The USSR Supreme Court gave a third estimate of unionwide 1957 petty hooligan arrests as 1,537,689. For this number, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 58. The RSFSR total for 1957 and 1964 is taken from GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 474, l. 2. A different 1957 and 1958 total for the RSFSR is given respectively as 1,005,804 and 972,546 in GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 505, ll. 398–399.

1957

Union Republics

Table 9.  Number of People Given Measures of Administrative Punishment for Petty Hooliganism (Arrests and Fines) in the USSR, 1957–1964

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



105

of their or­di­nary be­hav­ioral rep­er­toire and the way oth­ers inter­preted and ap­plied de­vi­ant la­bels to them that made these peo­ple into petty hoo­li­gans. As a catch­all ­weapon for build­ing bet­ter be­hav­ior and inter­ven­ing early in the de­vi­ant ca­reer of po­ten­tial of­fend­ers, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree was ap­plied to a wide and seem­ingly be­wil­der­ing array of the or­di­nary in­de­cen­cies that ­plagued the So­viet every­day. Re­spond­ing with en­thu­siasm and imag­i­na­tion to this lat­est cam­paign, po­lice­men and ­judges were em­pow­ered to dis­ci­pline their sub­jects ac­cord­ing to their own var­y­ing, ex­pan­sive, and in­con­sis­tent local vi­sions of the be­hav­ioral de­co­rum and ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct re­quired of So­viet cit­i­zens. The ec­cen­tric­ities and minor mis­be­hav­iors of urban life pro­vided them with al­most lim­it­less sup­ply of ac­tions and ac­tors out of which they could man­u­fac­ture petty hoo­li­gan­ism on a mass scale. Po­lice and ­judges tried to pro­tect their ­subjects’ qual­ity of life by en­forc­ing cor­rect stan­dards of po­lite ­speech and try­ing to get So­viet cit­i­zens to stop using ­name-calling and foul lan­guage as nor­mal parts of their ­speech rep­er­toire. The fact that the use of ob­scene lan­guage on the ­streets and in other pub­lic ­places was the or­di­nary in­de­cency that got most drunk males la­beled as petty hoo­li­gan re­flects the im­por­tance of po­lic­ing im­proper ­speech in the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign.30 Al­ways seen as a ­marker of low cul­ture, the use of foul lan­guage now be­came a sym­bol and early warn­ing sign of de­vi­ance that de­manded inter­ven­ tion and cor­rec­tion ­through the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign. The case of a man from the Mol­ot­ ov re­gion who was ar­rested for using foul lan­guage in a bus sta­tion and, ­thereby, both­er­ing the cit­i­zens ­around him was a com­mon one through­out the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram.31 Given the en­tan­gled bor­ders of the pub­lic and pri­vate in the So­viet spa­tial imag­i­na­ tion, ob­scene ­speech in the home could also re­sult in a petty hoo­li­gan pros­ec­ u­tion, as seen by the case of a 42­-­year-old book­keeper from Mos­cow who was im­pris­oned for five days for curs­ing at home “in the pres­ence of his wife and chil­dren.”32 The petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign was not only de­signed to get So­viet cit­i­zens to stop swear­ing, it was sup­posed to end the in­sults and ver­bal abuse that cit­i­zens, ­stressed by life in cit­ies ­marred by over­crowd­ing, scar­city, and poor ser­vices, com­monly ­hurled at one an­other. Such in­sults ran the gamut from the stan­dard ugly epi­thets of ar­guing hus­bands and wives to triv­ial every­day ex­changes in which a man ­called his neigh­bor a “witch” (koldun’ia) and an of­fice ­worker (ar­guing over the cor­rect com­pen­sa­tion for his busi­ness trip) ­called his boss a

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

106



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

“bu­reau­crat.”33 ­Through the power the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign gave them to de­fine and en­force po­lite dis­course, po­lice and ­judges re­made the ­ill-spoken and the ­loose-lipped into the de­vi­ant and tried to im­pose their under­stand­ings of ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct onto the rough ur­ba­niz­ing so­ci­ety of the Khrush­chev era.34 “Pes­ter­ing” ( pris­tav­a­nie) was an­other com­mon form of ugly, every­ day urban be­hav­ior that po­lice and ­judges now pur­sued ­through the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram. Pes­ter­ing could take many forms, in­clud­ing prop­o­si­tion­ing women, ex­pos­ing one­self in a pub­lic place, push­ing pe­des­trians, uri­nat­ing in pub­lic, and ha­rass­ing by­stand­ers.35 It could also take more ob­scure forms, as in the case of a 51­-­year-old un­em­ployed man who re­ceived fif­teen days in ­prison for pes­ter­ing cus­tom­ers at a store to drink vodka with him and a 16­-­year-old boy who re­ceived the same sen­tence for throw­ing snow­balls “with mis­chie­vous in­tent” (na ­pochve ­ozorstva).36 Other every­day mark­ers of dys­func­tion in over­crowded urban res­i­ dences, such as mak­ing too much noise, drew the at­ten­tion of zeal­ous po­lice and trans­formed care­less speak­ers into de­vi­ants. Re­gard­less of its con­tent, noise­mak­ing in gen­eral could be read as petty hoo­li­gan­ism, es­pe­cially dur­ing night­time hours. Two men, for ex­am­ple, were ar­rested sim­ply for mak­ing noise after mid­night.37 In Vor­o­nezh, two res­tau­rant goers were sen­tenced to five days for slam­ming their ­plates on the table.38 A ­tenth-grade Mos­cow stu­dent and Kom­so­mol mem­ber was ar­rested for three days for shout­ing while he was walk­ing down Dzer­ zhink­sii ­Street with his ­friends. To in­flate the so­cial dan­ger of his ac­tions, the po­lice chief noted in the case ma­te­rial for­warded to the judge that the stu­dent was a per­son “with­out def­i­nite oc­cu­pa­tion.”39 Petty hoo­li­gan­ism was, like­wise, dis­cov­ered in the be­hav­ior of a man who con­versed in a loud voice at his ­friend’s home (the case ma­te­ri­als under­lined the ­deviant’s ob­vi­ous lack of cul­ture by not­ing that he put his dirty boots on the couch).40 Em­pow­ered by the am­bi­gu­ity and ­fast-track pun­ish­ment pro­cess of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree, the po­lice trans­formed the in­noc­u­ous rule break­ers of the every­day into hoo­li­gan of­fend­ers ­against so­ci­ety. By en­forc­ing the par­ti­tion of parks and ­streets into re­stricted areas and no-go zones with the de­cree, they were able to make a school­child who ran in a ­flower gar­den and a No­vos­i­birsk man who ­crossed the ­street at an un­marked place into petty hoo­li­gans.41 The com­mon­place un­civil oc­cur­rences of life in an urban econ­omy of short­age were re­read under the ex­pan­sive petty hoo­li­gan­ism de­cree as new forms of de­vi­ancy. A

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



107

man, for in­stance, who ­jumped the line at a fur­ni­ture store found him­ self la­beled as a hoo­li­gan and sen­tenced to five days in ­prison.42 Minor forms of prop­erty theft and de­face­ment were ­turned into ­anti-social of­fenses war­rant­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive ar­rest and in­car­cer­a­tion. For in­stance, two ­Alma-Ata res­i­dents were given ­ten-day sen­tences for pick­ing flow­ers for their girl­friends from the road­side. Even the de­struc­tion of one’s own prop­erty could land one among the petty hoo­li­gans. In ­Odessa, a man who ac­ci­den­tally ­locked him­self out of his home was sen­tenced to ten days for break­ing the lock of his own door to gain re­entry.43 Petty hoo­li­gan­ism acted as a con­ven­ient ve­hi­cle for po­lic­ing so­cial space and main­tain­ing or­der­li­ness. How­ever, it also made the pub­lic hos­tage to the ­police’s tacit and per­sonal vi­sion of petty hoo­li­gan­ism, a vi­sion that often made un­heeded steps into ad­min­is­tra­ tive of­fenses and ­placed the un­mind­ful and the ec­cen­tric onto the path of im­pris­on­ment. The same pro­cess of using the re­laxed stan­dards and pro­cess­ing ma­chin­ery of the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram to make the every­day into the im­pri­son­able can be seen in re­la­tion to drunk­en­ness. In a mas­sive ex­pan­sion of an al­ready out­sized ad­min­is­tra­tive pun­ish­ment pro­gram, an April 1961 RSFSR Su­preme So­viet de­cree made drunk­en­ness (“in the ­streets or in other pub­lic ­places”) into a type of petty hoo­li­gan­ism.44 As a re­sult, many peo­ple found them­selves la­beled as de­vi­ants for doing some­thing they did on a reg­u­lar basis in the ­entertainment-free world of the So­viet fac­tory town.45 For ex­am­ple, a Mos­cow man was held for ten days for “hoo­li­gan acts ex­pressed in ap­pear­ing drunk on the ­street.” In No­vos­i­birsk, a judge gave a woman five days for “drink­ing vodka in the en­try­way of her home.”46 A local judge even sen­tenced a ­drunken man who asked the po­lice to take him to a ­sobering-up sta­tion to three days in­car­cer­at­ ion.47 De­signed to cut down on ­alcohol-related crime and so­cial dis­or­der, the de­cree made a com­mon every­day phe­ nom­e­non of the So­viet ­street de­vi­ant. In this way, it en­larged the scope of the hoo­li­gan label to en­com­pass com­mon mis­be­hav­iors that were pre­vi­ously ­non-prosecutable under this elas­tic crim­i­nal cat­e­gory and, ­thereby, ex­panded its ap­pli­ca­tion out­ward to vast new co­horts of po­ten­ tial of­fend­ers. Like its crim­i­nal cou­sin, a great deal of petty hoo­li­gan be­hav­ior took place in apart­ments and was di­rected ­against the ­offenders’ wife, rel­a­ tives, or neigh­bors. Pro­po­nents of do­mes­ti­cat­ing de­vi­ance, such as USSR Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor R. A. Ru­denko, ex­pli­citly de­fended the ap­pli­ ca­tion of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree to do­mes­tic dis­or­der. Ar­guing that

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

108



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

spou­sal abuse in a pri­vate home (chast­nyi dom) was a pub­lic con­cern, he urged his sub­or­di­nates that “even here [in pri­vate homes] the de­cree [on petty hoo­li­gan­ism] must be ac­tive.”48 Using the cam­paign to po­lice im­proper con­duct in the home, the po­lice ar­rested a Chu­vash man and gave him fif­teen days for beat­ing his par­ents, chas­ing them onto the ­street, break­ing all the ­dishes and win­dows, and try­ing to set fire to their house.49 Less spec­tac­u­larly, those who in­sulted their wives or ­argued ­loudly with their ­spouses or chil­dren both at home and in pub­lic often re­ceived petty hoo­li­gan pun­ish­ments. Cases of ver­bal and phys­i­cal as­sault ­against neigh­bors were also a com­mon ­source of petty hoo­li­gan pros­e­cu­tions, as ex­em­ plified by the case of a man who in­vited his neigh­bor to drink with him in the com­mu­nal ­kitchen, got into an ar­gu­ment with her, ­ripped off her dress, and ­grabbed her ­breast.50 As with crim­i­nal hoo­li­gan­ism, res­i­den­ tial con­flicts and fam­ily feuds were some of the most prev­a­lent forms of petty hoo­li­gan­ism, and the ­kitchen ri­valed the ­street cor­ner as a com­mon site of de­vi­ant dis­tur­bance. The move­ment of petty hoo­li­gan­ism to the home bred fa­mil­iar de­bates over un­tan­gling the inter­woven boun­dar­ies ­between pri­vate mat­ters and pub­lic af­fairs in the So­viet spa­tial imag­in ­ ary.51 But it also led to anger and aston­ish­ment that daily forms of urban in­ci­vil­ity that were once con­sid­ered in­sig­nif­i­cant were now being ­treated as im­pris­on­ ing of­fenses under the vague and ex­pan­sive ­clauses of the petty hoo­li­gan cat­eg ­ ory. Iurii Dom­brovs­kii, the fa­mous au­thor of The Fa­culty of Use­less Knowl­edge, was ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism in the mid-1960s and, on his re­lease, wrote a com­plaint to the Sec­re­tar­iat of the Union of So­viet Writ­ers about the in­jus­tice and hu­mil­i­a­tion of his de­ten­tion. While in ­prison, he asked his cell­mates why they had been ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism. In the ac­count he left of his ex­pe­ri­ence, he wrote of his amaze­ment over their an­swers: Al­most all the ­crimes here are iden­ti­cal: a quar­rel (ssora) with the neigh­bor, a quar­rel with the wife, apart­ment squab­bles (skolki). Not a sin­gle one of these cases falls under the mean­ing of hoo­li­gan­ism. In­stead, they all fall under the cat­e­gory that used to be ­called “cases of pri­vate suit (dela chast­nogo iska).” One res­i­dent quar­reled with an­other. A wife swore at a hus­band. Some­thing hap­pened in the ­kitchen above the gas stove. You could en­gage in these lit­tle ­fights as much as you ­wanted until now. But now, one of the more in­formed trou­ble­mak­ers or neigh­bors under­stands that a cam­paign is going on and that the po­lice are inter­ested in en­ter­ing as many cases of petty hoo­li­gan­ism into their books as pos­sible (be­fore they were inter­ested in doing the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



109

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

re­verse). So he calls the po­lice. The po­lice­man ar­rives. He walks off with one of the peo­ple and tells the other per­son what he needs to write in the case re­port. . . . And the next thing you know, you are sit­ting in ­prison for fif­teen days.52

The petty hoo­li­gans about whom Dom­brovs­kii ­writes were vic­tims of an ex­pan­sive vi­sion of de­vi­ancy run amok. In­stead of being ­rebels rag­ing ­against the ­system, they were ac­ci­den­tal de­vi­ants. They stum­bled un­wit­tingly into hoo­li­gan­ism as their every­day in­ci­vil­ities (such as ar­guing, curs­ing, and ca­rous­ing) and their ways of so­cial­iz­ing (such as ­binge-drinking) were ab­sorbed into the ex­pand­ing boun­dar­ies of a broad­ened cat­e­gory of de­vi­ance. By walk­ing un­know­ingly into some­ body ­else’s broad def­i­ni­tion of de­vi­ancy, the ar­gu­men­ta­tive, un­cul­tured, un­couth, and ec­cen­tric be­came hoo­li­gans and were re­born as out­casts of the So­viet ­system. They were not lash­ing out at the So­viet state but only doing what, un­for­tu­nately, they al­ways had done: drink, curse, and fight. The cam­paign ­against petty hoo­li­gan­ism did not re­duce hoo­li­gan­ ism ex­cept in the Po­tem­kin world of So­viet of­fi­cial state­ments. Nor, in the short term, was it sup­posed to. In­stead, it in­creased hoo­li­gan­ism by mak­ing the po­lice and the ­courts into man­u­fac­tur­ers of de­vi­ancy on a mass scale.53 On the up side, it al­lowed po­lice of­fi­cers, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges to speed up turn­over times in petty cases and con­serve re­sources for se­ri­ous ­crimes. On the down side, the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign made mil­lions of So­viet cit­i­zens who had no prior ar­rest ­records into de­vi­ants, stig­ma­tized them with an out­sider iden­tity, in­ad­ver­tently intro­duced some of them to the crim­i­nal sub­cul­ture of the So­viet penal ­system, and ­launched them into a new ca­reer in crime. This was es­pe­cially true of the re­peat petty hoo­li­gan of­fend­ers who made up a trou­bling mi­nor­ity of the new ­anti-deviancy ­program’s de­tai­nees.54 From the start of the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign, re­ports began emerg­ing of peo­ple who were being ar­rested five to ten times per year or even every month under the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram and who were spend­ing an ap­pre­ciable por­tion of each year under ad­min­is­tra­tive in­car­cer­a­tion.55 One such re­port told the story of a 42­-­year-old man who, dur­ing the ­course of a sin­gle year, was ar­rested thir­teen times for petty hoo­li­gan­ism and in­car­cer­ated for 151 days.56 To some re­peat of­fend­ers, the dis­ci­pli­nary world of the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram be­came so fa­mil­iar that, as the jour­nal Krok­o­dil joked of an ­eight-time petty hoo­li­ gan who had spent over a quar­ter of the year under ad­min­is­tra­tive

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

110



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

ar­rest, “when [they] enter the ­prison, the po­lice greet [them] like old ac­quain­tances and ­friends.”57 For such peo­ple ar­rested multi­ple times, the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram dis­rupted the world of work and fam­ily and ­turned life into a ro­tat­ing round of ­short-term in­car­cer­a­tions. These re­peat of­fend­ers were at par­tic­u­lar risk for fall­ing into petty thiev­ery and more se­ri­ous types of hoo­li­gan­ism upon re­lease. In­stead of being re­formed into bet­ter work­ers, they were re­made into ­bigger and bet­ter of­fend­ers. The fact that 30 to 50 per­cent of the hoo­li­gans con­victed in crim­i­nal ­courts in the mid1960s were ­alumni of the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram ­showed the suc­cess of the new ­system in creat­ing the very type of crime that, in the long term, it was de­signed to sup­press.58

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Mak­ing the In­noc­u­ous into the Im­pris­on­ing and Vice Versa With the prom­ul­ga­tion of petty hoo­li­gan­ism, the state ­created a new form of hoo­li­gan­ism that cou­pled non­se­ri­ous of­fenses to light pun­ish­ ments. By rec­og­niz­ing the en­tire spec­trum of ­anti-social acts ­through the crea­tion of the petty hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory, the state in­serted de­grees of de­vi­ancy into hoo­li­gan­ism and made it into a flex­ible catch­all cat­e­gory that could be ratch­eted up or wa­tered down to fit any oc­ca­sion no mat­ter how small or in­sig­nif­i­cant.59 By dif­fer­en­tiat­ing de­vi­ancy in this man­ner, legal work­ers were given the abil­ity to rec­og­nize the full di­ver­sity of dis­or­derly prac­tices that had pre­vi­ously co­ex­isted un­eas­ily under the older homog­en ­ iz­ing la­bels of sim­ple and ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism. In intro­duc­ing the con­cept of petty hoo­li­gan­ism, the state ex­panded the do­main of de­vi­ance at the ex­pense of clar­ify­ing and stan­dard­iz­ing its mean­ing. They re­sponded to emerg­ing crime prob­lems by mak­ing new hoo­li­gan­isms with­out first solv­ing the inter­pre­tive prob­lems as­so­ ciated with the ex­ist­ing la­bels (sim­ple and ma­li­cious). How­ever, con­ tin­u­ally dif­fer­en­tiat­ing and ex­pand­ing ­hooliganism’s def­i­ni­tions did not make it ­easier to apply or to under­stand. In­stead, it multi­plied the op­por­tu­nities for mis­la­bel­ing and elic­ited grow­ing cat­e­gory con­fu­sion as local legal work­ers strug­gled to de­fine, in prac­tice, the ­ill-defined bor­ders ­between ­hooliganism’s multi­ple mean­ings. Right from the be­gin­ning, peo­ple at both ends of the power hier­ar­chy noted petty ­hooliganism’s vague and elu­sive for­mu­la­tion—and the po­ten­tial this of­fered for the un­checked abuse and un­con­trol­la­ble ex­pan­sion of the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



111

A cit­i­zen from Le­nin­grad wrote to the RSFSR Su­preme So­viet to com­plain about the ­decree’s vague­ness and lack of clar­ity, es­pe­cially in such “empty” ­phrases as “ap­pear­ances of in­sult­ing dis­re­spect.”60 Even an of­fi­cial as il­lus­tri­ous as Lazar Ka­gan­o­vich posed the frank ques­tion to his Pre­sid­ium col­leagues, dur­ing their de­bate over the new de­cree: “What ex­actly is petty hoo­li­gan­ism?”61 This last ques­tion in par­tic­u­lar be­dev­iled lower ­courts, who fre­quently pep­pered the RSFSR and USSR Su­preme ­Courts with ques­tions about how to de­fine and dis­tin­guish petty hoo­li­gan­ism, es­pe­cially from the ­closely re­lated and in­ad­e­quately de­fined crim­i­nal cat­eg ­ ory of sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism.62 So acute was the con­fu­sion ­between petty and sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism that many po­lice­men and ­judges ­stopped using the lat­ter cat­e­gory en­tirely (con­vic­tions for sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism cor­re­spond­ingly ­dropped ­nearly one third in the year after the un­veil­ing of the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign) and even sug­gested that the state scrap this now seem­ingly super­flu­ous crim­in ­ al 63 label. With the crea­tion of petty hoo­li­gan­ism, the state may have dif­fer­ en­tiated de­vi­ancy and pur­pose­fully given po­lice and ­judges the power to go after the petty. In the pro­cess, how­ever, they also in­serted an ad­di­ tional layer of am­bi­gu­ity into what was an al­ready in­scru­ta­ble crim­in ­ al cat­e­gory and made it even more dif­fic­ ult to de­fine and de­ploy. This am­bi­gu­ity not only per­plexed the local inter­pret­ers of the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign; it also en­a­bled local po­lice of­fi­cers and ­judges to abuse and ma­nip­u­late the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign to their own ends and ad­van­tages. In their every­day prac­tice of ap­ply­ing ­crimes to new cases and con­texts, these local a­ gents in­vested petty hoo­li­gan­ism with new mean­ings and ­opened up the do­main of de­vi­ancy to new acts and ac­tors. Armed with their own vi­sions of de­vi­ance that ­matched local under­stand­ings, needs, and agen­das, local po­lice of­fi­cers and ­judges hi­jacked the ­state’s petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign and ag­gra­vated the av­a­ lanche of in­car­cer­a­tion by push­ing the elas­tic boun­dar­ies of petty hoo­li­ gan­ism out­ward. Em­pow­ered by the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree and the cam­paign fash­ioned ­around it, they pur­sued their own mean­ing of petty hoo­li­gan­ism and, in the pro­cess, used (and, at times, ­abused) a ­fast-track ­system of ad­min­is­tra­tive pun­ish­ment to make both in­noc­u­ous ac­tors and se­ri­ous crim­i­nals into a new class of light­weight law­break­ers. The legal jour­nals and bu­reau­cratic watch­dogs de­cried ob­vi­ous mis­uses of petty hoo­li­gan sanc­tions, such as in the case of a man ­charged with petty hoo­li­gan­ism for at­tempt­ing sui­cide.64 Govern­ment re­ports con­tained lists of in­ap­pro­pri­ate petty hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions. They told

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

112



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

the story of a man ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism for curs­ing in a store and de­mand­ing that he be given the book of com­plaints. After learn­ing that the man’s ti­rade was ­caused by the ­saleswoman’s re­fu­sal to sell him ­thirty grams of candy (she ­claimed that the scale could not ac­cu­ rately meas­ure any­thing less than fifty grams), the judge threw out his case.65 They also told the story of a 45­-­year-old house­wife and ­mother of two who was sleep­ing in a hut in her yard when she saw some boys tres­pass­ing in her gar­den. The house­wife, while still in her night­gown, im­me­di­ately ran to the po­lice to in­form them of the of­fense. In­stead of tak­ing ac­tion ­against the tres­pass­ing ­youths, the po­lice fined her fif­teen ru­bles for petty hoo­li­gan­ism on the ­grounds of in­de­cent ex­po­sure.66 The petty hoo­li­gan de­cree was not only used (some­times il­le­git­i­ mately in the eyes of watch­dogs) to make the de­bat­able and bor­der­line mis­be­hav­iors of the every­day de­vi­ant; it could also be used to trans­form major ­crimes into minor of­fenses. A prom­i­nent legal jour­nal re­ported that “a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber” of po­lice and in­ves­ti­ga­tive work­ers, when con­fronted with a case of crim­i­nal hoo­li­gan­ism, pre­ferred to pro­cess it as petty hoo­li­gan­ism and pur­pose­fully for­mu­lated ma­te­ri­als to “sof­ten ­events and ­present them as an ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fense.”67 The ­large-scale mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of petty hoo­li­gan­ism to major, vi­o­lent ­crimes was ­proven by the fact that fight­ing and var­i­ous forms of phys­i­cal as­sault were, after pub­lic ob­scen­ity, the sec­ond most com­mon form of petty hoo­li­gan­ism re­ported in some lo­cal­ities.68 Al­though watch­dogs ­frowned on the prac­tice, po­lice often ap­plied petty hoo­li­gan­ism to vi­o­lent as­saults, such as in the case of a man who beat a woman for re­fus­ing to dance with him and in the case of an in­tox­i­cated Le­nin­grader who in­flicted two knife ­wounds on a by­stander.69 Not­ing how the elas­tic and ­open-ended petty hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory was mis­used to make major ­crimes dis­ap­pear as ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fenses, a ­prison guard wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet: “Many ­crimes are cov­ered up by this de­cree. When you read the sen­tence you are ­amazed. For all that this per­son did, they ­needed to give him three or four years in jail ­rather than fif­teen days.”70 Com­ment­ing on the case of a man who was ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism after he (and three ac­com­ plices) broke into a house, ­stabbed a woman in the arm, as­saulted a man, and broke all the glass in the win­dows and doors, a legal jour­nal cau­tioned that such im­proper use of the petty hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory “per­ verts the mean­ing of the [petty hoo­li­gan] de­cree by vir­tu­ally am­nes­ty­ing ­hooligan-criminals. It does not ­strengthen, but weak­ens the fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism.”71

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



113

De­spite the wide­spread pub­lic and pro­fes­sional dis­ap­proval of such “lib­eral” ap­proaches to vi­o­lent of­fend­ers, the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram gave local of­fi­cials in­cen­tives to trans­fer vi­o­lent crime onto the ­fast-track ­system of ad­min­is­tra­tive pun­ish­ment. De­fin­ing stab­bings and as­saults as petty hoo­li­gan­ism cod­dled vi­o­lent of­fend­ers and al­lowed them to slip ­through the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. But it also al­lowed local po­lice of­fi­cers, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges to ac­cel­er­ate their case turn­over and con­serve ­scarce in­ves­ti­ga­tive and ju­di­cial re­sources.72 By tak­ing cases out of the crim­i­nal ­courts and put­ting them in ad­min­is­tra­tive ve­nues, these of­fi­cials de­flated con­vic­tion rates, low­ered local crime sta­tis­tics, and ­created a vir­tual vic­tory over crime that they could use to im­press their super­i­ors.73 Yet, po­lice of­fi­cers were far from the only ­agents in­volved in re­ in­vent­ing petty hoo­li­gan­ism and using this am­big­u­ous cat­e­gory to pur­sue their own agen­das and under­stand­ings. Cit­i­zens, in the de­nun­ ci­a­tions they wrote to the po­lice on the al­leged petty hoo­li­gan­ism of their neigh­bors and rel­a­tives, were also ac­tively re­think­ing the con­cerns and con­texts to which the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree could be ap­plied. Bat­tered wives, for ex­am­ple, some­times sent de­nun­ci­a­tions to the po­lice ask­ing that their abu­sive or ­drunken hus­bands be ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ ism.74 Using the de­cree as a way to draft pub­lic agen­cies into their af­fairs, they at­tempted, with in­creas­ing suc­cess, to ex­pand the ap­pli­ca­tion of petty hoo­li­gan­ism to the en­tan­gled ­spaces of the So­viet do­mes­tic ­sphere. In the pro­cess, bat­tered wives pro­jected their own mean­ings of de­vi­ance onto petty hoo­li­gan­ism and ex­panded its ap­pli­ca­tion to new areas and ends. ­Rather than being sim­ply ob­jects of the ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess, So­viet cit­i­zens ­adopted the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree for their own pur­poses and, in the pro­cess, ­shaped its evolv­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion. A ­teacher, for in­stance, used the de­cree to dis­ci­pline class­room trou­ble­mak­ers by send­ing a de­nun­ci­a­tion to the local po­lice about a stu­dent who did not pre­pare his les­sons, was rude to his teach­ers, and ­cursed in ­school. The stu­dent was sen­tenced to five days.75 By using the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree as a way to en­force dis­ci­pline ­within their dis­or­dered work­places and pri­vate lives, ac­ti­vist cit­i­zens re­in­vented its mean­ing, ­opened new ­spaces for its ap­pli­ca­tion, and ­fueled the av­a­lanche of in­car­cer­a­tion it in­spired. Cam­paign pres­sures, idio­syn­cratic local ap­pli­ca­tions, and am­bi­gu­ity al­lowed petty hoo­li­gan­ism to spill over from le­git­i­mate tar­gets onto il­le­git­i­mate ones. Not­ing the drift of petty hoo­li­gan­ism into mis­ap­pli­ca­ tion, watch­dogs con­stantly com­plained that the de­cree “was being

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

114



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

ap­plied in the lo­cal­ities in an ex­ces­sively broad man­ner.”76 A 1957 re­port on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree de­clared: “The po­lice send a great num­ber of petty hoo­li­gan cases to the ­courts ground­lessly that lack any sign of this vi­o­la­tion.”77 Par­tic­u­larly wor­ri­some was the mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of the petty hoo­li­gan label to ­groups such as the men­tally ill, chil­dren under the age of 16, car ­thieves, and oth­ers whose ac­tions ­called for dif­fer­ent forms of civil and crim­i­nal re­sponse.78 ­Fast-track ar­rests, lim­ited in­ves­ti­ga­tions, and the lack of ap­peals made such cases of il­le­git­i­mate ap­pli­ca­tion and il­le­gal de­ten­tion a fre­quent oc­cur­rence in the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign.79 In­ stead of safe­guard­ing pro­ced­u­ral norms and end­ing ar­bi­trary ar­rests, the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram, in an ef­fort to ex­pe­dite the pun­ish­ment pro­cess and end the per­sis­tent hoo­li­gan prob­lem, was dis­man­tling the for­mer and ex­tend­ing the lat­ter. In this way, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree ­seemed to contra­dict the so­cial­ist le­gal­ity lan­guage that the re­gime used as its prin­ci­pal dis­course of ­de-Stalinization. The dep­uty chair of the USSR Su­preme Court ­openly ex­pressed his worry at a 1964 ple­num that the pro­gram in­creased, ­rather than cur­tailed, the op­er­a­tion of pu­ni­ tive po­lice power and made cit­i­zens more, not less, li­able to ar­bi­trary in­car­cer­a­tion. Be­fore the prom­ul­ga­tion of the de­cree on petty hoo­li­gan­ism, the rea­sons for the de­ten­tion of cit­i­zens and their de­liv­ery to the po­lice were very nar­row. Ac­cord­ing to the Crim­i­nal Pro­ced­u­ral Code, there had to be se­ri­ous ­grounds for doing so. But now the rea­sons for de­tain­ing a cit­i­zen are in es­sence lim­it­ less. Any kind of triv­ial mis­be­hav­ior (nepravil’noe po­ved­e­nie) by a cit­i­zen in a pub­lic place or in an apart­ment can be inter­preted as petty hoo­li­gan­ism and lead to that per­son being de­livered to the po­lice, ­brought be­fore the court, and de­tained. . . . We talk a lot about . . . safe­guard­ing cit­i­zens from ground­ less ar­rest and, there­fore, the ­courts and the Pro­cu­racy ­should all give the ques­tion [of how to apply the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree] more at­ten­tion.80

De­spite press state­ments that hyped it as “oc­cu­py­ing an im­por­tant place in the safe­guard­ing of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity,” the petty hoo­li­gan cam­ paign ­created a ­system of stream­lined pun­ish­ment and ar­bi­trary in­car­ cer­a­tion that ­clashed with the legal pro­tec­tions as­so­ciated with this key ­phrase of ­Khrushchev’s ­de-Stalinization.81 Orig­i­nal ­drafts of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree had en­vi­sioned pros­e­cu­to­rial over­sight and reg­u­la­tion of the pro­gram. How­ever, con­cerns that such reg­u­la­tion would bog the ­system down in un­end­ing ap­peals and ar­gu­ments that ad­min­is­tra­tive

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



115

of­fenses did not war­rant the same pro­tec­tions and pro­ce­dures that gov­erned crim­i­nal cases won the day—de­spite the ­Procuracy’s re­peated at­tempts to as­sert their right to reg­u­late and over­see the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram.82 ­Rather than safe­guard­ing so­cial­ist le­gal­ity, the petty hoo­li­gan pro­ gram sac­ri­ficed it by pro­duc­ing a large ­amount of ground­less pros­e­cu­ tions and il­le­gal ar­rests and by prop­a­gat­ing a pun­ish­ment pro­cess that op­er­ated out­side of pros­e­cu­to­rial over­sight and pro­tec­tion. The com­ bi­na­tion of em­pow­er­ment and elas­tic­ity that the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree ­brought to local ­anti-deviance ef­forts was one con­trib­ut­ing fac­tor to the ex­pan­sion of ar­bi­trary pu­ni­tive power. How­ever, the large case­loads the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign gen­er­ated ­created an­other cause for the prev­a­lence of il­le­gal in­car­cer­a­tion. ­Bogged down in petty hoo­li­gan cases, local po­lice and ­judges used ­short-cut strat­e­gies to speed up turn­ overs, strat­e­gies that in­creased the like­li­hood that un­war­ranted cases would sail ­through the ­fast-track ­system un­checked and un­cor­rected.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Cop­ing with an Av­a­lanche of Of­fend­ers Orig­i­nally, po­lice of­fi­cers, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges wel­comed the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree as a way to cut red tape, re­duce work­loads, and speed the turn­over of ­time-consuming cases of non­se­ri­ous hoo­li­gan­ism.83 In­stead of rely­ing on pro­longed in­ves­ti­ga­tions and ­trials that often took weeks or ­months and ate up ex­ces­sive re­sources and ­man-hours, the de­cree set up a ­fast-track ­system for try­ing triv­ial hoo­li­gan cases. Upon ar­rest­ing a sus­pected petty hoo­li­gan, the po­lice of­fi­cer drew up a short case re­port. Super­i­ors at pre­cinct head­quar­ters would re­view this re­port and then make the de­ci­sion on ­whether or not to send the case to court. The sus­pect and the case re­port would then, if war­ranted, be for­ warded to a judge for an im­me­di­ate hear­ing. The ­decree’s trun­cated ­method of treat­ing petty cases prom­ised to boost the power of the po­lice and stream­line the hoo­li­gan pun­ish­ment pro­cess. How­ever, the cam­paign ­against petty hoo­li­gan­ism did lit­tle to re­duce work­loads and case vol­umes. In­stead, it ­created a flood of new de­vi­ants that tied down per­son­nel in paper­work and pro­cess­ing de­mands. The de­cree re­quired that petty hoo­li­gan cases be ­brought to a judge for sen­tenc­ing ­within ­twenty-four hours of the in­itial ar­rest. This re­quire­ ment put the po­lice under im­mense pres­sure to pro­cess petty hoo­li­gan cases as ­quickly as pos­sible, a pres­sure that many were un­able to han­dle.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

116



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

The adap­tive strat­e­gies that the po­lice de­vel­oped to speed case pro­ cess­ing ­created the con­di­tions for a flood of junk cases to sail ­through the ­system un­reg­u­lated and un­cor­rected. The first vic­tim of tight pro­cess­ing dead­lines was the ­twenty-four hour tar­get it­self. The in­abil­ity of po­lice and ­judges to pro­cess petty hoo­li­gan cases ­within the re­quired ­twenty-four hour pe­riod was symp­to­ matic of a ­system ­swamped by sheer num­bers. ­Across the So­viet Union, ­twenty-four hour turn­overs were rare as in­com­ing cases over­stretched the ­system.84 More trou­blingly, tight time lim­its had a del­et­ er­i­ous af­fect on the qual­ity of case ma­te­ri­als. Beat cops, under pres­sure to in­crease turn­over, often pro­duced case re­ports “on the fly” by ­cutting out par­tic­u­ lars and omit­ting the in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary for ­proper pro­cess­ing. Many case ma­te­ri­als ­lacked names, con­tact in­for­ma­tion, and did not state what ac­tions the ac­cused was sup­posed to have com­mit­ted. Re­ports often com­plained that case fil­ers de­scribed the al­leged petty hoo­li­gan ac­tions com­mit­ted in an “im­pre­cise and super­fi­cial” lan­guage that over­used gen­eral ­phrases, such as “he com­mit­ted hoo­li­gan acts,” or “the ac­cused ­caused a ­ruckus (skan­dal) and etc.”85 The use of such gen­er­al­iza­tions and vague for­mu­las cut down on fil­ing time, but it also com­pli­cated sen­tenc­ing and over­sight by con­ceal­ing case spe­cif­ics in a homog­en ­ iz­ing lan­guage. The lack of de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on ac­tion and sit­u­a­tional con­text ham­pered the court in mak­ing fair judg­ments and often meant they were pass­ing sen­tences ­blindly on am­big­u­ous case ma­te­ri­als.86 The po­lice also cut down on petty hoo­li­gan work and ag­gra­vated the av­a­lanche of in­car­cer­a­tion by let­ting oth­ers find the petty hoo­li­gans for them. The po­lice were the only ­agents em­pow­ered to draw up re­ports on sus­pected petty hoo­li­gan ac­tiv­ity. How­ever, apart­ment res­i­dents, di­rec­tors, wives, and other pri­vate cit­i­zens by­passed this re­stric­tion by in­form­ing on petty hoo­li­gans and send­ing case re­ports di­rectly to the au­thor­ities.87 Al­though a legal jour­nal ­warned that some cit­i­zens were abus­ing the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree “as a way to set­tle per­sonal ­scores,” the po­lice pe­ri­od­i­cally ac­cepted these de­nun­ci­a­tions with lit­tle ­factchecking and fre­quently for­warded them to ­judges for sen­tenc­ing.88 By sub­contract­ing out the com­po­si­tion of petty hoo­li­gan case re­ports to third par­ties, the po­lice al­lowed cit­i­zens to ­co-opt the ­state’s ­antideviancy pro­gram, made it de­pen­dent on the ques­tion­able tes­ti­mony of ­self-interested par­ties, and in­creased the num­ber of false case re­ports fil­ter­ing ­through the ­system. For ex­am­ple, a man was ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism on the basis of a case re­port writ­ten up by the man’s ­live-in

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



117

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

f­ ather-in-law and ­mother-in-law claim­ing that he used foul lan­guage in the apart­ment. No neigh­bors cor­rob­o­rated the ­charge, and it was dis­ cov­ered that the ­in-laws had fab­ri­cated it to evict their ­son-in-law from the apart­ment and aug­ment their tight liv­ing space.89 In other cases, peo­ple were sen­tenced on the basis of anon­y­mous, ­third-party de­nun­ ci­a­tions that were im­pos­sible to ver­ify.90 The flood of cases left over­ bur­dened po­lice or­gans more con­cerned with avoid­ing over­sight and, as the Tad­zhik SSR Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor noted, using short cuts to “lighten their work­load” than with fol­low­ing the pro­ced­u­ral for­mal­ities that kept the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree from be­com­ing an in­stru­ment of il­le­gal pros­ec­ u­tion.91 To ex­pe­dite the turn­over of petty hoo­li­gan cases, free up their work sched­ules, and, at the same time, pro­cess petty hoo­li­gan cases in the re­quired time, ­judges also ­adopted ­short-cut strat­e­gies. ­Judges fre­ quently ­rushed ­through ­low-priority petty hoo­li­gan cases. Some re­ports noted that ­judges ­crammed in as many as ­twenty-two petty hoo­li­gan cases in a sin­gle hour.92 Dom­brovs­kii de­scribed the speed of petty hoo­li­ gan hear­ings among his sen­tenc­ing co­hort as a ­quasi-military op­er­a­tion that com­bined speed with super­fi­cial­ity: “One-two, ­one-two! The door [of the ­judge’s cham­ber] ­opened and ­closed. Next, next, next! A man flew out with ten to fif­teen days every three min­utes.”93 The be­hav­ior of ­Dombrovskii’s judge, who was on the tele­phone hold­ing a per­sonal con­ver­sa­tion dur­ing most of his hear­ing, ­showed how ­hard-up ­judges saved time in petty hoo­li­gan cases by ­cutting cor­ners in ex­am­ina­tions, ­rubber-stamping po­lice ma­te­ri­als, and pass­ing sen­tences with lit­tle anal­y­sis. Koch­e­tova [the judge in ­Dombrovskii’s case] ­turned to the first page of the case file and ­looked at the last lines. . . . With a ha­bit­ual move­ment, she took out a blank sheet of paper [on which to write the ver­dict] and ­grabbed her pen. “So you com­mit­ted hoo­li­gan­ism and used un­cen­sored lan­guage?” she asked. I an­swered . . . that I nei­ther ­fought with any­one nor com­mit­ted hoo­li­gan­ism, but was sim­ply try­ing to pro­tect a woman who was ­beaten. She again read to me the last words of the po­lice re­port. My words had no im­pact on her what­soever. She was not inter­ested. . . . She lis­tened and she did not lis­ten. She ­looked at me and she did not look at me . . . She ­grabbed a blank sheet of paper. “Well ­that’s it. Ten days. Try to draw the right les­sons from this.”94

The high case­loads, low pri­or­ity, and tight dead­lin­ing of petty hoo­li­ gan work ­prompted ­judges to adopt ques­tion­able examination meth­ods

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

118



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

that ig­nored ­time-consuming for­mal­ities, such as call­ing wit­nesses, ex­am­in­ing case ma­te­ri­als for ev­i­den­tiary gaps, al­low­ing the ac­cused hoo­li­gans to de­fend them­selves, keep­ing proto­cols of the ex­am­ina­tions, and writ­ing out for­mal sen­tences.95 One judge in Bri­ansk was so hasty in his sen­tenc­ing that he did not ver­ify the iden­tity of the ac­cused and wrote the wrong man’s name down on the ar­rest de­cree, re­sult­ing in the de­liv­ery of an in­no­cent man to ­prison.96 In an­other case, po­lice ar­rested a man for petty hoo­li­gan­ism on the basis of a case re­port, com­ posed by his for­mer wife and her ­friend, ac­cus­ing him of hav­ing ­called his ­ex-wife a “spec­u­la­tor.” Even ­though the man pro­fessed his in­no­ cence, the judge re­fused to call wit­nesses in the case, dis­missed the man’s com­plaint that the po­lice re­port was ­drafted by ­self-interested par­ties and sen­tenced the man to ten days.97 Such tac­tics saved sched­ules from swamp­ing, but they also vi­o­lated the ­regime’s so­cial­ist le­gal­ity rhet­o­ric by ex­pos­ing cit­i­zens to ar­bi­trary power with lit­tle hope of ap­peal or over­sight and by caus­ing un­war­ranted de­ten­tion.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Put­ting Up the Petty Hoo­li­gan The heavy case vol­ume gen­er­ated by the cam­paign ­against petty hoo­li­ gan­ism com­pli­cated the task of find­ing hold­ing ­spaces for petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees. Pris­ons were often re­luc­tant to house ­low-priority, ­short-term ad­min­is­tra­tive de­tai­nees and at times re­fused to open their doors to the ­stream of petty hoo­li­gan ar­res­tees.98 Be­cause the de­cree man­dated im­pris­on­ment, local govern­ments were ­forced to find and im­pro­vise stor­age ­spaces for petty hoo­li­gans out­side the ­prison ­system. Many lo­cal­ities used the po­lice ­stations’ pre­trial de­ten­tion cells (kam­ery ­predvaritel’nykh zak­liu­che­nii, KPZ) as petty hoo­li­gan stor­age cen­ters. How­ever, most KPZs were not de­signed to han­dle the high traf­fic of the petty hoo­li­gan ­system. When cou­pled with the sheer num­ber of petty hoo­li­gans, spa­tial lim­its meant that over­crowd­ing was a com­mon part of the de­ten­tion pro­cess. In the ­Moscow-region town of ­Khimki, nine­teen petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees were held in a ­twenty ­square meter room.99 The sin­gle fif­teen ­square meter room in which the petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees of ­Moscow’s Lenin dis­trict were held was so ­crowded that there was no place for them to sleep or lie down dur­ing the night.100 In ­Moscow’s Bu­tyrka ­prison, petty hoo­li­gans were ­forced to sleep two to a bunk to max­imize oc­cu­pancy.101 In his rec­ol­lec­tion of his de­ten­tion ex­pe­ri­ence, Dom­brovs­kii, who had spent sev­eral years in the ­Stalin-era Gulag, de­scribed the tiny and over­crowded room where he spent his

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



119

sen­tence: “I had never seen such a ­prison cham­ber (kam­era) be­fore. It was com­pletely full. There ­wasn’t even an empty space to spit in. In 1939 and 1949, they used to take us to such rooms for maybe two or three hours or, at the most, a ­couple of days. But I would be here for half a month. . . . You ­couldn’t walk ­around. There ­wasn’t any place to ­stretch your legs. The tiny ex­panse [of the cham­ber] . . . held so many im­pos­sibil­ities: it was im­pos­sible to move, to ­breathe . . . or to get some fresh air.”102 San­i­ta­tion and a lack of basic hy­giene made con­ta­gion a fre­quent prob­lem of the over­crowded KPZ. Over­crowd­ing, the hold­ing of ­healthy and sick pris­on­ers in the same cell, and a lack of bath­ing fa­cil­ities ­raised fears of in­fec­tious dis­ease out­breaks among the petty hoo­li­gan pop­u­la­ tion. In the ­Gor’kii re­gion, watch­dogs re­ported that ­healthy de­tai­nees and de­tai­nees suf­fer­ing from con­tag­ious forms of tu­ber­cu­lo­sis were being held in com­mon hold­ing cells.103 Short­ages of ­kitchen uten­sils and crock­ery also in­creased the risk of dis­ease out­breaks. In the ­Gor’kii re­gion, only two bowls and three ­spoons were ­handed out at meals, forc­ing de­tai­nees to share dirty uten­sils with one an­other.104 Local of­fi­cials had to de­velop crea­tive pol­i­cies to counter­act KPZ over­crowd­ing, pol­i­cies that ­eroded the pu­ni­tive power of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree. Prac­tices such as early re­lease and house ar­rest were re­luc­tantly used to free up de­ten­tion space. In the Iv­a­novo re­gion, fe­male de­tai­nees were al­lowed to go home at night be­cause of a lack of space at the KPZ.105 In Le­nin­grad, “a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber” of petty hoo­li­ gans were re­leased home be­cause of lack of space in the KPZ. When space be­came avail­able, they were re­ar­rested to serve out their sen­ tence.106 In some KPZs of the same city, fe­male de­tai­nees were al­lowed to wan­der ­around the po­lice quar­ters be­cause of lack of avail­able space in the hold­ing cells and at night they slept on what­ever ta­bles and ­chairs they were able to find un­oc­cu­pied.107 Over­crowd­ing, in some in­stances, con­trib­uted to the in­ad­ver­tent crim­i­nal­iza­tion of the petty hoo­li­gan pop­u­la­tion. The RSFSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs (MVD) re­quired that male, fe­male, adult, and juve­nile petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees be held in sep­ar­ate cells and that petty hoo­li­ gans be seg­re­gated from more se­ri­ous crim­i­nals.108 By tak­ing minor of­fend­ers out of the or­di­nary ­prison pop­u­la­tion, the MVD hoped to peel petty hoo­li­gans away from the cor­rupt­ing in­flu­ence of the hard­ened crim­in ­ als with whom they were often ­lumped to­gether under the pre­ vi­ous ­one-size-fits-all ­system. In re­al­ity, spa­tial lim­i­ta­tions con­strained the MVD’s pol­icy of seg­re­gated de­ten­tion and, at times, ­forced petty

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

120



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees and gen­eral of­fend­ers to be held in com­mon rooms re­gard­less of dif­fer­ences in gen­der, age, and crim­i­nal back­ground.109 In these mixed de­ten­tion ­spaces, petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees often fell under the spell of crim­i­nal ele­ments who used the ­detainees’ rel­a­tive free­dom of move­ment (dur­ing the time they ­traveled to and from their work as­sign­ments) and their abil­ity to re­ceive out­side pack­ages to smug­gle in­for­ma­tion, in­struc­tions, and contra­band into and out of hold­ing cells and pris­ons.110 Be­cause of infra­struc­ture con­straints, the pun­ish­ment pro­cess ­turned from a time of cor­rec­tion into a time of cor­rup­tion in which some petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees were ex­posed and ab­sorbed into crim­i­nal sub­cul­tures.111

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Pun­ish­ing the Petty Hoo­li­gan The Khrush­chev re­gime, ­through the cam­paign ­against petty hoo­li­ gan­ism, de­cided to get tough with hoo­li­gans by, in part, get­ting more len­ient. The petty hoo­li­gan de­cree re­duced ­prison sen­tences for the low­est level of hoo­li­gan­ism from one year to short ­three- to ­fifteen-day micro­stays.112 In op­po­si­tion to Sta­lin­ist ­anti-hooligan strat­eg ­ ies, ­lengthy in­car­cer­a­tion was no ­longer the cen­ter of the strat­egy for deal­ing with non­se­ri­ous hoo­li­gan­ism. In­stead, the cen­tral cor­rec­tive for petty hoo­ li­gan­ism re­volved ­around the man­da­tory phys­i­cal labor that the de­ t­ainee had to per­form dur­ing each day of his in­car­cer­a­tion. Echo­ing the re­forg­ing phi­lo­so­phy of the 1930s, the archi­tects of the petty hoo­li­gan pol­icy be­lieved in the power of phys­i­cal labor to re­make ­broken men.113 Phys­i­cal labor was a re­for­ma­tive in­stru­ment ­through which de­tai­nees could mold them­selves into use­ful So­viet sub­jects and re­find their place in the So­viet ­system. More­over, man­ual labor would re­in­force a work ethic in a de­vi­ant sub­cul­ture pop­u­larly as­so­ciated with shirk­ing and sloth.114 The com­pul­sory labor re­quire­ment also sec­onded as a pub­lic ­system of sham­ing, ­status re­ver­sal, and ex­po­sure de­signed to make hoo­li­gans lose face be­fore their col­lec­tives and com­mu­nities. ­Ideally (though ­rarely in re­al­ity), of­fi­cials tried to set labor pro­jects in ­high-traffic areas to dis­play petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees and max­imize their ex­po­sure to the pub­lic gaze. Over­seers some­times ratch­eted up the hu­mil­i­a­tion by shav­ing the ­forced ­laborers’ heads and as­sign­ing de­tai­nees to “fem­i­nine” work du­ties that ­crossed gen­dered no­tions of ­sex-appropriate labor.115 Ex­pos­ing de­tai­nees to de­mean­ing tasks as­so­ciated with a fe­mi­nized do­mes­tic ­sphere, such as clean­ing toi­lets or sweep­ing ­floors, chal­lenged

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



121

the ­self-image of a group in­fa­mous for its as­so­ci­a­tion with rit­ua­ ls of rough mas­cu­lin­ity, such as drink­ing and fight­ing.116 To max­imize the mis­ery, petty hoo­li­gans, as the pros­e­cu­tor of the Ka­luga re­gion ad­vo­ cated, were to be given “the most ­filthy” jobs, such as emp­ty­ing gar­bage cans, work­ing as ­stable boys, gath­er­ing hay, col­lect­ing fire­wood, sort­ing veg­et­ a­bles, and clean­ing wells.117 In this man­ner, man­da­tory pub­lic labor acted as a spec­ta­cle de­signed to em­bar­rass the hoo­li­gan and in­form (if not en­ter­tain) his col­lec­tive. The logic of such sham­ing spec­ta­cles was viv­idly de­scribed in a 1958 Iz­ves­tiia ar­ti­cle: “Now the [de­tai­nees] are car­ry­ing ­brooms and shov­els. The “he­roes” of yes­ter­day are march­ing along sadly, hid­ing their faces be­neath their coat col­lars. As they sweep the ­street, they try to keep their backs to the side­walk. And from that cor­ner one hears sar­cas­tic jokes and laugh­ter. . . . No mat­ter how the he­roes hide their eyes, the shame of fif­teen days of pub­lic scorn will be re­mem­bered all their lives.”118 Pub­lic ­clean-up pro­jects, such as ­street sweep­ing or snow re­moval, pro­vided an ideal ve­hi­cle for ex­pos­ing petty hoo­li­gans to vis­ible and aud­ible pub­lic scorn.119 ­Through pub­lic works pro­jects, the ­hooligans’ stereo­typ­i­cal hab­i­tat would be re­claimed and ­turned into the stage on which they were dis­played be­fore the pub­lic eye. The shame of being pa­raded be­fore their neigh­bors and col­leagues would, of­fi­cials hoped, stay with the petty hoo­li­gan for­ever and speed his re­in­te­gra­tion into the col­lec­tive. In ad­di­tion, local eco­nomic im­per­a­tives and inter­ests ­shaped the petty hoo­li­gan labor ­system and dic­tated where de­tai­nees were sent to work. Petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees were fre­quently ­farmed out to local en­ter­prises for tem­po­rary work as­sign­ments. In this way, the petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees, ­through their labor, were not only serv­ing out their sen­tences, but (it was hoped) re­ded­i­cat­ing them­selves to the task of con­struct­ing com­mu­nism. They were also add­ing value to the local econ­omy by fill­ing gaps in the local labor mar­ket, es­pe­cially in such ­low-status or ­labor-intensive sec­tors as san­i­ta­tion or con­struc­tion.120 From its in­cep­tion, how­ever, the com­pul­sory labor ­system ran into multi­ple ad­min­is­tra­tive and super­vi­sory dif­fi­cul­ties that lim­ited the ex­tent of the ­make-work ­system and often in­ad­ver­tently freed de­tai­nees from their labor re­spon­sibil­ities. In par­tic­u­lar, ad­min­is­tra­tive neg­li­gence on the local level sub­verted the petty hoo­li­gan work pro­gram. Po­lice in Sta­lin­grad, for ex­am­ple, sent lists of de­tai­nees to the local ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee, but local of­fi­cials made no ef­fort to ­create ­make-work

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

122



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

as­sign­ments for them.121 Sim­i­larly, de­tai­nees in ­Moscow’s Kras­nog­ var­diia dis­trict were not put to work be­cause the dis­trict had ­failed to or­ga­nize any work pro­jects.122 The neg­li­gence of local So­viets in creat­ing ­make-work as­sign­ments for petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees was re­flected in the large per­cent­age of de­tai­nees who did lit­tle or no labor at all dur­ing their in­car­cer­a­tion. The USSR Pro­cu­racy es­ti­mated that only 20 to 30 per­cent of de­tai­nees were being put to work in re­quired labor pro­jects.123 In one dis­trict in the ­Gor’kii re­gion, only one out of ­seventy-four de­tai­nees was sent to work on each day of his sen­tence as re­quired by the de­cree. Most of the other de­tai­nees ­worked only 10 to 25 per­cent of their sen­tence days.124 Det­ainee in­ac­tiv­ity under­mined the uto­pian pro­gram of ref­or­ma­tion ­through labor and ­turned de­ten­tion into what many crit­ics ­mocked as a pe­riod of “idle rest.”125 Va­ca­tion, re­lax­a­tion, and lei­sure ­rather than ­status re­ver­sal, sham­ing, and man­ual labor be­came the un­in­ten­tional leit­mo­tifs of a ­forced labor ­system on the skids. The in­abil­ity to match de­tai­nees with labor pro­jects ­prompted com­plaints that petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees “eat free bread and do not suf­fer.”126 With­out com­pul­sory labor, ­prison lost its bite and its trans­for­ma­tive power to re­mold de­ tai­nees into model So­viet work­ers. “Ten or fif­teen days is not a re­form meas­ure,” a Le­nin­grad woman wrote in dis­may, “it is a time of amuse­ ment.”127 ­Prison for idle petty hoo­li­gans had, ac­cord­ing to crit­ics, be­come a “hol­i­day hotel” ( pan­sio­nat) in which they spent “va­ca­tion.”128 Il­lus­trat­ing the sus­pi­cion that petty hoo­li­gans en­joyed their pe­ri­ods of ad­min­is­tra­tive in­car­cer­a­tion too much, a Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda ar­ti­cle re­ported a petty hoo­li­gan de­scrib­ing his de­ten­tion as “an ­all-expenses paid pass to the local ­branch of hea­venly par­a­dise.”129 In­ad­e­quate work trans­formed the idle and un­re­pen­tant petty hoo­li­ gan into the pop­u­lar punch line of such mass media ve­hi­cles as Le­onid ­Gaidai’s film Op­er­at­siia “y” i dru­gie prik­liu­che­niia Shu­rika (1965) or the sa­tir­ical jour­nal Krok­o­dil. Par­o­dy­ing the la­bor­less de­ten­tion, a car­toon in Krok­o­dil, en­ti­tled “A New Place of Rest (novoe mesto ot­dykha),” de­picted two petty hoo­li­gans leav­ing a po­lice sta­tion at the end of their de­ten­tion pe­riod and com­par­ing how much ­weight they had ­gained dur­ing their in­car­cer­a­tion. The petty hoo­li­gan who ­gained the least (seven ­pounds as op­posed to ten) ex­plains the rea­son for the dif­fe­ren­tial by com­plain­ing: “Well ­that’s be­cause they gave you fif­teen days and I only got ten.”130 With their abil­ity to sup­ple­ment their con­di­tions of in­car­cer­a­tion with lib­eral ac­cess to out­side pack­ages and given their abil­ity to evade as­signed labor tasks, some in the MVD ­feared that petty hoo­li­gans “feel

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



123

no worse in the KPZ than at home.”131 Other crit­ics noted that the KPZ ex­pe­ri­ence was often bet­ter for petty hoo­li­gans be­cause: “At home, the wife nags him. At work, the com­rades keep an eye on him. But in the KPZ, the petty hoo­li­gan feels com­pletely free from any re­straint.”132 In­stead of act­ing as a de­ter­rent, the cozy con­di­tions of in­car­cer­a­tion made some petty hoo­li­gans de­sire ­rather than fear ar­rest. “To the drunk, it is even bet­ter to have fif­teen days,” one angry cit­i­zen wrote to the au­thor­ities. “He sits ­around and gets that much ­closer to his pen­sion.”133 Be­liev­ing that “the hoo­li­gans laugh at this de­cree,” such crit­ics ­called for petty hoo­li­gans to be ­treated more “se­verely,” ar­guing that “they ­should be held to such a ra­tion and in such a re­gime that they would think twice be­fore com­mit­ting hoo­li­gan­ism again.”134 How­ever, the petty hoo­li­gan ­program’s pri­mary sab­o­teurs were not the bu­reau­crats who ig­nored the ­system from above. They were the petty hoo­li­gan pris­on­ers who ­wrecked it from ­within. Not sur­pris­ingly, they had their own ­thoughts about being pawns in the ­state’s labor game and ­proved re­luc­tant to play by its rules. Get­ting local au­thor­ities to run a ­small-scale em­pire of un­free labor ­against their ­wishes was a con­stant chal­lenge to the petty hoo­li­gan pro­ject. Mak­ing ­poorly super­ vised and com­pletely un­mo­ti­vated un­free la­bor­ers work, stay on site, and not mis­be­have—that was the real chal­lenge for the So­viet state. Work was at the top of the ­state’s petty hoo­li­gan ­agenda. But for those petty hoo­li­gans who found them­selves at the cen­ter of the com­ pul­sory labor ­system, it was often the far­thest thing from their minds. ­Through var­i­ous tac­tics of work avoid­ance, petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees side­stepped the labor ­system. By re­fus­ing to work, run­ning away, and drag­ging their feet, petty hoo­li­gans did their best to avoid the labor the So­viet state ­sought to im­pose on them. To evade com­pul­sory labor, petty hoo­li­gans often used the ex­cuse that they did not have ap­pro­pri­ate work ­clothes to par­tic­i­pate in dirty work de­tails. Oth­ers com­plained that they ­lacked the tools nec­es­sary to take part in labor ­schemes. Still oth­ers ­claimed that they were sick or suf­fered from phys­i­cal dis­abil­ities that pre­cluded their use in ­makework pro­jects.135 When ex­cuses ­failed, ­flight was an­other pop­u­lar tac­tic that petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees used to avoid work as­sign­ments. The un­will­ing­ness or in­abil­ity of po­lice de­part­ments to waste per­son­nel or re­sources on es­cort du­ties meant that petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees were often sent to work­sites with­out po­lice es­cort or in under­guarded con­voys. De­tai­nees es­caped the com­pul­sory labor ­system by sim­ply run­ning away while

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

124



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

en route to work pro­jects and re­turn­ing to their homes or neigh­bor­ hood ­haunts. In one in­stance, a ­prison sent de­tai­nees to work with­out any guard or es­cort on the con­di­tion that they re­turn to the ­prison “around 6–7 PM.” A spot check found that only 33 per­cent of de­tai­nees re­ported to their as­signed work­sites.136 To plug the ­steady loss of petty hoo­li­gan labor from un­guarded work gangs, some en­ter­prises in the ­Gor’kii re­gion hired ­off-duty po­lice­men and ­prison ­guards to es­cort and super­vise de­tai­nees at the cost of forty ru­bles per guard per day. By moon­light­ing as con­voy es­corts, po­lice­ men gen­er­ated side earn­ings to sup­ple­ment their state sal­a­ries. How­ ever, they ­placed an ad­di­tional fi­nan­cial bur­den on a ­loss-making labor ­system whose costs often ate up any po­ten­tial ben­e­fits that work­places de­rived from petty hoo­li­gan labor. Fre­quently, the cost of fund­ing es­cort ser­vices ex­ceeded the value of the labor that en­ter­prises were able to ex­tract from the ­system.137 When (or if) they ar­rived at their work­site, de­tai­nees ­needed con­stant on­site super­vi­sion to pre­vent shirk­ing, work stop­pages, dis­ci­pli­nary infrac­tions, and es­cape at­tempts. This added an­other layer of costs onto a ­system that de­manded ex­pen­sive over­sight at every phase of its op­er­a­ tion. Po­lice ­guards often read news­papers and ­failed to en­sure that de­tai­nees ­worked prop­erly.138 Fre­quently, the po­lice ­passed super­vi­sory func­tions off onto en­ter­prise man­ag­ers who also often took lit­tle or no inter­est in di­vert­ing man­power to the task of det­ainee baby­sit­ting. Rel­e­ gat­ing the task of guard­ing de­tai­nees onto the in­sti­tu­tions mak­ing use of their labor meant that, as one re­port de­clared, “there was ­really no guard duty pro­vided at all.”139 Many de­tai­nees were un­super­vised dur­ing work hours and did what­ever they ­pleased.140 As a re­sult, many de­tai­nees did no work and left the work­site to wan­der or en­gage in dis­or­derly be­hav­ior. One petty hoo­li­gan det­ainee in the Tiu­men re­gion left his work­site, which was sup­pos­edly under po­lice guard, went down­town, got drunk, and com­mit­ted an­other act of petty hoo­li­gan­ism for which he was sen­tenced to an ad­di­tional fif­teen days. In the same re­gion, six de­tai­nees held a drink­ing party at their un­ super­vised work­site and one ran away.141 Some de­tai­nees left the work­sites and re­turned to their homes.142 One det­ainee in Mos­cow, for ex­am­ple, left his work­site, went home to cel­e­brate New Y ­ ear’s Eve, and then re­turned to the KPZ fol­low­ing the hol­id ­ ay cel­e­bra­tion.143 One Le­nin­grad petty hoo­li­gan left his work site and re­turned to the po­lice sta­tion only two ­months later.144

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



125

Some de­tai­nees took ad­van­tage of their free­dom of move­ment and lack of super­vi­sion to ac­quire contra­band and smug­gle it back into de­ten­tion cen­ters. In the ­Gor’kii re­gion, four de­tai­nees re­turned to the KPZ from their work­site drunk and one tried to bring a bot­tle of vodka back to his cell (the po­lice ­mounted a contra­band ­search and found sev­eral more empty bot­tles in his cell).145 To help them at­tain pro­hib­ited ma­te­ri­als or sup­ple­ment their pack­age al­low­ances, rel­a­tives and ­friends would some­times il­li­citly meet petty hoo­li­gans at their work sites and give them ad­di­tional food or other for­bid­den items.146 The un­super­vised de­tai­nees who did stay on­site at work as­sign­ments ex­erted their own con­trol over the work pro­cess ­through a rep­er­toire of shirk­ing and foot drag­ging. Work tem­pos were at­ten­u­ated and work­ days ­contracted to limit ex­er­tion.147 Stop­pages dis­rupted pro­duc­tion rou­tines. With­out over­sight, no in­cen­tive ex­isted for petty hoo­li­gans to work. The Sec­re­tary of the Kom­so­mol Cen­tral Com­mit­tee de­scribed the work­ing pat­terns of petty hoo­li­gans: “Those who want to work, they do a lit­tle bit of work. Those who don’t want to work, they play dom­i­nos.”148 “After work­ing for an hour or so, they start to talk about what ­they’re going to eat for lunch,” a po­lice­man re­marked about his ­detainees’ work rou­tine at a local col­lec­tive farm.149 “All the time they ei­ther sit ­around or smoke,” A ­prison ­worker from ­Uzhno-Sakhalinsk com­ plained about the petty hoo­li­gans he ­guarded. “When you re­mark [that they ­should be work­ing], they only smile and still they don’t work.”150 Hoo­li­gans, local em­ploy­ers dis­cov­ered, were bad work­ers who added lit­tle value to the pro­duc­tion pro­cess.151 Med­i­cally and phys­i­ cally, many petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees were ­ill-suited for phys­i­cal labor. Some de­tai­nees were al­co­hol­ics who suf­fered from the side ef­fects of al­co­hol with­drawal dur­ing their in­car­cer­a­tion and were phys­i­cally un­able to work.152 Un­skilled det­ainee labor pre­sented a haz­ard in dan­ger­ous work­sites, es­pe­cially in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, that multi­ plied the costs and con­cerns of using petty hoo­li­gan labor. Un­trained det­ainee la­bor­ers often ig­nored or vi­o­lated ­safety reg­u­la­tions, ex­pos­ing work­places to in­creased risks and li­abil­ities.153 Fac­ing an un­en­vi­able cal­cu­lus of high super­vi­sory costs and low ben­e­fits, many en­ter­prises re­fused to take petty hoo­li­gan labor. Local en­ter­prises in Ka­luga in­formed re­gional of­fi­cials that they did not want det­ainee work­ers be­cause they “just sit ­around all day, drink, and run off to their homes.”154 In the Sverd­lovsk re­gion, local of­fi­cials re­fused to ­create work as­sign­ments for the de­tai­nees be­cause they ­argued that

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

126



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

de­tai­nees “worked badly and did noth­ing.”155 Try­ing to pawn his petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees off on local en­ter­prises, one local po­lice chief re­mem­bered the di­rec­tors plead­ing with him: “For God’s sake, don’t send them to us!”156 The dif­fi­cult hunt for a will­ing work­site meant that some de­tai­nees found them­selves “led ­around town in bus­ses like tour­ists on an ex­cur­sion in ­search of a work­place that would agree to use their ser­vices.”157 The law in­ad­ver­tently en­cour­aged shirk­ing by fail­ing to give over­ seers dis­ci­pli­nary pow­ers over under­per­form­ing de­tai­nees.158 Lo­cal­ities ex­peri­mented with var­i­ous strat­e­gies to com­pel de­tai­nees to work and re­gain con­trol over the labor pro­cess. In the Le­nin­grad re­gion, the po­lice in­formed the ­detainees’ work­places about work re­fu­sals so that they could pun­ish the det­ainee for vi­ol­ at­ing labor dis­ci­pline or for ab­sen­tee­ ism.159 Of­fi­cials in the Ka­luga re­gion tried to pun­ish de­tai­nees who re­fused to work by add­ing a day onto their sen­tence for each day they re­fused to at­tend their work as­sign­ment.160 In some ­hard-line lo­cal­ities such as Tula and Iv­a­novo, ­labor-shirking de­tai­nees were ­placed in pun­ish­ment cells (kartser).161 Other lo­cal­ities tried to en­cour­age de­tai­nees to work ­through pos­i­tive in­cen­tives, such as early re­lease and mon­et­ ary re­wards. How­ever, such in­cen­tive pack­ages di­rectly vi­o­lated the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree and took the sting out of the com­pul­sory labor ­system. In No­vos­i­birsk, re­gional of­fi­cials ex­peri­mented with giv­ing po­lice ­chiefs and ­prison war­dens the right to re­lease de­tai­nees early who were “con­scien­tious in the ful­fill­ ment of the work as­signed to them.”162 In the ­Gor’kii re­gion, petty hoo­li­ gan pris­on­ers were re­leased early for “good work.”163 Al­though the de­cree for­bade such com­pen­sa­tory ar­range­ments, de­tai­nees were some­ times paid for their labor, giv­ing them a mon­e­tary in­cen­tive not to en­gage in shirk­ing and work stop­pages.164 These moves ­blunted the pu­ni­tive power of ­forced labor and re­in­forced pub­lic con­cern over the in­car­cer­a­tion ­regime’s in­suf­fi­cient se­ver­ity.

Pay­ing for the Petty Hoo­li­gan Pro­gram By March 1959, the USSR MVD was al­ready com­plain­ing to the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters about the ex­ces­sive num­ber of petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees (al­most three mil­lion in the first two years of the pro­gram) and es­pe­cially about “the sig­nif­i­cant ­amount of state re­sources spent to keep them under guard.”165 Com­ment­ing on the es­ca­lat­ing ex­penses of the pro­gram, local re­ports began com­plain­ing of

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



127

the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign as a “bur­den” that was “hang­ing on the neck of the state.” Early con­cerns, in par­tic­u­lar, cen­tered on the per­sis­tent im­bal­ance ­between the large in­puts re­quired to run the com­pul­sory labor ­system and the lim­ited and ­low-quality out­put it gen­er­ated.166 Much to the shock and cha­grin of of­fi­cials, basic pro­gram ex­penses, such as feed­ing costs, often out­stripped the value that det­ainee labor added to the local econ­omy.167 Com­ment­ing on the labor ­system’s input/out­put im­bal­ance, the Sec­re­tary of the Kom­so­mol Cen­tral Com­mit­tee noted at a Feb­ru­ary 1960 ple­num that: “120,000 ru­bles are ­wasted on work­ers whose labor is worth only 70,000 ru­bles.”168 The mass ar­rest and im­pris­on­ment of in­dus­trial work­ers also im­posed ­losses on the state in ad­di­tion to the di­rect costs as­so­ciated with in­car­cer­a­tion. Pull­ing work­ers off the fac­tory floor, even for short pe­ri­ods of pun­ish­ment, threat­ened to dis­rupt pro­duc­tion ­rhythms and lower out­put lev­els in en­ter­prises ­across the So­viet ­system.169 To cut ex­penses and re­duce the bud­ge­tary bur­den of the pro­gram, some lo­cal­ities ­forced de­tai­nees to cover their own in­car­cer­a­tion costs.170 Oth­ers ­sought to trim costs by re­quir­ing de­tai­nees to sup­ply their own food and bed­ding dur­ing de­ten­tion.171 Aside from levy­ing side ­charges on de­tai­nees, state bod­ies at­tempted to re­coup costs and ad­dress input/ out­put im­bal­ances by charg­ing work­places for the petty hoo­li­gan labor that they used. Yet they often over­priced petty hoo­li­gan labor and ren­dered it too ex­pen­sive rel­a­tive to its poor qual­ity. For ex­am­ple, an order of the Azer­bai­jani MVD re­quired work­places to pay ­twenty-five ru­bles into the re­pub­li­can bud­get for every day a petty hoo­li­gan det­ainee ­worked at their en­ter­prise. Such a meas­ure al­lowed the re­pub­lic to re­coup part of the costs of ad­min­is­ter­ing the pro­gram. It also cut down on the risk of local of­f i­c ials mis­a p­p ro­p ri­a t­i ng the money ­r aised ­through the sale of hoo­li­gan labor by de­pos­it­ing it di­rectly into cen­tral cof­fers.172 Yet, as a re­sult of this meas­ure, a Pro­cu­racy re­port ob­served that en­ter­prises in Baku re­fused to ac­cept det­ainee labor that they now saw as o ­ verly ex­pen­sive and un­prof­it­able.173 In­ad­ver­tently, the ­state’s ­cost-sharing pro­gram, which was in­sti­tuted un­ion­wide by an Au­gust 1957 joint order of the USSR MVD and the USSR Min­is­try of Fi­nance, low­ered work­place de­mand for petty hoo­li­gan labor and jeop­ard­ized the ­make-work ­system that was at the heart of the ­decree’s re­for­ma­tive pro­gram.174 In an ef­fort to curb pro­gram ex­penses fur­ther, the state tried other ­cost-cutting strat­e­gies, such as pass­ing pro­gram costs en­tirely onto local

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

128



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

govern­ments: a move that was ac­com­plished by a De­cem­ber 8, 1958, USSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters de­cree that ­shifted the costs of in­car­cer­a­tion for both petty hoo­li­gan­ism and petty spec­u­la­tion onto local bud­gets start­ing from Jan­u­ary 1, 1959.175 Oth­ers ­floated the idea of al­ter­na­tive pun­ish­ment prac­tices as a pos­sible cost ­cutter. To re­duce ­prison time, USSR Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Af­fairs Ni­ko­lai Du­do­rov rec­om­mended in June 1959 that ­judges be given ad­di­tional non­cus­to­dial pun­ish­ment op­tions, such as fines of 300 ru­bles or cor­rec­tive labor sen­tences of ­thirty days. He also sug­gested that the costs of in­car­cer­a­tion be de­ducted from the ­detainees’ wages, that par­ents be ­forced to pay the im­pris­on­ment ex­penses of their chil­dren, and that un­em­ployed petty hoo­li­gans be sub­jected to com­pul­sory prop­erty sei­zures.176 Pick­ing up on ­Dudorov’s ideas, the RSFSR le­gal­ized al­ter­na­tive non­ cus­to­dial pun­ish­ment op­tions in 1961, giv­ing ­judges the op­por­tu­nity to dis­ci­pline petty hoo­li­gans ­through wage gar­nish­ments, fines, or by trans­fer­ring cases to ­comrades’ ­courts.177 An April 19, 1961, de­cree of the RSFSR Su­preme So­viet intro­duced a ten- to ­thirty-ruble fine for petty hoo­li­gan­ism that could be given in lieu of the orig­i­nal ­three- to ­fifteen-day im­pris­on­ment stan­dard. The new de­cree ­sought to cut down on case­loads and re­duce pres­sure on the ju­di­ci­ary by mak­ing cer­tain cases (“tak­ing into ac­count the per­son­al­ity of the vi­o­la­tor and the na­ture of the act com­mit­ted”) avail­able to be trans­ferred to ­comrades’ ­courts. Ad­di­tion­ally, the de­cree aimed to curb in­car­cer­a­tion costs and boost the pro­duc­tiv­ity of det­ainee labor by mak­ing petty hoo­li­gans who re­fused to work pay for the costs of their meals out of their own ­pocket at the cost of one ruble per day.178 How­ever, even when ­comrades’ ­courts were avail­able for off­load­ing, many ­judges ig­nored the ­state’s pol­icy push and con­tin­ued to han­dle these cases ­in-house ­rather than trans­fer this of­fense to an er­ratic and under­reg­u­lated ­system of vol­un­teer ­courts. In­stead of seiz­ing on the ­comrades’ ­courts as a way to purge their sched­ules of petty crime, local ­judges con­tin­ued to pro­cess the vast ma­jor­ity of petty hoo­li­gan cases per­son­ally, often send­ing less than 5 per­cent of their cases to ­comrades’ ­courts.179 Even after the prom­ul­ga­tion of a 1963 RSFSR Su­preme So­viet de­cree urg­ing ­judges to send petty hoo­li­gan cases to the ­comrades’ ­courts, most ­judges still re­fused to send petty hoo­li­gan cases to these al­ter­na­tive ve­nues, ar­guing that such of­fend­ers often ­slipped ­through the wide ­cracks of the vol­un­teer court ­system and fell into in­creased risk of re­cid­i­vism.180 The fact that the Tatar auton­o­mous re­pub­lic sent only 265 out of 3,727 petty hoo­li­gan cases to the com­rades ­courts right

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



129

after the de­cree was pub­lished shows both the un­will­ing­ness to make use of this al­ter­na­tive dis­ci­pli­nary ­system and the lim­its of a ­system of local ­comrades’ ­courts that was often dys­func­tional or ex­isted only in the world of bu­reau­cratic paper (see chap­ter 4).181 In ­contrast to the ­comrades’ ­courts, the new non­cus­to­dial pun­ish­ ments, such as fines and wage gar­nish­ments, were much more suc­cess­ful in di­vert­ing a siz­able mi­nor­ity of of­fend­ers from the ex­pen­sive in­car­cer­a­ tion and com­pul­sory labor ­system. After 1961, ­between 30 to 40 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases were given non­cus­to­dial pun­ish­ments, eas­ing cost con­cerns and open­ing a rev­e­nue ­stream that could be used to sub­si­dize com­pul­sory labor. Of the two avail­able al­ter­na­tive pun­ish­ments, fines were used more ­widely and were often ap­plied to ­first-time of­fend­ers who had good work eval­u­a­tions (kha­rak­te­ris­tiki ).182 How­ever, many ­judges had mis­ giv­ings about levy­ing fines on petty hoo­li­gans, ar­guing that it ­lacked the re­for­ma­tive im­pact of ar­rest and com­pul­sory labor. Some petty hoo­li­gans l­ acked a per­ma­nent ad­dress or oc­cu­pa­tion and could not be fined.183 Oth­ers (often up to 20 per­cent of those fined) sim­ply re­fused to pay, ig­nored their ob­li­ga­tions and, ­thereby, side­stepped the pun­ish­ment pro­cess com­pletely.184 Al­though the ma­jor­ity of petty hoo­li­gans were still im­pris­oned, such re­forms sub­verted the petty hoo­li­gan ­program’s uto­pian vi­sion by end­ing its uni­ver­sal pun­ish­ment re­gime cen­tered on re­form ­through ­forced labor. By al­low­ing some hoo­li­gans to slip ­through the ­system eas­ily, it re­turned to the in­ef­fec­tive and ­deviance-promoting days of mixed pun­ish­ment for minor mis­be­hav­ior. With the 1961 de­cree, petty hoo­li­gan pun­ish­ments ­traveled full cir­cle away from an ex­pen­sive ­forced labor re­gime and back to­ward the ­low-impact and ­low-cost rep­er­toire of fines and cor­rec­tive labor that the pro­gram was, in part, de­signed to re­place.

Put­ting Petty Hoo­li­gan­ism in Per­spec­tive The his­tory of petty hoo­li­gan­ism ­presents a non­stan­dard nar­ra­tive of legal re­form dur­ing the Thaw pe­riod. The plot does not in­volve re­form­ers re­plac­ing an ar­bi­trary Sta­lin­ist ­system of pu­ni­tive power with a struc­ture of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity that re­spected legal and pro­ced­u­ral norms. In­stead, it is a story of how re­form­ers, in order to pun­ish minor mis­be­hav­ior, ­created a ­pared-down pun­ish­ment pro­cess that often ran rough shod over both the for­mer and the lat­ter, a pun­ish­ment pro­cess mod­eled, in

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

130



Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale

part, on a ­fast-track ­system that was first used in the pre­war Sta­lin pe­riod. ­Rather than shor­ing up so­cial­ist le­gal­ity, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree sac­ri­ficed it in an ef­fort to re­al­ize a pro­ject of in­tru­sive be­hav­ioral en­gi­neer­ing based on ex­pand­ing the au­thor­ity of the state into the ­trivia of every­day life. In this way, the story of petty hoo­li­gan­ism com­pli­cates our pic­ture of the Thaw by under­lin­ing the inter­play of lib­er­al­iza­tion and re­pres­sion, le­gal­ity and ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity, and past pro­grams and ­present re­forms that went on ­within it. The foun­da­tional year of ­Khrushchev’s Thaw, 1956, began with one of the ­best-known ­events of the Khrush­chev era, the Se­cret ­Speech to the Twen­ti­eth Party Con­gress, and ended with one of the least, the RSFSR de­cree on petty hoo­li­gan­ism, two acts that pro­vide two very dif­fer­ent vi­sions of this ­pivotal year. Read from the per­spec­tive of the Se­cret ­Speech, the year 1956 ap­pears as a pe­riod of lib­er­al­iza­tion as­so­ciated with the chal­leng­ing of old or­tho­dox­ies and au­thor­ities.185 Yet seen ­through the prism of petty hoo­li­gan­ism, it also ap­pears as a time of re­pres­sive so­cial dis­ci­pline in which the state ­sought to ex­pand its po­lic­ing power to the most mun­dane as­pects of every­day life. Like the ­anti-gypsy leg­is­la­tion or the stu­dent crack­downs of the same year, the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree shows us that 1956 was more than a year of lib­er­al­iz­ing po­lit­ic­ al re­form.186 It was also a year of in­creased pros­e­cu­ tion, co­er­cive re­fash­ion­ing, and ag­gres­sive state ac­tion ­against an ex­ pand­ing array of ­state-defined un­de­sir­ables. By show­ing the lim­its of lib­er­al­iza­tion and so­cial­ist le­gal­ity, the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign re­minds us that dur­ing the late 1950s a ­de-Stalinizing so­ci­ety co­ex­isted in an un­easy equi­lib­rium with a so­ci­ety of over­reach­ing and in­creas­ingly in­ti­ mate in­tru­sion, in­tol­er­ance, and mass in­car­cer­a­tion. How­ever, were these two sides of 1956 (the Se­cret ­Speech and the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree) ­really so in­com­pat­ible? As many so­ci­ol­o­gists and anthro­pol­og ­ ists have noted, so­ci­eties often turn to the fig­ure of the de­vi­ant dur­ing times of acute so­cial ten­sion or tran­si­tion to af­firm their core cul­tural val­ues.187 In the same man­ner, the So­viet ­state’s ­antideviance ef­forts al­lowed it to ad­ver­tise its bed­rock moral ­ideals by de­fin­ing and dis­tin­guish­ing them in op­po­si­tion to the un­couth and un­ cul­tured be­hav­ior of the hoo­li­gan—a pro­cess that was es­pe­cially use­ful dur­ing the de­sta­bi­liz­ing pe­riod of un­cer­tainty, ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, and ­change in­au­gu­rated by ­de-Stalinization.188 In an era of flux when all ex­ist­ing au­thor­ities and ­ideals ap­peared open to re­vi­sion, po­lic­ing and pros­e­cut­ing petty hoo­li­gan­ism al­lowed the state to re­as­sert the con­tin­ued

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

Making Hooliganism on a Mass Scale



131

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

rel­ev ­ ance of its civ­il­iza­tional val­ues and to re­mind so­ci­ety of the con­se­ quences that lay out­side the lim­its of ac­cept­able ex­per­i­men­ta­tion. There­fore, ­rather than ­merely under­min­ing each other, the Se­cret ­Speech and the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign acted in com­ple­men­tary ways to de­fine the murky mix of pos­sibil­ities, pro­hi­bi­tions, and pen­al­ties that ­de-Stalinization ­opened be­fore So­viet so­ci­ety. Far from being the sim­ple bogey man of so­cial­ism, the petty hoo­li­gan ­helped to de­mar­cate and de­fend the hazy bor­ders ­between ac­cept­able and in­ap­pro­pri­ate modes of be­hav­ior dur­ing a lim­i­nal pe­riod of cau­tious chal­lenge and ­change. By doing so, this lowly and la­men­table fig­ure be­came the sym­bolic foil ­through which a rap­idly chang­ing ­post-Stalinist So­viet Union could re­af­firm for it­self and re­in­still in its cit­i­zens every­thing that was un­ shak­able and en­dur­ing in its vi­sion of man, mo­ral­ity, and so­cial­ist so­ci­ety.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:12.

4 Em­pow­er­ing Pub­lic Ac­ti­vism

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The ­Khrushchev-Era Cam­paign to Mo­bi­lize ­Obshchestvennost’ in the Fight ­against Hoo­li­gan­ism In 1959, Khrush­chev un­veiled an am­bi­tious new pro­gram for po­lic­ing and pun­ish­ing hoo­li­gan­ism in So­viet so­ci­ety. With the ex­pan­sion of the ­comrades’ ­courts and the ­people’s aux­il­iary po­lice (dru­zhina), the state ­sought to en­large its com­mu­nity of ac­ti­vists and en­list them in the ­anticrime cause. By un­leash­ing So­viet ­obshchestvennost’ and tap­ping into the power of ex­panded pub­lic ac­ti­vism, Khrush­chev under­took a new ap­proach to curb­ing crim­i­nal­ity and halt­ing the ­spread of hoo­li­gan­ism. ­Obshchestvennost’ is one of the key words of Rus­sian cul­ture and its use was par­tic­u­larly wide­spread and im­por­tant dur­ing the Khrush­chev era. “It is one of the first Rus­sian words to know,” an ­American in ­Khrushchev’s Mos­cow noted, “but one of the most dif­fi­cult to ren­der into En­glish.”1 Its var­i­ous def­i­ni­tions in­clude the “pub­lic,” the “opinionmakers,” “so­ci­ety,” or “the com­mu­nity.” For So­viet speak­ers, ­ob­shchestvennost’ sig­nified “the total num­ber of peo­ple who take an ac­tive inter­est in so­cial life,” or what D. N. Usha­kov ­termed “so­cial tem­per­a­ ment or the in­cli­na­tion for so­cial work.”2 In­stead of re­fer­ring to every­one in So­viet so­ci­ety, ­obshchestvennost’ re­ferred to the ­self-selected group that chose to in­volve it­self in vol­un­teer so­cial work. Dur­ing the Sta­lin pe­riod, the do­main of ­obshchestvennost’ was ­largely lim­ited to elite women who could af­ford to take part in vol­un­teer pro­jects.3 How­ever, 132

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



133

the mean­ing of ­obshchestvennost’ broad­ened dur­ing the Khrush­chev era to in­di­cate a mass move­ment of so­cial ac­ti­vism that ­crossed the ­country’s strat­ified ­status and gen­der hier­archies. ­Rather than being lim­ited to the elite or to women, the ­Khrushchev-era cam­paign was de­signed to draw in as wide and var­ied a group of vol­un­teers as pos­sible from all so­cial ­strata.4 The cam­paign to en­large ­obshchestvennost’ and em­power com­mu­nity ac­ti­vism in the fight ­against crime was given a high pub­lic­ity ­send-off. Im­ages and ­speeches cel­e­brated the power of the com­mu­nity to con­front and ex­cise the crim­in ­ al. To link the pol­icy to the un­cor­rupted ­preStalinist past, con­ti­nu­ities with the ­Lenin-era ­workers’ po­lice (ra­bo­chaia mi­lit­siia) were sug­gested and ­stressed. Above ­quotes of Lenin, car­toons de­picted the hoo­li­gan being ­plucked from his lair and car­ried off by the long arm of ­obshchestvennost’.5 The em­pow­er­ment of pub­lic ac­ti­vism and ­obshchestvennost’ ­heralded the end of ­anti-social dis­or­der and the com­ing end of tra­di­tional law en­force­ment or­gans. “Are we ­really going to take hoo­li­gans into the com­mu­nist fu­ture with us and po­lice­ men in order to stop them?” Khrush­chev asked a Kom­so­mol Con­gress. “You have the power, com­rades. If all of you take on this mat­ter, you will cor­rect it.”6 Al­though the cam­paign to mo­bi­lize ­obshchestvennost’ un­ion­wide was of­fi­cially un­veiled in 1959, the ­forces and frus­tra­tions that led to its an­nounce­ment had been brew­ing for many years prior. One of the ­biggest of these frus­tra­tions was the ­public’s grow­ing anger over the fail­ure of its po­lice force to fight crime ef­fec­tively. In the mid-1950s, angry of­fi­cials and cit­i­zens crit­i­cized the po­lice for their in­abil­ity or un­ will­ing­ness to stop se­ri­ous ­crimes like hoo­li­gan­ism.7 In­ef­fec­tive po­lice, these crit­ics ­charged, left city ­streets un­safe, un­super­vised, and under the con­trol of crim­in ­ als. Mass news­papers, such as Iz­ves­tiia, crit­i­cized the po­lice for “stay­ing away from hoo­li­gans” and “clos­ing their eyes” to this per­sis­tent urban prob­lem.8 Cit­i­zens com­plained to state au­thor­ities that their local po­lice force was “hope­less” or, worse yet, con­sisted of cow­ards who “run as far away as pos­sible when they see a hoo­li­gan.”9 When a Krok­o­dil car­toon char­ac­ter asked why there were no po­lice on the ­streets at dark, her ­companion’s proc­la­ma­tion (“Be­cause it’s dan­ger­ous. There are a lot of hoo­li­gans ­around”) ­played off the com­mon stereo­type that the po­lice were too ­afraid to con­front the hoo­li­gan.10 The com­mon ac­cu­sa­tion that the po­lice ­turned a blind eye to dan­ger­ous hoo­li­gan­ism to focus on triv­ial and harm­less of­fenses in­spired an­other Krok­o­dil car­toon de­pict­ing a po­lice­man ig­nor­ing the drunk hoo­li­gan

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

134



Empowering Public Activism

ter­ror­iz­ing the park to ar­rest a child im­prop­erly pick­ing a ­flower (the ­cartoon’s cap­tion read: “He [the Po­lice­man] Chose the ­Lesser of Two Evils”).11 Such rep­re­sen­ta­tions re­flected and re­in­forced the ­public’s deep dis­trust of the ­police’s abil­ity and de­sire to mount a suc­cess­ful ­anti-hooligan cam­paign. In ad­di­tion to the pub­lic, Com­mu­nist Party of­fic­ ials were also ­deeply con­cerned in the mid-1950s about the state of po­lice pro­fes­sion­al­ism. Cen­tral Com­mit­tee re­ports found that the po­lice were woe­fully under­ ed­u­cated, with 93 per­cent of or­di­nary patrol­men and 65 per­cent of pre­cinct cap­tains (nachal’niki gor­raiot­de­le­nii mi­lit­sii ) hav­ing only an ele­men­tary or in­com­plete sec­on­dary level ed­u­ca­tion. They also found that po­lice de­part­ments suf­fered from a se­ri­ous short­age in basic equip­ ment, with 90 per­cent of po­lice posts hav­ing no tele­phone con­nec­tion and 63 per­cent hav­ing no auto­mo­bile. ­Mainly be­cause of poor pay and work con­di­tions, in the first half of the 1950s, over 11 per­cent of the po­lice force an­nu­ally was leav­ing or being fired—a crip­pling rate of per­son­nel turn­over that in­creased the dif­fi­culty of build­ing an ac­com­ plished, ex­pe­ri­enced, and ef­fec­tive force.12 Con­firm­ing what the pub­lic al­ready knew and was com­plain­ing about, the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee re­ported that the po­lice were “not lead­ing an ac­tive strug­gle ­against crime.” As a re­sult, crime, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee, was in­creas­ing in many lo­cal­ities. To im­prove their local crime fig­ures, some po­lice were re­fus­ing to reg­is­ter ­crimes and dis­tort­ing local sta­tis­tics down­ward ac­cord­ingly—a prac­tice that the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee noted had taken on a “mass char­ac­ter” by the mid-1950s.13 To im­prove po­lice per­for­mance, the Party had dis­missed the USSR Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Af­fairs, S. N. Kru­glov—ac­cus­ing him of de­lib­er­ately mis­lead­ing them about the real state of crime in the coun­try and al­low­ing the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of the po­lice to de­te­ri­orate under his watch.14 It also ­passed de­crees de­signed to im­prove po­lice op­er­a­tions and in­crease pay and ben­e­fit lev­els to at­tract bet­ter ap­pli­cants and re­tain per­son­nel. In ad­di­tion, the Party under­took a prop­a­ganda of­fen­sive, com­mis­sion­ing lit­er­a­ture that por­trayed po­lice­men in pos­i­tive ways, de­sign­ing new po­lice uni­forms, and start­ing a new hol­i­day, ­Policemen’s Day (Den’ mi­lit­sio­ne­rov), de­signed to im­prove the pub­lic image of the av­er­age So­viet po­lice­man.15 In re­sponse to the break­down in pub­lic and Party trust in the po­lice, some cit­i­zens rec­om­mended send­ing in the mil­i­tary to re­store order to un­safe city ­streets.16 But the most com­mon Party and pub­lic re­sponse to

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



135

poor po­lic­ing was to ad­vo­cate that the com­mu­nity po­lice it­self and stand col­lec­tively as one ­against the hoo­li­gan other. In­stead of in­ef­fec­ tive in­di­vid­ual op­po­si­tion, the press de­clared that the pub­lic ­should inter­vene en masse ­against hoo­li­gan­ism. Under­lin­ing the ne­ces­sity of mov­ing from in­di­vid­ual inter­ven­tion to col­lec­tive op­po­si­tion, a 1956 Iz­ves­tiia ar­ti­cle ­stated: “If a hoo­li­gan does meet re­sis­tance it is only from a few brave in­di­vid­u­als. The hoo­li­gan can deal with them eas­ily. In­stead, we need to mo­bi­lize all the pe­des­trians, all the pas­sen­gers in the street­ car, and all the spec­ta­tors at the movie the­a­ter. ­Against their ­united re­sis­tance the hoo­li­gan is help­less.”17 Col­lec­tive inter­ven­tion ­worked be­cause the hoo­li­gan, it was ­argued, was a cow­ard who would stop his crime and run away at the first sign of re­sis­tance. “A hoo­li­gan ­thinks he is a hero when he is not ­checked,” a judge told Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda. “Peo­ple need only treat him as he de­serves and he will stop.”18 Car­toons that ­showed the hoo­li­gan re­treat­ing in front of ­united pub­lic re­sis­tance re­in­forced this point and en­cour­aged col­lec­tive forms of op­po­si­tion.19 The idea of stim­u­lat­ing so­cial ac­ti­vism and using it to po­lice dis­or­der and de­vi­ancy was not new. From the 1920s on­ward, var­i­ous vol­un­teer ­groups per­formed aux­il­iary po­lice func­tions and, dur­ing World War II, ­helped pro­vide pub­lic pro­tec­tion ­against “spies and sab­o­teurs.”20 The state had also long used the ­comrades’ ­courts as an in­stru­ment for ad­ju­ di­cat­ing minor dis­putes and en­forc­ing labor dis­ci­pline, es­pe­cially dur­ing the pre­war pe­riod.21 What was new about the Khrush­chev pro­gram was its ex­tent. In the ­obshchestvennost’ pro­gram, the Khrush­chev re­gime ­sought to ­create a mass com­mu­nity of ac­ti­vists to whom it could hand off the prob­lem of po­lic­ing and pun­ish­ing hoo­li­gan­ism.

Vi­o­lent Vig­i­lant­ism and the ­Obshchestvennost’ Cam­paign Schol­ars, such as Har­old Ber­man and G ­ eorge Bres­lauer, have inter­preted the ­obshchestvennost’ ex­peri­ment as an out­growth of ­Khrushchev’s pop­u­list, ­pro-mobilization lead­er­ship style and his ideo­log­i­cal ­agenda of quick­en­ing the pace of com­mu­nist con­struc­tion.22 By spin­ning off state func­tions to so­cial ac­ti­vists and in­creas­ing com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pa­tion in po­lic­ing and pun­ish­ing petty crim­i­nals, Khrush­chev hoped to ­wither away the ­state’s pu­ni­tive ap­pa­ra­tus and train the So­viet cit­i­zenry to func­tion in the state­less ­self-regulating Com­mu­nist so­ci­ety to come.23 ­Rather than link­ing it to ideol­ogy and lead­er­ship style, Oleg Khark­hor­ din has inter­preted the pol­icy to out­source the ­anti-hooligan cam­paign

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

136



Empowering Public Activism

to ­obshchestvennost’ as an ef­fort to in­crease so­cial ­self-policing, ­achieve a mass ­system of total sur­veil­lance, and ex­pand the ­regime’s so­cial con­trol ca­pa­bil­ities.24 ­Through ex­pand­ing the reach of ­obshchestvennost’ out­ ward, the Khrush­chev re­gime, Khark­hor­din ­argues, ­sought to re­place the Sta­lin­ist ­system of to­tal­i­tar­ian­ism from above with a more per­va­ sive, om­ni­pres­ent, and ­all-intrusive type of to­tal­i­tar­ian­ism from below. Shy­ing away from is­sues of so­cial con­trol and sur­veil­lance, other schol­ars have ­looked at the ef­fect of the ­obshchestvennost’ cam­paign on the inner work­ings of the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. Yoram Gor­lizki has, for ex­am­ple, ­argued that pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, such as the ­comrades’ ­courts, ­served a use­ful func­tion in light­en­ing the crim­i­nal court ­system’s over­ crowded dock­ets. Ap­peal­ing to ­obshchestvennost’, he ­argues, pro­vided ­much-needed re­lief to an over­bur­dened court ­system by pro­vid­ing an al­ter­na­tive venue for pro­cess­ing triv­ial and ­time-consuming cases.25 By fo­cus­ing too nar­rowly on ideol­ogy or ­institution-building, how­ ever, his­to­rians have ­erased ­themes of phys­i­cal con­fron­ta­tion and vi­o­lence from the story of how the ­obshchestvennost’ cam­paign op­er­ated. Or, they have writ­ten off vi­o­lent vig­i­lant­ism as the un­in­tended out­come of ­break-neck so­cial mo­bil­iza­tion, bad re­cruit­ment prac­tices, poor per­son­nel over­sight, and lack of train­ing.26 How­ever, vi­o­lence, in­stead of being the un­in­tended out­come of bad ap­ples slip­ping into the vol­un­ teer ­system, was an in­te­gral part of the ­state’s cam­paign to out­source po­lic­ing to ­obshchestvennost’. The state ­wanted or­di­nary cit­i­zens to en­list in ­obshchestvennost’ so that they could take back city ­streets and take the of­fen­sive in the fight ­against per­sis­tent crime. If those cit­i­zens hurt a few crim­i­nals in the pro­cess—so be it. Cer­tainly, the dru­zhina was a train­ing ­ground for a so­ci­ety of ac­ti­vists and a sym­bol of the with­er­ing away of the ­state’s pu­ni­tive power in the ­run-up to the ­self-regulating com­mu­nist com­mu­nity to come. Cer­tainly, it was a prac­ti­cal way for a ­cash-strapped state to aug­ment a fail­ing po­lice force by out­sourc­ing petty crime po­lic­ing on the cheap. How­ever, the dru­zhina also pro­vided a plat­form for un­leash­ing le­git­i­ mate pop­u­lar vi­o­lence in the con­fron­ta­tion ­between com­mu­nity and crim­i­nal. In ad­di­tion to being an in­sti­tu­tion of so­cial s­ elf-mobilization, the dru­zhina was an in­stru­ment for creat­ing, con­trol­ling, and ­co-opting vig­i­lante vi­o­lence in the ser­vice of a ­full-spectrum fight ­against the en­dur­ing prob­lem of crime. ­Through the dru­zhina, seg­ments of the state ­sought to har­ness the power of pop­u­lar vi­o­lence in the ­anti-crime and ­anti-hooligan cam­paign, a power whose le­git­i­macy and ne­ces­sity were both being newly rec­og­nized in the mid-1950s.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Empowering Public Activism



137

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

In the mid-1950s, the state re­thought ac­cepted prec­e­dents that lim­ited the role of com­mu­nity ac­ti­vism in crime con­trol, nego­tiated new rules of per­mis­sible pop­u­lar vi­o­lence, and ­adopted a new pro­ac­tive ­fight-back phi­lo­so­phy in the re­la­tion­ship ­between com­mu­nity and crim­i­nal. One sig­nal of the ­state’s in­creas­ing tol­er­ance of pop­u­lar ­anti-crime ac­tiv­i­ties and its shift from pen­al­iz­ing to pro­mot­ing vi­o­lent vig­i­lant­ism in the mid-1950s was its re­draft­ing of ­self-defense leg­is­la­ tion. ­Pushed by con­cerned cit­i­zens and Party ­elites, the USSR Su­preme Court ex­panded the boun­dar­ies of per­mis­sible pop­u­lar vi­ol­ ence out­ ward and, in the pro­cess, ­created a space for vig­i­lante vi­o­lence in the ­anti-crime cam­paign, a space that gave local com­mu­nities wide lee­way to get tough ­against hoo­li­gans. In the sum­mer and fall of 1956, a se­ries of ar­ti­cles ap­peared in Li­ter­a­ tur­naia ga­zeta and other mass cir­cu­la­tion ­papers on the ques­tion of ­self-defense. A feuille­ton by Semen ­Narin’iani en­ti­tled “In­stead of ­Thanks” ap­peared in ­Pravda as a part of this se­ries.27 The feuille­ton told the story of sev­eral men who, hav­ing used vi­o­lence to de­fend other peo­ple from hoo­li­gan­ism, had found them­selves under crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­ tion. In one such case, a ­worker at a local fac­tory came to the aid of a po­lice­man whom hoo­li­gans were beat­ing. Dur­ing the ­course of the strug­gle, the ­worker hit the hoo­li­gans and, sub­se­quently, was him­self ar­rested and, iron­i­cally, ­brought on trial for hoo­li­gan­ism. The in­ves­ti­ga­tor . . . ex­plained that, after Sai­kov [the ­worker] had ­struck one of the hoo­li­gans, the hoo­li­gans ­ceased being hoo­li­gans and be­came vic­tims while the vic­tim Sai­kov be­came a hoo­li­gan. “In act­ing in ­self-defense, Sai­kov ex­ceeded per­mis­sible lim­its,” said the judge. “What do you mean ex­ceeded? He re­ceived ­twenty blows and gave only one in re­turn.” “That ­doesn’t mat­ter [said the judge]. Sai­kov ­should not have ­raised a fin­ger ­against the hoo­li­gans. He ­should have tried to talk to them.” “These peo­ple are not ­judges, but some kind of ­non-resisting pac­i­fists,” said Sec­re­tary Zu­ba­rev of the local Kom­so­mol or­gan­iza­tion.28

By set­ting very nar­row or non­ex­is­tent pa­ram­e­ters of per­mis­sible vi­o­lence, the cur­rent ­self-defense stat­ute, the feuille­ton com­plained, took vi­o­lence out of the rep­er­toire of ac­cept­able so­cial re­ac­tions to crime. At the same time as it left in­di­vid­u­als un­able to de­fend them­ selves, it ­eroded com­mon­sense dis­tinc­tions ­between of­fend­ers and de­fend­ers. Many read­ers could not under­stand why fight­ing back ­against crime made a man a hoo­li­gan ­rather than a hero. De­scrib­ing his own ex­pe­ri­ence fight­ing back ­against hoo­li­gans, a Mos­cow man wrote

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

138



Empowering Public Activism

to ­Pravda about how ­shocked he was to be pros­e­cuted ­rather than ap­plauded for sav­ing a woman from hoo­li­gan ha­rass­ment: “It turns out that [in the ­course of the strug­gle] I ­maimed the hoo­li­gan. ‘Well,’ says the jur­ist, ‘they are going to con­vict you.’ I was aston­ished by this an­swer and began to ex­plain that I was de­fend­ing my­self ­against a hoo­li­gan and that I did a noble thing by pro­tect­ing the woman [whom the hoo­li­gan was ha­rass­ing]. Re­gard­less of this fact, the jur­ist con­firmed that they were still going to con­vict me all the same.”29 The ex­ist­ing ­self-defense law not only ­blurred the line ­between vic­tim and vic­ti­mizer, it re­warded cow­ar­dice in­stead of cou­rage. ­Narin’iani’s feuille­ton con­tin­ued, ex­cor­i­at­ing the ­RSFSR’s ­self-defense leg­is­la­tion for pen­al­iz­ing the ac­tions of real men who con­fronted crim­i­nals and con­don­ing the cow­ar­dice of the weak ones who ­cringed be­fore them.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

For us, [Sai­kov] is a hero. And yet the court ­thinks that Fi­lim­o­nov, not Sai­kov, is the real hero. Fi­lim­o­nov had seen the scan­dal ­caused by the hoo­li­gans. He had heard the ­victim’s call for help, but had done noth­ing. “I was shin­ing my shoes,” he ­claims. Fi­lim­o­nov had seen the hoo­li­gans beat­ing up their vic­tim and had not come to his aid. “I had no time. I was shin­ing my shoes.” One of the hoo­li­gans had ­struck Fi­lim­o­nov on the ear and Fi­lim­o­nov had ­looked at the of­fender ­meekly and again bent over his shoes. It re­volted Gon­cha­rova [the judge] to hear the tes­ti­mony of this ­healthy young man, this cow­ard. But Gon­cha­rova was ­forced to go ­against her con­vic­tions and sub­ject to pun­ish­ment real men like Sai­kov: bold, hon­or­able men who ­should have re­ceived the ­public’s ­thanks. And all of this hap­pened be­cause of out­moded ar­ti­cles of the crim­i­nal code.30

The ­Narin’iani feuille­ton not only at­tacked an in­suf­fic­ ient ­self-defense stat­ute, it cel­e­brated a vi­sion of mas­cu­lin­ity that ­equated vig­i­lante vi­o­lence with “bold and hon­or­able man­hood.” By sig­nal­ing out for shame those who stood aside and ­failed to fight back, it ­called on all “healthy young men” to stand up, col­lec­tively con­front the crim­i­nal, and use, if need be, ag­gres­sive force to fight back ­against hoo­li­gan­ism. The re­sponse to media ­pieces such as ­Narin’iani’s was over­whelm­ing and cat­a­pulted the issue of per­mis­sible vi­o­lence to the fore­front of the ­anti-crime de­bate. Let­ters ­poured into state agen­cies and news­papers on the ­self-defense issue. Let­ter writ­ers at­tacked the ­self-defense law for teach­ing So­viet cit­i­zens to be pas­sive in the face of crime and for put­ting the brave peo­ple who stood up to crime “on the ­defendant’s bench next to the hoo­li­gans.”31 Writ­ing on how the ­overly nar­row law on ­self-defense al­lowed ­courts to act as “de­fend­ers of hoo­li­gan­ism,”32 a

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



139

man wrote in re­sponse to a ­Pravda ar­ti­cle: “Im­a­gine if Gri­az­nov and Bar­a­nov had gone to the aid of their com­rade and, in the heat of the mo­ment (v ­azarte), they broke one of the ­hooligan’s arms. They would be ­dragged to court [and suf­fer the con­se­quences]. At the same time, it would im­me­di­ately be dis­cov­ered that the hoo­li­gan was a sweet and in­no­cent boy.”33 By im­pos­ing ex­ces­sive costs and con­se­quences on good Sa­mar­i­tans, the ­self-defense stat­ute en­cour­aged in­ac­tion and gave So­viet cit­i­zens per­verse in­cen­tives to de­crease ­rather than in­crease pop­u­lar par­tic­i­pa­ tion in local ­anti-crime cam­paign­ing. “The So­viet in­tel­li­gent­sia is ­taught that they ­should not lay hands on the crim­in ­ al (ru­ko­prik­ladst­vom),” a Le­nin­grad ­teacher wrote, “but ­should run away.”34 In­stead of en­cour­ ag­ing an ac­ti­vist “So­viet mo­ral­ity,” a man from Mos­cow de­nounced the So­viet ju­di­cial ­system for judg­ing vig­i­lante vi­o­lence from a “pac­i­fist Chris­tian per­spec­tive” and for con­di­tion­ing So­viet cit­i­zens to “turn the other cheek” to vi­ol­ ent of­fend­ers.35 The let­ter writ­ers be­lieved that they had a right to con­front crim­i­nals and hoo­li­gans with vi­o­lent force, a right that the cur­rent ­self-defense leg­is­la­tion de­nied. The ­self-defense stat­ute, as a stu­dent at the Gorky In­sti­tute of World Lit­er­a­ture put it, “hin­der[ed] us from set­ting upon the scoun­drels and grab­bing them by the neck” be­cause it took the op­tion of vi­o­lent con­fron­ta­tion ­between com­mu­nity and crim­i­nal off the table.36 Like their cit­i­zens, high So­viet of­fi­cials ­showed an inter­est in push­ing out the pa­ram­e­ters of self de­fense and en­cour­ag­ing a vi­o­lent col­lec­tive con­fron­ta­tion ­against crim­i­nal­ity. Less than a week after the pub­li­ca­ tion of ­Narin’iani’s piece, the high­est po­lit­i­cal body in the coun­try, the Pre­sid­ium, dis­cussed the is­sues ­raised in the feuille­ton and ac­knowl­ edged the cor­rect­ness of the ­author’s con­clu­sions. In a ­top-secret de­cree, the Pre­sid­ium ­blasted the USSR Pro­cu­racy and the USSR Su­preme Court for their “bu­reau­cratic slow­ness” and in­structed both bod­ies to re­view the ­republics’ ­self-defense leg­is­la­tion im­me­di­ately and to pub­lish pop­u­lar ex­pla­na­tions in the press on the inter­pre­ta­tion of these laws.37 Law en­force­ment of­fi­cials were quick to adapt to the new Party line on the issue of ­self-defense. At a No­vem­ber 1956 meet­ing of Mos­cow re­gional ad­min­is­tra­tive work­ers, the USSR Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor R. A. Ru­denko, for ex­am­ple, ­strongly con­demned the nar­row inter­pre­ta­tion of ­self-defense, claim­ing: “This is, of ­course, in­cor­rect, contra­dicts our so­cial­ist mo­ral­ity, and ­trains (vospityvat’) our cit­i­zenry to act like cow­ards. Our cit­i­zens have the right to de­fend them­selves. This is their func­tion, their right.”38

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

140



Empowering Public Activism

To en­cour­age an “ac­tive fight ­against crim­i­nals” and fol­low­ing the ex­plicit in­struc­tions of the Pre­sid­ium to re­view ­self-defense leg­is­la­tion, the USSR Su­preme Court re­inter­preted the re­stric­tive ­self-defense stat­ute to allow a space for pop­u­lar vi­o­lence in the ­anti-hooligan fight. Cau­tion­ing lower ­courts not to take a “me­chan­i­cal ap­proach” to ­selfdefense, the USSR Su­preme Court, in an Oc­to­ber 1956 guid­ing in­struc­ tion, leg­i­ti­mized pop­u­lar vi­o­lence as a valid re­sponse to hoo­li­gan ac­tions. It al­lowed So­viet cit­i­zens to use force ­against any at­tack or ­threat of at­tack at any de­gree ­thought rea­son­able so long as the crim­i­nal re­ fused to cease his crime and the force was not mo­ti­vated by a ­spirit of “ven­geance or ret­ri­bu­tion.” Fol­low­ing the ­Presidium’s or­ders and the Su­preme ­Court’s in­struc­tion, news­papers pub­lished inter­views with Su­preme Court mem­bers and ex­plan­a­tory es­says to ac­quaint the pub­lic with the ex­pand­ing lim­its of per­mis­sible vi­ol­ ence.39 The 1956 USSR Su­preme Court in­struc­tion on ­self-defense was de­signed to un­leash pop­u­lar ­forces in the ­anti-hooligan cam­paign. It was de­signed to pro­claim the ­public’s right to use vi­o­lence ­against crim­i­nal ag­gres­sion and to ­create a wide space for the pub­lic to ex­er­cise that right. It also sig­naled to lower ­courts that they ­should allow more free­dom for the ap­pli­ca­tion of force in ­self-defense cases. The de­sire to push out the lim­its of per­mis­sible vi­o­lence in the pub­lic fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism ­prompted a jus­tice to note to his col­leagues at the Oc­to­ber Ple­num of the USSR Su­preme Court: “If the ­courts allow some ex­treme lee­way (krainost’) in the ap­pli­ca­tion of this in­struc­tion it will be jus­tified be­cause the res­o­lu­tion is di­rected at draw­ing cit­i­zens into an ac­tive strug­gle ­against hoo­li­gan­ism and crime.”40 The USSR Su­preme Court ­showed its sup­port for vi­o­lent ­self-defense by over­turn­ing lower court con­vic­tions of a man who had ­beaten a hoo­li­gan to death with an iron bar and of a man who had ­stabbed a hoo­li­gan sev­eral times. The court ad­ver­tised these ex­on­er­a­tions in a mass cir­cu­la­tion paper that was aimed at the youth au­di­ence they were hop­ing to mo­bi­lize to the ­anti-hooligan cause.41 The pre­his­tory of the ­obshchestvennost’ ex­peri­ment was one of sof­ten­ ing ­self-defense leg­is­la­tion and en­cour­ag­ing col­lec­tives to force­fully con­front crim­i­nal­ity. It was a com­mu­nal call to arms ­against the hoo­li­ gan other re­plete with the rhet­o­ric of vi­o­lent vig­i­lant­ism, a lan­guage of “lay­ing hands” on the hoo­li­gans, of “grab­bing them by the neck,” of “lead­ing an ac­tive strug­gle,” “of strik­ing first,” or “strik­ing back.” Per­haps not sur­pris­ingly, one of the most vocal sup­port­ers of un­ leash­ing the power of pop­u­lar vi­o­lence was Khrush­chev. Dur­ing a 1957

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



141

visit to the Khab­a­rovsk re­gion, Khrush­chev en­cour­aged the com­mu­nity to take c­ harge of its crime prob­lem and told them in clear terms not to be ­afraid to hit back ­against the hoo­li­gan: “The hoo­li­gan is a cow­ard. He is a hero only so long as no­body ­stands up to him and grabs him by the back of the neck. So, go ahead and grab the hoo­li­gan by the neck and show him his place. Work­ers ­should not be ­afraid to bring the hoo­li­ gan to order. Bring the vi­o­la­tor to heel (Obuz­daite na­ru­shi­te­lia)! We can­not tol­er­ate his kind any­more! Show him that the work­ers are the boss of this town and not the hoo­li­gan.42 Sev­eral years later dur­ing a ­speech to Kom­so­mol ac­ti­vists, Khru­ sh­chev re­minded his au­di­ence that vi­o­lent vig­i­lant­ism was an ac­cept­able re­sponse to ag­gres­sive de­vi­ants. Re­call­ing his own ex­pe­ri­ence in ­preRevolutionary ­Ukraine, Khrush­chev told his young lis­ten­ers about how they han­dled hoo­li­gans in the un­ruly in­dus­trial towns of his youth: “I grew up at the mines in the Do­nets Basin. The hoo­li­gans were run­ning wild there, but the hon­est peo­ple de­fended them­selves. How did they de­fend them­selves? Not by pray­ing for de­liver­ance from the hoo­li­gans, but by more ef­fec­tive means!”43 The “stir” that broke out in the hall and the “ap­plause” that fol­lowed s­ howed that his views on un­leash­ing the power of pop­u­lar vi­o­lence in the ­anti-crime cam­paign had not fal­len on deaf ears. Vi­o­lence ac­com­pa­nied the ad­vent of the ­obshchestvennost’ cam­paign and, es­pe­cially, the ­anti-crime ac­tiv­i­ties of the dru­zhina. Em­pow­er­ing ­obshchestvennost’ led to con­fron­ta­tions that often es­ca­lated into the ap­pli­ca­tion of brute force. A Che­li­a­binsk ac­ti­vist wrote that the con­ fron­ta­tion ­between de­ter­mined dru­zhin­niki and des­per­ate crim­in ­ als had “on more than one oc­ca­sion pro­duced sharp skir­mishes” in which phys­i­cal in­ju­ries were in­flicted and re­ceived.44 Cas­u­al­ties were a part of the pop­u­lar po­lic­ing pro­cess. The mass press car­ried sev­eral sto­ries of dru­zhin­niki who had been ­wounded or ­killed in the line of duty and had re­ceived spe­cial ­awards and med­als for their ser­vice, sto­ries that not only under­lined the brav­ery of pub­lic vol­un­teers but also the level of vi­o­lence un­leashed by the out­sourc­ing of pub­lic po­lic­ing to ­obshchestvennost’.45 Fear was also prev­a­lent as vul­ner­able, un­armed dru­zhin­niki were sent out onto un­safe city ­streets and crim­i­nal ele­ments re­sorted to ter­ror tac­tics to in­tim­id ­ ate the ­agents of ­obshchestvennost’. Dru­zhin­niki re­ported that crim­i­nals beat them and ­warned them not to con­tinue their ­patrol ac­tiv­i­ties.46 In other in­stances, crim­i­nals used the ­threat of death to deter dru­zhina ac­ti­vism, as in the case of a thief ­caught with a list of dru­zhina ­members’ names that the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

142



Empowering Public Activism

local crim­in ­ al under­world had sen­tenced to death for their ­anti-crime ac­tiv­i­ties.47 In­itially, some law en­force­ment ­agents dealt with those who as­saulted or slan­dered dru­zhin­niki under the 1956 petty hoo­li­gan de­cree. By mak­ing it an ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fense sub­ject to ­short-term in­car­cer­a­tion or fines, these local law en­forc­ers es­sen­tially de­crim­i­nal­ized ­antidruzhina ac­tiv­ity and ­turned a blind eye to ag­gres­sive ­street-corner re­sis­tance to the ac­ti­vism of ­obshchestvennost’.48 How­ever, mount­ing crit­i­cism and con­cern over the vul­ner­abil­ity of vol­un­teers led the state to re­con­sider the crim­i­nal costs of ­anti-obshchestvennost’ vi­o­lence. In 1962, the Pre­sid­ium of the USSR Su­preme So­viet ac­knowl­edged the dan­gers of ­anti-druzhina vi­o­lence and ­passed a de­cree grant­ing stiff cus­to­dial sen­tences (five to fif­teen years) or the death pen­alty to those who used force ­against or at­tempted to kill an ­on-duty dru­zhin­nik, a de­cree that n ­ icely com­ple­mented the other ­hard-line law en­force­ment meas­ures intro­duced in that year (see chap­ter 5).49 The vi­o­lent under­cur­rent of the ­obshchestvennost’ cam­paign helps put the ac­tions of ­over-the-top dru­zhin­niki in per­spec­tive. ­Foreign ob­serv­ers and the So­viet press often made men­tion of the “rough” be­hav­ior of the dru­zhin­niki.50 They de­cried the dru­zhina for for­cibly ­cutting the hair and cloth­ing of so­cial un­de­sir­ables and for rough­ing up those they iden­tified (some­times in­cor­rectly) as of­fend­ers. Crit­ics who com­plained about vi­o­lent dru­zhin­niki in con­tem­po­rary news­papers and pub­li­ca­ tions often de­scribed them as the prod­ucts of im­proper re­cruit­ment or or­gan­iza­tional in­fil­tra­tion.51 How­ever, they were also part of the pro­cess of un­leash­ing pop­u­lar ag­gres­sion, a pro­cess that was a cen­tral com­po­nent of the ­obshchestvennost’ ex­peri­ment and the cam­paign to sof­ten rigid ­self-defense rules that pre­ceded it. Vi­o­lence was not alien to the ­obshchestvennost’ cam­paign. Just as in­jury and death were part of the human costs of col­lec­tive con­fron­ta­tion, phys­i­cal force and rough treat­ment were also an in­trin­sic part of the clash ­between the com­mu­nity of ac­ti­vists and the crim­i­nal world. In the con­fron­ta­tion, harsh tac­tics were not re­nounced. They were re­shaped to ­strike out ­against a new as­sort­ment of ­society’s en­e­mies. By pro­mot­ing per­mis­sible vi­o­lence and open­ing an area for vig­i­lant­ism, the ­obshchestvennost’ ex­peri­ment was not so much about get­ting rid of the power to reg­u­late and pun­ish So­viet so­ci­ety ar­bi­trar­ily, ag­gres­sively, and ­extra-legally. It was about tak­ing this power away from the po­lice and giv­ing it to the peo­ple in­stead.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

one line short

Empowering Public Activism



143

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Meas­ur­ing the Ex­tent of ­Obshchestvennost’ The cam­paign to mo­bi­lize ­obshchestvennost’ ­called on every mem­ber of So­viet so­ci­ety to be­come in­volved in the ­anti-crime strug­gle and to stand up ­against ­anti-social ac­tiv­ity. The press under­lined the uni­ver­ sal­ity of the mo­bil­iza­tion call by de­pict­ing and de­scrib­ing men and women, both young and old, play­ing their part to rid So­viet so­ci­ety of hoo­li­gans.52 Such media cover­age in­spired read­ers re­gard­less of age and gen­der to join ­obshchestvennost’ and help the re­gime ­achieve mass mem­ber­ship.53 Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics, the size of the vol­un­teer move­ment dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod was im­mense, and its rate of ­growth was ex­tremely rapid. In July 1960, the dru­zhina, less than a year after the res­o­lu­tion es­tab­lish­ing its ex­is­tence was an­nounced, com­prised 80,000 ­patrol units with a mem­ber­ship ­around 2.5 mil­lion. By July 1965, this num­ber had grown to the in­cred­ible fig­ure of 130,000 ­patrols and 4.5 mil­lion mem­bers.54 How­ever, these out­sized num­bers often ob­scured and in­flated the real level of vol­un­teer ac­tiv­ity and under­ stated the dif­fi­cul­ties of­fi­cials faced in draft­ing ac­ti­vists on the side of ­obshchestvennost’. The at­tempt to trans­fer the po­lic­ing and pros­e­cu­tion of de­vi­ants to ­obshchestvennost’ faced a big prob­lem in the lo­cal­ities—many peo­ple did not want to vol­u n­t eer. Mem­b er­s hip in the or­g an­i za­t ions of ­obshchestvennost’ in­volved heavy time in­vest­ments that cut down on ­after-work lei­sure and, es­pe­cially in the case of dru­zhina mem­ber­ship, ex­posed vol­un­teers to the phys­i­cal dan­gers as­so­ciated with po­lic­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. Lack­ing the right to carry weap­ons on ­patrol and often with­ out the means to call in ­back-up in cases of at­tack, the dru­zhin­niki were some­times out­gunned and out­num­bered by the crim­i­nals they were sup­posed to de­tain. They were also the po­ten­tial tar­gets of re­venge at­tacks, phys­i­cal ha­rass­ment, or pub­lic rid­i­cule. Sent to con­front crim­i­ nal­ity with lit­tle pro­tec­tion, many dru­zhin­niki, as a pen­sioner told the Su­preme So­viet, were in con­stant fear of being as­saulted, in­tim­i­dated, or mur­dered while on ­patrol duty. My son is a mem­ber of the mi­li­tia as­sis­tance bri­gade. How­ever, he has ­stopped work­ing with them. When I be­came inter­ested in his lack of de­sire to work in the bri­gade my son and his ­friends told me that they lack the right work­ing con­di­tions. They gave ex­am­ples when hood­lums (zhu­liki ) and

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

one line short

144



Empowering Public Activism

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

crim­i­nals beat them and ­warned them that if they catch them again then they will be ­killed. The par­ents of many bri­gade mem­bers pres­sured them to quit such work say­ing that the life of their chil­dren is too dear to them. With­out weap­ons, the mem­bers of the bri­gade can­not do any­thing. They are ­scared and do not even ap­proach them [the crim­i­nals]. Such a sit­u­a­tion is un­bear­able and in­tol­er­able. . . . They are un­armed ex­cept for a red arm­band that does ab­so­lutely noth­ing to scare off hoo­li­gans or ban­dits.55

The po­ten­tial phys­i­cal costs of join­ing dru­zhina units, as the ­pensioner’s let­ter made clear, had an ad­verse ef­fect on mem­ber­ship rates. The state re­sponded to this neg­a­tive feed­back with a pos­i­tive pub­lic­ity cam­paign and with the crea­tion and award­ing of dis­tin­guished ser­vice med­als to dru­zhin­niki.56 ­Through med­als and ci­ta­tions, the state at­ tempted to ­create a new and more pos­i­tive pub­lic image of the dru­zhina, stop the high turn­over and or­gan­iza­tional ex­od ­ us, and fill mem­ber­ship gaps with fresh co­horts. Yet de­spite ef­forts at in­spir­ing the pub­lic to en­roll, the dru­zhina ex­pe­ri­enced a per­sis­tent prob­lem in re­cruit­ing and re­plen­ish­ing its per­son­nel. By them­selves, vol­un­tary re­cruit­ment ­drives made lit­tle head­way in creat­ing a mass mem­ber­ship.57 In the rush to ex­pand ­obshchestvennost’ en­roll­ments and pad unit ros­ters, work­places some­times aban­doned the prin­ci­ple of vol­un­tary mem­ber­ship and ­drafted work­ers into the dru­zhina.58 Blan­ket en­roll­ments, in which en­tire work col­lec­tives were ­drafted into the vol­un­teer ef­fort, were also used to build mass mem­ber­ ships post­haste in the face of un­en­thu­sias­tic em­ploy­ees.59 En­ter­prise di­rec­tors, strug­gling to in­flate their ­obshchestvennost’ en­roll­ments, also re­sorted to stuff­ing units with non­ex­is­tent ac­ti­vists. The rush to fol­low cen­tral pol­icy and build a mas­sive grass­roots vol­un­teer ­system with­out the nec­es­sary ma­te­rial and man­power led to the pro­ life­ra­tion of Po­tem­kin or­gan­iza­tions ­staffed by ros­ters of vir­tual vol­un­ teers. Many dru­zhina units were like the ones in the Bel­go­rod re­gion, which a local of­fic­ ial ad­mit­ted “were ­created only on paper.”60 The pres­sure to max­imize en­roll­ments as ­quickly as pos­sible also ­prompted work­places to by­pass the ­druzhina’s ­time-consuming vet­ting pro­ce­dures. Ac­cord­ing to dru­zhina reg­u­la­tions, pros­pec­tive mem­bers over the mini­mum age of 18 had to send a let­ter of in­tent in­di­cat­ing their de­sire to join up and had to re­ceive the sup­port of the col­lec­tive where they ­worked, stud­ied, or re­sided, a re­quire­ment that de­manded con­ven­ing a meet­ing of the col­lec­tive and hold­ing a vote.61 Ig­nor­ing

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



145

or waiv­i ng these re­q uire­m ents en­a ­b led the rapid ex­p an­s ion of o­ bshchestvennost’, but it also al­lowed im­proper ap­pli­cants and “mo­rally un­suit­able per­sons” to get ­around screen­ing safe­guards and into the dru­zhina.62 As a re­sult, a Le­nin­grad in­sti­tute ap­pointed as its dru­zhina com­mander a man who had just been re­leased from serv­ing a ­ten-day de­ten­tion for petty hoo­li­gan­ism and a fac­tory in Bel­go­rod ­elected as ­comrades’ court chair­man a con­victed thief who had ­served fif­teen years in de­ten­tion and been ­caught steal­ing goods from the same fac­tory whose court he now ­chaired.63 By em­pow­er­ing ­rather than elim­i­nat­ing crim­i­nals, the RSFSR Su­preme Court com­plained that poor re­cruit­ment meth­ods ­drafted into the ­anti-crime fight “per­sons who dur­ing their ­patrols com­mit ­crimes them­selves.”64 There were re­ports of dru­zhin­niki shak­ing down cit­iz­ ens, such as in the case of a dru­zhina com­mander who stole furs, a pair of felt boots, and a ­sweater from a man at the local mar­ket and of a dru­zhin­nik who stole a ­drunk’s watch while ac­com­pa­ny­ing him to the ­sobering-up sta­tion.65 In this way, the line ­between dru­zhin­nik and crim­in ­ al was in­creas­ingly ­blurred dur­ing the cam­paign drive. Crim­in ­ als were be­ com­ing dru­zhin­niki ­through ­on-the-fly en­roll­ment and im­proper vet­ting. And dru­zhin­niki were be­com­ing crim­i­nals who ­turned the dru­zhina into an in­sti­tu­tional ve­hi­cle for per­sonal ag­grand­ize­ment, ha­rass­ment, and ­rent-seeking and took ad­van­tage of the un­reg­u­lated po­lic­ing power that had been trans­ferred to them in order to prey on the pop­u­la­tion they were re­cruited to pro­tect. Many dru­zhina units were not only short of vol­un­teers, they were ­starved for sup­plies as well. Com­pli­cat­ing pro­vi­sion­ing prob­lems was the fact that many dru­zhina bod­ies ­lacked the or­gan­iza­tional clout and bu­reau­cratic pull to com­mand ­scarce re­sources from local ad­min­is­tra­ tions. Some local dru­zhina had dif­fic­ ulty find­ing a space for their head­ quar­ters. Oth­ers ­lacked ac­cess to the basic of­fice sup­plies ­needed to ­record their or­gan­iza­tional ac­tiv­ity.66 Like their pro­fes­sional po­lice counter­parts, many dru­zhina head­quar­ters ­lacked means of trans­por­ta­ tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and, there­fore, had dif­fi­culty co­or­di­nat­ing field ­patrols and dis­patch­ing units to emerg­ing crime ­scenes ­quickly.67 The ­state’s de­sire to ­create a mass infra­struc­ture of grass­roots vol­un­ teer or­gan­iza­tions ex ni­hilo often out­paced the abil­ity of local govern­ments and work­places to re­al­ize them given their ma­te­rial and man­power con­straints. The re­sult was a rush to bring on line “flash” in­sti­tu­tions that satis­fied cen­tral pol­i­cies but often dis­ap­peared soon after they were

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

146



Empowering Public Activism

f­ ormed or per­sisted only on paper. ­Forced to shoul­der the costs and re­spon­sibil­ities of the ­obshchestvennost’ cam­paign de­spite com­pet­ing pro­duc­tion and per­sonal pri­or­ities, some lo­cal­ities, work­places, and vol­un­teers fol­lowed a strat­egy of build­ing po­tem­kin in­sti­tu­tions that ­created the ap­pear­ance of com­pli­ance to state goals. On paper, the ­grassroots ­obshchestvennost’ ­start-ups num­bered in the tens of thou­sands and were ef­fec­tive in roll­ing back crime rates. In re­al­ity, the dru­zhina and ­comrades’ ­courts were often under­funded, over­stretched, and had ser­vice ­records that ­ranged from ir­reg­u­lar to non­ex­is­tent. The life cycle of ­obshchestvennost’ ­start-ups often fol­lowed a cam­paign ­rhythm ­marked by in­itial bouts of rapid crea­tion fol­lowed by the ­equally rapid onset of or­gan­iza­tional in­er­tia.68 The ac­tiv­ity level of ­start-ups ­tended to fall off pre­cip­i­tously with time. For ex­am­ple, of the ­twentynine dru­zhina units ­created in the Kirov dis­trict of Kras­noiarsk, only two con­tin­ued to do work of any kind when they were ­checked.69 In ­Saratov’s Bal­a­kov dis­trict, watch­dogs dis­cov­ered that only half of the ­area’s ­twenty-four ­comrades’ ­courts were ac­tive and work­ing. The rest had ­stopped meet­ing alto­gether.70 Mem­ber­ship rolls fol­lowed a sim­i­lar cam­paign dy­namic of in­itial high en­roll­ment fol­lowed by rapid or­ga­ n­iza­tional ex­od ­ us and under­staff­ing.71 Many ­obshchestvennost’ start­ups only op­er­ated for a short time, dis­solved, or ­inched along out of in­er­tia and re­mained ac­tive only as a line on a ­bureaucrat’s led­ger.72 After a he­roic open­ing phase, many of the or­gan­iza­tions that these local bu­reau­crats threw to­gether sank into leth­argy as the pub­lic at­ten­ tion, ma­te­rial, and man­power re­sources orig­i­nally al­lo­cated to them dried up. The dru­zhin­niki of Tatar ­ASSR’s Fac­tory #159, for ex­am­ple, were crit­i­cized for doing noth­ing else in five ­months ex­cept bring­ing five ­drunks to the po­lice—de­spite the fact that the dru­zhina sup­pos­edly con­sisted of 466 ac­tive mem­bers.73 The USSR Pro­cu­racy de­clared that many dru­zhina units were “in es­sence in­ac­tive” or only able to field a hand­ful of hard­core ac­ti­vists to sup­port their ac­tiv­ity.74 Like the dru­zhina, the ­comrades’ ­courts also suf­fered from sim­i­lar prob­lems of under­staff­ing and or­gan­iza­tional leth­argy. For in­stance, a re­port dis­cov­ered that ­Omsk’s 139 ­comrades’ ­courts tried only 383 cases for all of 1963, sug­gest­ing an an­nual per court case­load of ­around three cases.75 Many ­comrades’ ­courts, such as the one ­created in ­Moscow’s Bolshe­vik con­fec­tion­ary fac­tory, did not hold ses­sions for years at a time or, as in the case of a ­comrades’ court in Mezh­du­re­chinsk, did not ex­am­ine any cases at all and dis­banded after a short pe­riod of vir­tual ex­is­tence.76

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Empowering Public Activism



147

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Out­side the Lim­its of So­cial­ist Le­gal­ity: The Khrush­chev Era ­Comrades’ ­Courts The ­comrades’ ­courts were work or ­residence-based in­sti­tu­tions whose mem­bers were ­elected by their col­lec­tives. Their main task, ac­cord­ing to the 1961 RSFSR ­comrades’ court stat­ute, was “to pre­vent vi­o­la­tions of law and mis­de­mean­ors det­ri­men­tal to so­ci­ety, to ed­u­cate peo­ple by per­sua­sion and so­cial in­flu­ence, and to ­create an at­ti­tude of in­tol­er­ance to­ward any anti­so­cial acts.” To ac­com­plish these tasks, ­comrades’ ­courts could order the of­fender to apol­o­gize, cen­sure him, fine him up to ten ru­bles, pro­pose that he be de­moted or ­evicted, or re­quire him to pay dam­ages to the vic­tim in any ­amount up to fifty ru­bles.77 Schol­ars have inter­preted the crea­tion of the ­comrades’ court ­system, in part, as an at­tempt by a ­resource-poor state to ex­tend its crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system on the cheap and re­lieve the case bur­den on an over­ bur­dened ­people’s court ­system by creat­ing al­ter­na­tive dis­ci­pli­nary ve­nues.78 How­ever, they did not al­ways work this way. The pun­ish­ment of petty hoo­li­gan­ism is a text­book case of the mal­func­tion­ing of the vol­un­teer court ­system. De­spite cen­tral at­tempts to trans­fer more cases to the al­ter­na­tive ­system of vol­un­teer ­courts, the crim­i­nal ­courts and po­lice in re­pub­lics such as the RSFSR sent an in­sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of petty cases to their ­comrades’ court peers, rang­ing from a low of 2.6 per­cent in 1961 to a high of 10.9 per­cent in 1964.79 The con­stricted flow of petty cases to the vol­un­teer ­courts under­lined the dis­con­nect that ex­isted ­between state goals to mini­mize pres­sure on the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system via trans­fer­ ring petty crime to ­obshchestvennost’ and local pun­ish­ment prac­tices that em­pha­sized crim­i­nal ­courts over ­comrades’ ­courts. In­stead of pick­ing up the ­system’s slack, the ­comrades’ ­courts were, more often than not, iso­lated and ig­nored by their pro­fes­sional counter­parts in the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. The op­er­a­tion of the ­comrades’ ­courts re­vealed the ten­sion that ex­isted ­between cen­tral pol­i­cies and local prac­tices. It also un­veiled a cen­tral ten­sion ­within ­Khrushchev’s legal pro­gram it­self: the ten­sion ­between the pro­gram of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity and the pol­icy of out­sourc­ing cer­tain case cat­e­go­ries to the ar­bi­trary, ­ill-trained, and un­pro­fes­sional ­agents of ­obshchestvennost’. By sub­ject­ing cit­i­zens to pu­ni­tive power that was often ca­pri­cious and un­reg­u­lated, the ­comrades’ ­courts hin­dered ­rather than ­helped the pro­gram of im­prov­ing so­cial­ist le­gal­ity in the So­viet Union.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

148



Empowering Public Activism

So­cial­ist le­gal­ity was the key­word of the ­Khrushchev-era crim­i­nal jus­t ice ­s ystem. To elim­i ­n ate the ar­b i­t rary, un­c hecked, and il­l e­g al meas­ures as­so­ciated with Sta­lin­ist ter­ror, the Khrush­chev ad­min­is­tra­ tion ­sought to ­create a legal cul­ture based on pro­fes­sion­al­ism and re­spect for cod­ified legal and pro­ced­u­ral can­ons. These meas­ures, it was hoped, would safe­guard the pop­u­la­tion from the ar­bi­trary will of state ­agents.80 How­ever, as the ­obshchestvennost’ cam­paign ­showed, the ­regime’s rhet­o­ric of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity had its lim­its. And out­side those lim­its, where vol­un­teers im­pro­vised their own laws be­yond the ­state’s reg­u­la­tory over­sight, stood the ­comrades’ ­courts. In­itially, ­comrades’ ­courts acted and ex­isted be­yond the boun­dar­ies of le­gal­ity for one sim­ple rea­son—be­cause there was in­itially no law gov­ern­ing their in­creased re­spon­sibil­ities. The state had pub­lished a draft stat­ute on the ­comrades’ ­courts on Oc­to­ber 24, 1959, lob­bied ag­gres­ sively to ­create ­comrades’ ­courts in work­places and res­i­den­tial units through­out the coun­try, and sig­naled that petty crime cases ­should be trans­ferred to their ju­ris­dic­tion. How­ever, it did not pass a final stat­ute on ­comrades’ ­courts until July 3, 1961. In their rush to out­source the pun­ish­ment of petty crim­i­nals to vol­un­teer bod­ies and bring as many units on line as quickly as pos­sible, the state did every­thing to pro­mote the ­growth of ­comrades’ ­courts but ­failed to le­gal­ize their ­status as valid sites of dis­ci­pline. “It is im­pos­sible to con­sider the legal basis of the ­comrades’ ­courts as nor­mal,” a ­comrades’ court dep­uty chair­man ad­mit­ted to the Su­preme So­viet “in re­al­ity they are, so to say, only half legal.”81 Lack­ing a legal foun­da­tion on which to op­er­ate, ­comrades’ ­courts, as a vol­un­teer court in Kiev noted, had “no legal right to apply meas­ures of pub­lic in­flu­ence (voz­deist­viia) to the law­break­ers ( pra­von­a­ ru­shiteli)” that the state was send­ing to them.82 In the ab­sence of legal stand­ing and lack­ing sen­tenc­ing guide­lines, some ­comrades’ ­courts used the pub­lished draft law as the basis for their sen­tenc­ing and pro­ced­u­ral func­tions al­though many, like this Mos­cow law­yer, wor­ried about the le­git­i­macy of “ap­ply­ing this draft in real life . . . when it is still not a law but only a draft?”83 Still other local ­comrades’ ­courts used the win­dow of free­dom ­created by the time lag ­between draft and law to ­create their own jus­tice, a pro­cess that led, in the view of its crit­ics, to di­ver­sity, ar­bi­trari­ness, and il­le­gal­ity. ­Forced by the legal limbo to infer and im­pro­vise rules and pro­ce­dures on the spot, ­comrades’ ­courts ­created their own sen­tenc­ing and pro­ced­u­ral stan­dards. The re­sult was a com­plex po­lyph­ony of local prac­tices that some­times contra­dicted state law and led to con­fron­ta­tions with local

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Empowering Public Activism



149

govern­ment and ju­di­cial bod­ies.84 As vol­un­teer ­courts over­shot their man­date and wan­dered into their ju­ris­dic­tional ter­ri­tory, sus­pi­cious local of­fi­cials often re­fused, as a Mos­cow law­yer ex­plained, to rub­ber stamp the sen­tences of their com­radely counter­parts or issue or­ders for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of their de­ci­sions. As a re­sult, some minor of­fend­ers were able to slip out of the vol­un­teer ­system un­dis­ci­plined.85

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

In the work of the ­comrades’ ­courts there is one se­ri­ous short­com­ing . . . The local ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee is over­loaded with com­plaints on the de­ci­sions of the ­comrades’ ­courts. This hap­pens be­cause the [comrades’] ­courts are ­guided by a draft stat­ute and they apply all the sanc­tions that are in­cluded in this draft. But at the same time, it is im­pos­sible to apply any of these sanc­tions in prac­tice be­cause it is only a draft [and not a law]. The [comrades’] ­courts im­pose a fine. But no­body in the court has the legal power to levy such a fine. The cit­i­zens com­plain about these il­le­gal fines. The dis­trict ex­ec­ut­ ive com­mit­tee con­sid­ers that this is il­le­gal and ­changes the sen­tences [of the ­comrades’ ­courts]. This ­creates great hard­ships in the work of the ­comrades’ c­ ourts be­cause they find them­selves in two po­si­tions: on the one hand it is said to them “go ahead and judge,” while, on the other hand, it turns out that when they do judge then the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee ­changes their sen­tences.86

The ­state’s in­abil­ity to le­gal­ize the ­comrades’ ­courts dur­ing the first cru­cial years of their op­er­a­tion under­cut their pop­u­lar le­git­i­macy and, by bring­ing up the ques­tion of the ­comrades’ ­courts’ legal right to try cases, al­lowed cit­i­zens to con­test their de­ci­sions. A ­comrades’ court chair­ man from ­Moscow’s Bau­man dis­trict com­plained that “in the col­lec­tive the res­i­dents say that the court has no right to ex­am­ine cases.”87 In their rush to ­create ­comrades’ ­courts on the ­ground as ­quickly as pos­sible, the state sac­ri­ficed their legal stand­ing and, in so doing, in­ad­ver­tently sab­o­taged their abil­ity to func­tion ef­fec­tively as ­agents of pun­ish­ment in a ­post-Stalinist cul­ture of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity. The ­comrades’ court and the dru­zhina op­er­ated as non­pro­fes­sional sites where the ­agents of ­obshchestvennost’ could ­create and en­force their own vi­sion of jus­tice out­side the lim­its of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity. The Kirov re­gional court ­warned the RSFSR Su­preme Court that “the ­comrades’ ­courts fre­quently go be­yond the boun­dar­ies of the ­rights that have been given to them and make il­le­gal de­ci­sions.”88 At a meet­ing of the Pre­sid­ium of the Mos­cow Col­lege of Law­yers, a ­speaker, dis­cuss­ing the legal il­lit­er­acy of the ­comrades’ ­courts, com­mented that “there are ­masses of mis­takes and, it is pos­sible to say, ar­bi­trari­ness ( pro­iz­vol) in the de­ci­sions of the comrades’ ­courts.”89 Re­ports told of ­comrades’ ­courts

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

150



Empowering Public Activism

car­ry­ing out a large num­ber of “in­cor­rect sen­tences,” that were not spec­ified in the ­comrades’ court stat­ute, such as exile from vil­lages, ex­ces­sive fines, and cor­rec­tive labor.90 Some rural ­comrades’ ­courts took away labor days from col­lec­tive farm­ers or ­forced de­fen­dants to per­form com­pul­sory com­mu­nity ser­vice, such as dig­ging and clean­ing ir­ri­ga­tion ­ditches.91 Poor reg­u­la­tion, over­sight, and guid­ance were ­blamed for vol­un­teer mal­prac­tice. Ac­cord­ing to the law, local labor un­ions and govern­ments were to over­see the op­er­a­tion of the ­obshchestvennost’ ­courts. In re­al­ity, over­lap­ping ju­ris­dic­tions in the reg­u­la­tory struc­ture, lim­ited re­sources, and com­pet­ing pol­icy pri­or­ities meant that nei­ther body per­formed its watch­dog tasks ef­fec­tively. In­stead of being ­walked ­through the ­start-up pro­cess, many ­obshchestvennost’ ­spin-offs com­plained that the legal es­tab­lish­ment ig­nored them. The chair­man of the Vo­logda re­gion “Mem­o­ries of ­Ily’ich” ­comrades’ court wrote in ex­as­per­a­tion to the USSR Su­preme So­viet: “No­body is inter­ested in our af­fairs. [No­body gives us any] ad­vice. No­body wants to ac­knowl­edge our ex­is­tence.”92 An­other ­comrades’ court chair­man from Mos­cow com­plained that “no­body ­guides (ru­ko­vodit) the local ­comrades’ ­courts. . . . And all this ­brings con­fu­sion into our work.”93 The com­pan­ion of the comrades’ courts in the ­obshchestvennost’ ex­peri­ ment, the dru­zhina, also had trou­ble stay­ing ­within the con­fines of cod­ified law and ca­non­i­cal pro­ce­dure. Like the ­comrades’ ­courts, the dru­zhina often func­tioned out­side ef­fec­tive rules and reg­ul­ a­tion. In its ar­bi­trary ap­pli­ca­tions and loose inter­pre­ta­tions of the crim­in ­ al cat­eg ­ ory of hoo­li­gan­ism, it acted less like a site of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity and more like an in­sti­tu­tional am­plifier of de­vi­ance.

The Dru­zhina as an In­sti­tu­tional Am­plifier of De­vi­ance Like the ­comrades’ ­courts, the dru­zhina was an elec­ted in­sti­tu­tion that (ideally) local labor col­lec­tives chose. ­Elected com­mand­ers would draw up ­patrol sched­ules and ­routes, and dru­zhin­niki, usu­ally sev­eral times a month and in ­groups of two or more, would walk their as­signed beat look­ing for signs of sus­pi­cious or crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity. In prac­tice, the dru­ zhina was ­charged with main­tain­ing pub­lic order, com­bat­ing petty crime (such as hoo­li­gan­ism, drunk­en­ness, theft, and spec­u­la­tion), and en­forc­ ing traf­fic reg­u­la­tions. To ac­com­plish these di­verse tasks, a ­druzhinnik’s main ­weapon was “per­sua­sion and warn­ing.” Of­fend­ers who were re­sist­ant to moral

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



151

lec­tur­ing were to be es­corted to po­lice or dru­zhina head­quar­ters for pro­cess­ing and pun­ish­ment. The dru­zhina was also ­charged with con­ tact­ing the ­offender’s work unit and place of res­i­dence and in­form­ing them of the trans­gres­sion.94 One of the ­druzhina’s main weap­ons in the fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism was the use of pub­lic sham­ing tech­niques, such as ex­pos­ing of­fend­ers to the gaze of the as­sem­bled col­lec­tive ­through sa­tir­ical car­toons, wall news­papers, and pub­lic dis­plays of ­offenders’ photo­graphs. Being pub­licly dis­played as a hoo­li­gan, the de­vi­ant was stig­ma­tized in the court of pub­lic opin­ion, ex­posed to the rid­i­cule of his col­lec­tive, and ­started on the long road to re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. The hu­mil­i­a­tion that pub­lic sham­ing prac­tices pro­duced was viv­idly com­mu­ni­cated in a 1956 Trud ar­ti­cle: “The stu­dent was ­deeply ­ashamed when he saw his own pic­ture in the reg­u­lar issue of the Kom­so­mol ­Patrol, read the sa­tir­ical ­verses about his be­hav­ior and heard the laugh­ter and in­dig­nant words of those stand­ing near. It ­seemed to him that even as he ­walked down the ­street fin­gers were point­ing at him. There he is, the hoo­li­gan stu­dent.”95 In sa­tir­ical ar­ti­cles named “he­roes not of our time,” “guests of the dru­zhina,” or “zor’kii” (a ­well-known cam­era model), of­fend­ers were ex­hib­ited to such an ef­fect that they “begged” the paper’s ed­i­tors to re­move their ­photos and car­i­ca­tures, ex­plain­ing that “any­thing is bet­ter than to blush be­fore the gaze of your fel­low cit­i­zens and to hear their ­taunts.” In Vy­borg, a ­shamed hoo­li­gan ad­mit­ted that he had lost thir­teen ­pounds after the dru­zhina ex­hib­ited his pic­ture, and in ­Astrakhan’ a man at­tacked a local ed­i­tor for dis­play­ing an in­sult­ing car­i­ca­ture of him and his girl­friend.96 Dru­zhina sham­ing prac­tices also took more imag­i­na­tive forms. For ex­am­ple, a prob­lem ­drinker and fre­quent hoo­li­gan was ­forced to re­ceive his pay from a fair booth ­shaped like a bot­tle of Oso­baia mos­kovs­kaia (a pop­u­lar brand of vodka), a tech­nique that a cer­tain Com­rade Kotov ­claimed would cause the of­fender to be “em­bar­rassed and for­sake al­co­hol.”97 In a ­Gor’kii fac­tory, they ­placed signs at the work­sta­tions of trou­ble­some work­ers that read “here works a drunk and a tru­ant (progul’shchik).”98 In the Le­nin­grad re­gion, the dru­zhina wrote a pro­gram ex­pos­ing and satir­iz­ing wrong­doers and broad­cast it, ­through loud­ speak­ers, at every local house of cul­ture, be­fore every movie screen­ing, and be­fore every sport­ing event held at the local sta­dium.99 The fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism in pub­lic ­places was a core part of the ­druzhina’s man­date. How­ever, the mo­bil­iza­tion of the dru­zhina took place in an at­mos­phere of ex­treme am­bi­gu­ity and ten­sion over what

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

152



Empowering Public Activism

con­sti­tuted hoo­li­gan­ism and what con­sti­tuted a pri­vate space dur­ing a time when prob­le­matic di­chot­o­mies of pub­lic and pri­vate and in­di­ vid­ual and col­lec­tive were being con­tested. ­Hooliganism’s broad­ness and am­bi­gu­ity as a dis­tinct crim­i­nal cat­e­gory had dras­tic ef­fects on ­illeducated ­volunteers’ abil­ity to iden­tify what was hoo­li­gan­ism and who was a hoo­li­gan. Em­pow­ered by a dis­course and cam­paign of mo­bil­iza­ tion, ­driven by an at­mos­phere of fear over ris­ing rates of hoo­li­gan­ism yet lack­ing a clear idea of what hoo­li­gan­ism was, dru­zhin­niki fell prey to a pro­cess that Stu­art Hall has ­termed “sig­nifi­ca­tion spi­ral.”100 The main sig­nifi­ca­tion spi­ral pro­cess, ac­cord­ing to Hall, is “con­ver­ gence.” Dur­ing the con­ver­gence phase, two dis­tinct ac­tiv­i­ties are ­linked to­gether based on an as­sumed ­shared at­trib­ute, and new so­cial prob­ lems are under­stood ­through being ­placed in the con­text of fa­mil­iar ones. Dru­zhina pros­e­cu­tion prac­tices ex­hib­ited such a con­ver­gence ­between hoo­li­gan­ism (norm-breaking be­hav­ior that re­sulted in the crim­i­nal dis­rup­tion of and dis­re­spect for so­ci­ety) and de­vi­a­tions from es­tab­lished con­ven­tions (dif­fer­ences in stan­dard dress or be­hav­ioral style). In other words, ­ill-educated dru­zhin­niki fre­quently under­stood hoo­li­gan­ism as any­thing that was cul­tu­rally out of the or­di­nary or that sub­verted con­ven­tional moral norms, ­whether it was so­cially dis­rup­tive or not. Via con­ver­gence link­ing, dru­zhin­niki under­stood as hoo­li­ganism such triv­ial ­norm-breaking ac­tions as walk­ing out­side the des­ig­nated path of a park, dis­card­ing cig­ar­ette butts on the side­walk, going out in pub­lic “clad in pa­ja­mas,” ­cruelty to cats, and send­ing in­sult­ing let­ters ­through the mail.101 The most strik­ing ex­am­ple of sig­nifi­ca­tion spi­ral in dru­zhina pros­e­cu­tion prac­tices was the la­bel­ing of vis­ual dis­plays of cul­tural dif­fer­ence or non­con­for­mity as hoo­li­gan­ism. A 1963 Kom­so­ mol­s­kaia ­pravda let­ter told the story of a woman who was la­beled as a hoo­li­gan, had her pic­ture dis­played on the “wall of shame,” and was ­kicked out of the Kom­so­mol for danc­ing the “Charles­ton.” When the ­newspaper’s ed­i­tors ­called the local Kom­so­mol sec­re­tary to ask about why she had been pun­ished as a hoo­li­gan, the sec­re­tary re­sponded: “She is quite ­strange, you know. . . . She ­hasn’t ­bought a bed for one thing and every­one has white cur­tains hang­ing in the win­dows, but she hangs red ones.”102 In­di­vid­ual dis­plays of dif­fer­ence, de­vi­a­tions from fash­ion norms, and sty­lis­tic plu­ral­ism at­tracted the ­druzhina’s fre­quent inter­ven­tion and sanc­tion­ing as pub­lic vi­o­la­tions of so­cial order. An Iz­ves­tiia ­reader wrote a let­ter com­plain­ing that the dru­zhina ­brought his 17­-­year-old

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



153

daugh­ter to the po­lice sta­tion along with “drunken hoo­li­gans” be­cause “she had her scarf tied ­around her head in a cer­tain way.” The ed­i­tor re­sponded an­grily that vol­un­teer ­patrols ­needed more ed­u­ca­tion on what their ac­tual re­spon­sibil­ities in main­tain­ing pub­lic order were and de­clared: “The ­girl’s man­ner of dress was ­hardly more co­quet­tish than that of any other girl.”103 The Sochi dru­zhina was par­tic­u­larly in­fa­mous for sanc­tion­ing in­di­ vid­u­als de­vi­at­ing from fash­ion norms. The con­fla­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism and cul­tural dif­fer­ence in dru­zhina pros­e­cu­tion pat­terns was ex­em­ plified in the Sochi ­druzhina’s prac­tice of la­bel­ing dis­plays of dif­fer­ence, such as men wear­ing nar­row pants or ­bright ­shirts, as ex­am­ples of hoo­li­gan­ism. Dyed red and black ­shirts, ac­cord­ing to local vol­un­teers, were worn by hoo­li­gans “who annoy girls when drunk and start ­fights on the dance floor.” Based on this spu­ri­ous cor­re­la­tion, vol­un­teers rea­soned met­on ­ ym­i­cally (iden­tify­ing a whole by one of its con­stit­ut­ ive parts) that “con­se­quently, when you see a per­son who is dis­tin­guished from oth­ers by the color of his shirt, do not ex­pect good of him.”104 The ­volunteers’ im­a­gin­ing of the am­big­uo ­ us legal cat­e­gory of hoo­li­ gan­ism in terms of de­vi­a­tions from stan­dard­ized cul­tural con­ven­tions in local dress ­styles was sub­ject to grow­ing press crit­ic­ ism. Ex­hib­it­ing a link ­between the en­thu­siasm in­her­ent in ­anti-hooligan cam­paign­ing and the il­le­git­i­mate ex­ten­sion of hoo­li­gan­ism to non­crim­in ­ al acts, Kom­ so­mols­kaia ­pravda re­sponded crit­i­cally to a dru­zhina ­leader’s con­fes­sion that “‘per­haps we over­did ­things a bit. Some­times the fel­lows were car­ried away by their en­thu­siasm and de­tained ­worthy per­sons be­cause they were ­dressed some­what out of the or­di­nary [the cap­tain said].’ To fight par­a­sites, hoo­li­gans, and other harm­ful ele­ments is a noble and nec­es­sary task. But can one con­fuse such trash with work­ing peo­ple whose only sin is that they ­dressed dif­fer­ently from the stan­ dard and in a way to which some Sochi Kom­so­mol mem­bers were not ac­cus­tomed.”105 The crea­tion of a ­sphere of in­tol­er­ance in which the slight­est de­vi­a­ tion (wrong scarf knot, im­proper shirt pat­tern, non­standard cur­tain color) from con­ven­tion was la­beled as hoo­li­gan­ism did not ­create an or­derly pub­lic ­sphere. It ­created pub­lic re­sent­ment. In ad­di­tion, the dif­fu­sion and pro­life­ra­tion of rules of pub­lic con­duct ­through pamph­ lets, pos­ters, and lec­tures made cit­iz­ ens feel ­self-conscious of the ­ever-present pos­sibil­ity of being la­beled as a law­breaker. A 1959 Og­o­nek ar­ti­cle, for ex­am­ple, com­plained: “In­deed, com­rades, have not too many ‘rules’ and ‘oblig­a­tory ­regulations’ ap­peared in our lives? As

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

154



Empowering Public Activism

soon as you leave your apart­ment you are no ­longer an or­di­nary cit­i­zen but a po­ten­tial rule ­breaker and hoo­li­gan. You are ad­mon­ished by an­nounce­ments, pos­ters, and ap­peals as if you are a hoo­li­gan and do not know how to be­have in de­cent so­ci­ety.”106 The in­creas­ingly broad ap­pli­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism to in­creas­ing num­bers of peo­ple based on am­big­u­ous con­duct rules ­prompted Kom­ so­mols­kaia ­pravda to ob­serve that “the dru­zhina see prac­ti­cally every­one as a hoo­li­gan. They de­grade and in­sult peo­ple for no rea­son at all”107 The mount­ing con­fu­sion ­between mis­de­meanor, sty­lis­tic dif­fer­ence, and hoo­li­gan­ism in dru­zhina sanc­tion­ing prac­tices re­sulted in the ex­ten­ sion of the types of ac­tions con­sid­ered as hoo­li­gan­ism as well as in the class of peo­ple iden­tified as hoo­li­gans. Broad def­i­ni­tions of hoo­li­gan­ism not only af­fected the con­ver­gence strat­e­gies that vol­un­teers used to iden­tify hoo­li­gans, but also where they ­looked for hoo­li­gan­ism. Just as pri­vate ac­tions in pri­vate ­spaces (apart­ment hoo­li­gan­ism and wife beat­ing, for ex­am­ple) were being re­con­fig­ured as acts with pub­lic sig­nif­i­cance in the legal ­sphere, vol­un­ teers iden­tified pub­lic hoo­li­gan dis­rup­tions in both the pri­vate world of the do­mes­tic and in in­di­vid­ual ex­pres­sions of style and taste. The ­druzhina’s per­se­cu­tion of cul­tural dif­fer­ence as hoo­li­gan­ism was aimed at pro­mot­ing ho­mog­en­iza­tion by lim­it­ing in­di­vid­ual be­hav­ior and ­choice to the con­ven­tions of local cul­ture. How­ever, the crea­tion of a ­sphere of in­tol­er­ance to di­ver­sity and its pro­jec­tion onto pri­vate areas of in­di­vid­ual ex­pres­sion re­sulted in a back­lash ­against an in­creas­ingly in­tru­sive dru­zhina. At­tack­ing the le­git­i­macy of dru­zhina per­se­cu­tion, in­di­vid­u­als de­fended dis­plays of dif­fer­ence, in print, by phras­ing dif­fer­ence in the rhet­o­ric of pri­vacy and in­di­vid­ual ­choice. To pro­tect small ex­pres­sions of plu­ral­ity, they rhe­tor­i­cally con­fig­ured cer­tain in­sig­ nif­i­cant but sym­bol­i­cally im­por­tant parts of their world into small pri­vate ­spaces that were ­closed off from out­side pub­lic inter­ven­tion. A music ­patrol ­created by the dru­zhina “to fight ­against ba­nal­ity and teach good mu­si­cal taste” ­prompted an anon­y­mous let­ter from stu­dents. In their let­ter, the stu­dents de­fended dif­fer­ence by using the lan­guage of in­di­vid­ual ­choice to chal­lenge the le­git­i­macy of pub­lic inter­fer­ence in mat­ters of per­sonal taste. “Our anger is be­yond all ­bounds! What are you [the music ­patrol] try­ing to tell us? We our­selves can tell which music is good or bad.”108 In an­other in­stance, a woman, ma­nip­u­lat­ing the rhet­o­ric of pri­vacy, de­fended sty­lis­tic plu­ral­ity by ap­peal­ing to a per­sonal space be­yond pub­lic inter­ven­tion and con­trol. Con­fronted by a dru­zhina p ­ atrol for wear­ing pants and in­formed that her “in­de­cent”

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



155

at­tire was dis­or­derly, “Nina S., in­stead of can­didly re­pent­ing her ac­tion and giv­ing up the pants, be­came angry. She went so far as to as­sert that wear­ing pants was ­strictly a pri­vate mat­ter.”109 Dru­zhina bri­gades, em­pow­ered with a broad, in­tru­sive def­i­ni­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism and under­stand­ing the pri­vate as open to pub­lic inter­ven­ tion, ­showed an in­creas­ingly in­tru­sive inter­est in mon­i­tor­ing do­mes­tic ­spaces. Such in­tru­sive inter­ven­tion in pri­vate space was ­viewed as a le­git­i­mate pro­phy­lac­tic aimed at pre­vent­ing fu­ture vi­o­la­tions of so­cial order. “By in­trud­ing into ­people’s ­so-called per­sonal lives,” a sym­pa­ thetic legal jour­nal ­opined, “the dru­zhina have, in ef­fect, saved them from com­mit­ting ­crimes and ­helped them to em­bark on an hon­est life of labor.”110 Other dru­zhina sup­port­ers ­argued that suc­cess­ful ­street patrol­ling had ­pushed de­vi­ance in­doors and that it was now nec­es­sary to bring the bat­tle for pub­lic order to the home­bound hoo­li­gan. Ar­guing that do­mes­tic in­tru­sion was ­called for to save So­viet chil­dren, a dru­zhin­nik in Che­li­a­binsk com­mented to an ­Oktiabr’ cor­re­spon­dent: “On the ­streets we have order. But in homes, be­hind ­closed doors, all kinds of ­things still hap­pen. We must find a way to in­trude (vtorzhe­nie) into the lives of fam­i­lies whose per­sonal ­fights (chast­nye skan­daly) are ruin­ing the lives of their chil­dren and warp­ing and em­bit­ter­ing their souls.”111 Orig­i­nally, the dru­zhina stat­ute gave the dru­zhin­niki the right to enter only “pub­lic ­places,” such as movie the­a­ters, clubs, and sta­diums, to po­lice pub­lic order infrac­tions.112 ­Fueled by their in­creas­ingly in­tru­ sive inter­ests in mon­i­tor­ing do­mes­tic space and tak­ing ad­van­tage of the am­bi­gu­ity ­between pub­lic/pri­vate bor­ders, some dru­zhina units lob­bied to ex­pand their entry ­rights to in­clude pri­vate apart­ments (chast­nye kvar­tiry).113 By giv­ing them the right to force entry into apart­ ments, the dru­zhina could po­lice the final fron­tier of pub­lic dis­or­der, the home, and ex­tend pub­lic sur­veil­lance from the ­street to the fam­ily cir­cle. How­ever, both the press and the pub­lic con­tested the le­git­i­macy of re­de­fin­ing the pri­vate ­sphere as a key site for dru­zhina inter­ven­tion. Writ­ing on a no­to­ri­ous Nik­o­laev bri­gade, Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, for ex­am­ple, crit­i­cized the ­druzhina’s do­mes­tic sur­veil­lance prac­tices and ­hinted that there were some pri­vate ­spaces in which the pub­lic gaze was un­wel­come. For the Nik­o ­l aev dru­z hina, Kom­s o­m ols­k aia ­p ravda com­plained, “the most im­por­tant task is to peak into ­others’ bed­ rooms and to savor the de­tails of their per­sonal re­la­tions.”114 Dru­zhina sur­veil­lance ­prompted an angry cit­iz­ en to send a let­ter to the Su­preme So­viet at­tack­ing such seem­ingly un­war­ranted in­tru­sions: “If the ac­tiv­i­ties of the dru­zhina and the ­comrades’ ­courts are de­vel­oped any

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

156



Empowering Public Activism

fur­ther . . . then this will only lead to mas­sive spy­ing on the peo­ple and to the de­struc­tion of all human free­doms. I ­protest ­against this and ­against the slav­ery [which it will im­pose].”115 Such ac­tors, fac­ing ag­gres­sive dru­zhina in­tru­sions into ­spaces of in­di­ vid­ual ­choice and pri­vacy, re­as­serted the sep­ar­a­tion of pri­vate life from pub­lic inter­ven­tion. In a let­ter to Iz­ves­tiia, a 72­-­year-old pen­sioner told of a pair of dru­zhin­niki who lived next to her. The dru­zhin­niki, ac­cord­ing to the woman, reg­u­larly lis­tened at her door and re­ported on the pri­ vate ac­tiv­i­ties that took place in her apart­ment to the local ­comrades’ court, call­ing her ­weekly fam­ily gath­er­ings “binges,” and “or­gies,” and re­port­ing that her son was her lover. Iz­ves­tiia ed­i­to­ri­al­ized that the duty of pub­lic or­gan­iza­tions to con­trol and inter­vene in the pri­vate ­spaces of in­di­vid­u­als, ­though it may be nec­es­sary for sanc­tion­ing and pre­vent­ing hoo­li­gan­ism, was also an in­va­sion of pri­vacy when ap­plied to non­ de­vi­ant ac­tors: “The pub­lic [obshchestvennost’] will ­rightly be inter­ested in how a per­son be­haves, [and] will re­buff hoo­li­gans, but this has noth­ing in com­mon with crude inter­fer­ence in the per­sonal lives of good peo­ple or with se­cre­tive glanc­ing into key­holes.”116 A press that in the apart­ment hoo­li­gan dis­course ­blurred and con­ flated no­tions of pub­lic and pri­vate and so­cial and in­di­vid­ual by ad­vo­ cat­ing “throw­ing open” the doors of the pri­vate to pub­lic con­trol now ad­ vo­cated shut­ting the door link­ing the pub­lic world to the pri­vate ­sphere of the in­di­vid­ual. In­stead of gen­er­at­ing ­greater ­social-mindedness, in­ tru­sive dru­zhina prac­tices also gen­er­ated a con­cern with pro­tect­ing and sep­ar­at­ing the pri­vate and do­mes­tic ­realms from un­war­ranted pub­lic in­tru­sion. An un­ex­pected con­se­quence of the ­obshchestvennost’ cam­paign was a par­tial re­as­ser­tion of the pri­vate, the in­di­vid­ual, and the do­mes­tic in the face of a vol­un­teer move­ment gone too far.

If at First You Don’t Suc­ceed . . . So­viet au­thor­ities were savvy ­enough to re­al­ize that hoo­li­gan­ism was some­thing they could not solve ­through ar­rest and in­car­cer­a­tion alone. End­ing it, they under­stood, also re­quired more than em­pow­er­ing ­obshchestvennost’ to con­front the crim­i­nals ­within their com­mu­nities. In ad­di­tion to all these ef­forts, de­feat­ing de­vi­ance re­quired fix­ing the ­deep-seated so­cial ills that ­caused hoo­li­gan­ism in the first place. As we saw in chap­ter 1, So­viet au­thor­ities be­lieved that hoo­li­gan­ism de­rived from im­proper moral up­bring­ing (vos­pit­a­nie), the over­con­sump­tion of al­co­hol, and the un­cul­tured en­ter­tain­ments of the male, urban, work­ing

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



157

class. In an at­tempt to mount a ­full-spectrum fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism, So­viet au­thor­ities set about tack­ling this trio of ­causes. In the pro­cess, they came ­face-to-face with some of their most per­va­sive and in­sol­u­ble so­cial prob­lems. Hoo­li­gan­ism was most fre­quently com­mit­ted in the even­ings, on hol­i­days, and dur­ing pay­days.117 In other words, hoo­li­gan­ism was a lei­sure crime that ­sprang, in part, from how ­working-class men ­filled their free time. As an of­fense that oc­curred dur­ing after­work hours, hoo­li­gan­ism was ­closely ­linked to ­working-class lei­sure prac­tices and the en­ter­tain­ment infra­struc­ture of the So­viet in­dus­trial city. In these fac­tory towns, a clash of com­pet­ing lei­sure cul­tures raged that pit­ted what work­ers ac­tu­ally did in their after­work hours ­against what the au­thor­ities ­wanted them to do. The ­state’s vi­sion of cul­tured lei­sure in­volved prac­tices of ­self-improvement and ed­u­ca­tion and re­volved ­around ca­nonic sites of en­light­en­ment, such as the li­brary and the the­a­ter. By priv­i­leg­ing books over booze and high cul­ture over card games, it re­flected the state and the ­intelligentsia’s en­dur­ing faith in the re­deem­ing power of the clas­sics of Russian culture to im­prove be­hav­ior, en­no­ble hu­man­ity, and pre­vent ­crimes like hoo­li­gan­ism.118 Yet ­rather than em­brac­ing the ­state’s vi­sion of cul­tu­rally ap­pro­pri­ate en­ter­tain­ment, the hoo­li­gan ­avoided the ideal lei­sure pur­suits of the ­well-made So­viet man. The Kom­so­mol Cen­tral Com­mit­tee noted re­gret­ fully in 1962 that 90 per­cent of con­victed hoo­li­gans never read fic­tional lit­er­a­ture (khu­do­zhest­ven­naia li­ter­a­tura), did not know what vol­un­teer work (obsh­chest­ven­naia ra­bota) was, did not take part in the ac­tiv­i­ties of cul­tural or­gan­iza­tions, and never ­played ­sports.119 More­over, many cit­ies and fac­tory towns ­lacked (be­cause of com­pet­ing spend­ing pri­or­ities, phys­i­cal de­te­ri­ora­tion, war­time dam­age, or in­suf­fi­cient funds) a cul­tured lei­sure and en­ter­tain­ment infra­struc­ture ap­pro­pri­ate to the ­state’s gran­ di­ose vi­sion of build­ing bet­ter So­viet men ­through eas­ily avail­able art and en­light­en­ment.120 The lack of avail­able and/or inter­est­ing lei­sure out­lets ­created a vac­uum in the after­work hours of work­ers that they ­filled with prac­tices that put them at high risk for hoo­li­gan­ism.121 Drink­ing, a prac­tice that was ­highly cor­re­lated with de­vi­ance, dom­i­nated ­working-class lei­sure cul­ture and the rit­u­als of male so­ci­abil­ity in the So­viet in­dus­trial cit­ies. Il­lus­trat­ing the om­ni­pres­ence of al­co­hol and its com­mu­nal con­sump­tion in the ­workers’ world, a 17­-­year-old Che­li­a­binsk work­man, re­spond­ing to a Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda query about how read­ers spent their lei­sure time, wrote: “Today—a drink­ing party (p’ianka), to­mor­row—a drink­ing

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

158



Empowering Public Activism

party. So it’s been for the last three years.”122 Often, work­ers had noth­ing else to do but drink, given the lim­ited lei­sure op­por­tu­nities of the nor­mal fac­tory town. “We de­cide to stop drink­ing,” an­other let­ter ­writer re­marked, “but we have ab­so­lutely noth­ing to do with our time and so we reach for the bot­tle again.”123 In­stead of being ­created by cap­it­ al­ism or ex­ter­nal bour­geois in­flu­ ences, hoo­li­gan­ism was bred by the or­di­nary bore­dom of the av­er­age fac­tory town, the emp­ti­ness of So­viet ­working-class life, and the des­ per­ate at­tempt to have fun in a so­ci­ety that pri­o­ri­tized work over play. Under­lin­ing the links ­between bore­dom, hoo­li­gan­ism, and non­ex­is­ tent en­ter­tain­ment op­tions, ob­ser­vant ­foreign cor­re­spon­dents, such as Ed­ward Crank­shaw, iden­tified ­post-Stalinist hoo­li­gan­ism as a “re­volt ­against the te­dium and emp­ti­ness of the So­viet way of life.” He noted of the young gen­er­a­tion: “They are bored . . . and des­per­ate.”124 The bat­tle ­against bore­dom, there­fore, ­emerged as one of the prin­ci­ pal ­fronts in the ­larger strug­gle ­against hoo­li­gan­ism. “Bore­dom is a bad life com­pan­ion,” the Kom­so­mol Cen­tral Com­mit­tee re­marked in a 1956 let­ter. “When there is no­where to spend one’s free time in an inter­est­ing way, out come the cards and the bot­tle of vodka and, after that, the hoo­li­gan­ism [starts].” 125 Yet in a state where the au­thor­ities were boost­ing lei­sure time (and herald­ing it as a sign of So­viet ­socialism’s super­ior­ity to ex­ploi­ta­tive West­ern cap­i­tal­ism), this lei­sure time, iron­i­ cally, was often ­filled with an ­anti-social mix­ture of dull­ness, drink, and de­vi­ance.126 To fight the un­holy trin­ity of te­dium, heavy drink­ing, and hoo­li­ gan­ism, the state and its or­gan­iza­tion of labor un­ions tried to equip and fur­nish fac­tory cam­puses and dor­mi­to­ries with an ap­pro­pri­ate infra­ struc­ture of cul­tured en­ter­tain­ment. They ­created li­brar­ies ­stocked with books, news­papers, and pe­ri­od­i­cals. Every dor­mi­tory had des­ig­nated Red Cor­ners, out­fit­ted with ­radios and other media. Art and music study cir­cles were en­cour­aged and spon­sored. Pal­aces of cul­ture were built to house a wide va­riety of cul­tural pro­grams and ac­tiv­i­ties. The au­thor­ities built play­grounds and sup­ported and pro­moted rec­re­a­ tional ­sports. These in­sti­tu­tions would, op­ti­mists be­lieved, raise and mold the pop­u­la­tion into ap­pro­pri­ate So­viet sub­jects and cut down on in­ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tiv­ity by giv­ing work­ers and their chil­dren con­struc­ tive al­ter­na­tive pur­suits with which to oc­cupy their after­work hours.127 Cer­tainly, these in­sti­tu­tions en­riched count­less So­viet lives and laid the foun­da­tion for So­viet ex­cel­lence in a wide range of sport­ing and cul­tural do­mains, from ball­room danc­ing to chess.128 Yet de­spite the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



159

state at­ten­tion and sub­stan­tial re­sources that were de­voted to them, many local out­lets and or­gan­iza­tions of cul­tured lei­sure, es­pe­cially out­ side the show­case world of the cap­i­tal cit­ies, were ill ­equipped, ­poorly ­funded, and ­sparsely at­tended.129 Faced with com­pet­ing pri­or­ities and ­scarce re­sources, local lead­ers often pri­o­ri­tized eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment and in­dus­trial out­put over cul­tured en­ter­tain­ment. Lei­sure out­lets were often ­planned last, built last, and had the low­est pri­or­ity for ­scarce labor and mon­et­ ary re­sources. Due to a lack of re­pair bud­gets, many local out­lets of cul­tured lei­sure suf­fered from sig­nif­i­cant de­te­ri­ora­tion to their phys­i­cal plant, creat­ing “a bad inter­nal ap­pear­ance” that de­terred work­ers. Other clubs ­lacked es­sen­tial util­ities, such as heat and electric­ity, under­min­ing their op­er­a­ tions and driv­ing away lei­sure seek­ers, es­pe­cially dur­ing the win­ter. In­ad­eq ­ uate fund­ing also ad­versely af­fected the abil­ity of in­sti­tu­tions to ac­quire nec­es­sary lei­sure sup­plies, such as mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, art ma­te­ri­als, or pe­ri­od­i­cal sub­scrip­tions.130 Even more trou­blingly, the lec­tures, con­certs, and meet­ings that Party and Kom­so­mol func­tion­ar­ies de­vised often ended up elic­it­ing the bore­dom they were de­signed to fore­stall. One Mos­cow Kom­so­mol ­leader, when asked why ­youths went to “our lec­tures, con­certs, and con­ver­sa­tions with­out en­thu­siasm,” re­sponded with the sim­ple dec­lar­a­ tion “be­cause they are bor­ing.”131 Much to the cha­grin of the au­thor­ ities, work­ers ­proved less than ex­cited about lis­ten­ing to lec­tures on po­lit­i­cal ideol­ogy, the inter­na­tional sit­u­a­tion, or the use of plas­tics in So­viet man­u­fac­tur­ing. “Fre­quently,” the Kom­so­mol Cen­tral Com­mit­tee con­cluded, “the youth are bored in our dor­mi­to­ries, clubs, pal­aces of cul­ture, and parks.”132 ­Chronic fund­ing prob­lems also drove many clubs and lei­sure out­lets to ­charge or raise fees as ­self-financing strat­e­gies.133 To max­imize at­ten­d­ ance and en­trance fees, clubs of­fered at­trac­tions of ques­tion­able ed­u­ca­ tional, moral, or vos­pit­a­nie value, such as ­dances, that often de­gen­er­ated into de­vi­ance and de­val­ued the ­clubs’ mis­sion of ­high-end cul­tural and ed­u­ca­tional out­reach. In­stead of being “even­ings of re­lax­a­tion,” a Kom­so­mol of­fi­cial la­mented that club ­events ­quickly con­verted into “rowdy ­dances” (tantsul’ki ).134 At such ­events, a ­people’s judge com­ plained to the Pro­cu­racy, at­tend­ees “do not oc­cupy them­selves with danc­ing, but with hoo­li­gan­ism.”135 In­stead of being a key in­stru­ment in the ­state’s fight ­against the de­graded cul­ture that ­created hoo­li­gan­ism, many clubs con­verted into hoo­li­gan hang­outs or en­acted ­events that prop­a­gated the ­crime-promoting cycle of drink and de­vi­ancy.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

160



Empowering Public Activism

Yet even when al­ter­na­tives were avail­able to al­co­hol, many work­ers con­tin­ued to pre­fer binge drink­ing to book read­ing. The pref­er­ence for the bot­tle over the com­pet­ing ob­jects ­pushed by the ­state’s cul­tured lei­sure pro­gram was re­flected in house­hold spend­ing pat­terns. The av­er­age mid-1950s So­viet fam­ily spent about twice as much on vodka and wine as it did on the clas­si­cal ar­ti­facts of cul­tured lei­sure (the­a­ ter tick­ets, movie tick­ets, books, news­papers, mag­a­zines, sport­ing equip­ment, mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, and cam­era and radio equip­ment) com­bined.136 ­Working-class males con­tin­ued to drink be­cause al­co­hol and its com­mu­nal con­sump­tion were about more than es­cap­ism or emp­ti­ness. It was also about de­fin­ing, as­sert­ing, and claim­ing male iden­tity and com­mu­nity. In­stead of being an ­anti-social ac­tiv­ity, al­co­hol con­sump­tion was the key in­gre­di­ent of male inter­ac­tion and hos­pi­tal­ity, ce­ment­ing so­cial bonds and seal­ing friend­ships ­between men in sites rang­ing from the shop floor to the sep­ar­ate ­apartment’s ­kitchen. In count­less ­troiki, kom­pa­nii, and other ­small-scale so­cial set­tings, strang­ers be­came ­friends and ­friends deep­ened the mu­tual ties that made their lives mean­ing­ful— all ac­com­pa­nied by the drink­ing cul­ture that the state de­mon­ized. The state could not get rid of al­co­hol be­cause al­co­hol was an in­sep­a­ra­ble part of the male, ­working-class world: it was the life­blood of a sub­cul­ture the state ­claimed to rep­re­sent but that in re­al­ity it in­creas­ingly could nei­ther under­stand nor tol­er­ate.137 The state tried to fight the ­ever-present enemy, al­co­hol, not only by creat­ing an infra­struc­ture of cul­tured lei­sure in the in­dus­trial cit­ies, but by en­act­ing new leg­is­la­tion de­signed to re­duce al­co­hol con­sump­tion and re­strict its sale. By tight­en­ing con­trol over the flow of al­co­hol out of ­stores and into con­su­mers, the state ­sought to kill the twin de­mons of heavy drink­ing and hoo­li­gan­ism with a sin­gle blow. “The fight ­against drunk­en­ness,” as a local pros­e­cu­tor in ­Gor’kii ­stated, “will at the same time be a fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism.”138 How­ever, al­co­hol ­proved ex­tremely dif­fi­cult to ef­face from the So­viet scene. Just as al­co­hol was in­grained in the cul­ture of the male work­ing class, it was also built into the urban en­vi­ron­ment of the av­er­age So­viet city. The city land­scape was dot­ted with small al­co­hol out­lets that func­tioned as cen­ters for the un­reg­u­lated sale and con­sump­ tion of al­co­hol and as ­spaces of so­ci­abil­ity that were often iden­tified as birth­places of de­vi­ant be­hav­ior. These de­cep­tively mod­est es­tab­lish­ ments ­sported signs read­ing “Snack Bar” (Bufet), but, as one let­ter ­writer re­marked, ­should “more truth­fully be ­called tav­erns (trak­tir) or

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



161

bars (korchma/zab­e­lovka).”139 Such urban sites of al­co­hol con­sump­tion were often the ­scenes of ­brawls and social disorder. The curs­ing and com­mo­tion that re­volved ­around them ­caused pe­des­trians to cross the ­street to avoid walk­ing past these dens of de­vi­ance or to pe­ti­tion local au­thor­ities to close them.140 De­spite a ­well-publicized ­anti-alcohol cam­paign, such small al­co­hol out­lets ­formed an in­erad­i­cable niche in the urban ec­o­sys­tem of the Khrush­chev pe­riod, turn­ing the so­cial­ist city into a land­scape of de­sire lit­tered with areas that ca­tered to its ­inhabitants’ de­mand for drink. ­Wherever the So­viet cit­iz­ en ­turned, a let­ter ­writer de­scribed, he en­ coun­tered “vodka at every step.”141 It was sold and con­sumed in caf­e­ ter­ias, res­tau­rants, and snack bars (zak­u­soch­nye). The de­cep­tively named tea shop (chai­naia) ­served wine.142 Seem­ingly any site could be­come an im­promptu arena for the sale and con­sump­tion of hard al­co­hol. “In the ma­jor­ity of cases, gro­cery ­stores have been ­turned into tav­erns (ka­baki),” a col­lec­tive let­ter ­signed by ten women from Mog­i­lev de­clared: “in which or on the cor­ner out­side of which ­crowds of work­ers and juve­niles drink vodka.”143 In 1958, the Khrush­chev re­gime tried to stop prob­lem drink­ing by im­pos­ing al­co­hol sales re­stric­tions and con­sump­tion caps at ­stores and res­tau­rants.144 How­ever, res­tau­rant goers ­quickly ­adopted prac­tices that al­lowed them to con­sume above quota and to counter­act sales caps.145 Pa­trons got ­around sales re­stric­tions by bring­ing their own al­co­hol to res­tau­rants and drink­ing it on the sly. ­Bribes got serv­ers, anx­ious to sup­ple­ment their sal­a­ries ­through il­licit side pay­ments, to over­look sales re­stric­tions and allow ­over-quota con­sump­tion. In ad­di­ tion, drink­ers asked com­pan­ions and third par­ties to order al­co­hol for them and, in this way, by­passed or­der­ing lim­its.146 Like their res­tau­rant counter­parts, local trade bu­reau­crats often fol­lowed pol­i­cies that counter­acted state re­stric­tions. The state tried to cap con­sump­tion by re­duc­ing the num­ber of re­tail out­lets sell­ing al­co­hol or by lim­it­ing their sales hours. How­ever, local govern­ments, anx­ious to max­imize their al­co­hol rev­e­nues, pres­sured local trade or­gan­iza­tions to ex­pand, ­rather than roll back, the num­ber of re­tail out­lets sell­ing al­co­hol.147 In Bel­go­rod, a dis­trict ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee ap­proved an ex­ten­sive al­co­hol ex­pan­sion plan that trip­led the num­ber of trade ­points for al­co­hol from 104 to 385 after the prom­ul­ga­tion of the De­cem­ber 1958 ­anti-alcohol de­cree.148 Anx­ious to push pur­chase ­points as close as pos­sible to key con­su­mer ­groups, ­profit-minded plan­ners at times ac­tively dis­re­garded the spa­tial re­stric­tions on al­co­hol sales de­signed

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

162



Empowering Public Activism

to ­create ­alcohol-free zones ­around en­ter­prises, tran­sit ter­mi­nals, and ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions.149 “If be­fore the de­cree there were 150 trade or­gan­iza­tions [in a par­tic­u­lar city] that sold vodka,” a wor­ried RSFSR gen­eral pros­e­cu­tor re­marked about the ­out-of-control pro­life­ra­tion of al­co­hol in local com­mu­nities, “then now there are 500 such shops.”150 Fac­ing com­pet­ing and con­flict­ing pri­or­ities, ­stores were also under pres­sure to over­look state re­stric­tions on the sale of al­co­hol. By sell­ing al­co­hol out­side of of­fi­cial sales hours or at ­above-quota ­amounts, they pad­ded trade turn­over, met their tar­gets more eas­ily, and rang up in­creased sales, es­pe­cially in the lu­cra­tive after­work pe­riod. As a re­sult, al­co­hol was avail­a ble, as one of­f i­c ial re­p orted, “from early in the morn­ing till late in the eve­ning.”151 De­spite seem­ingly ­strict state reg­u­la­ tions, many areas were able to sup­port a cul­ture of ­around-the-clock con­sump­tion where, dis­ap­prov­ing au­thor­ities noted, “you can buy al­co­hol ­wherever and when­ever you want.”152 In ad­di­tion, fed­eral and local govern­ments hin­dered ef­forts to cut al­co­hol con­sump­tion and al­lowed con­su­mers to side­step state re­stric­ tions by fail­ing to choke off ­sources of al­ter­na­tive sup­ply, such as the sam­o­gon or home­made al­co­hol trade. ­Firmly en­trenched local cul­tures of sam­o­gon pro­duc­tion and per­mis­sive local of­fi­cials frus­trated the ­state’s cam­paign to stop the pro­duc­tion of home­made al­co­hol, es­pe­ cially in rural areas (where sam­o­gon pro­duc­tion was a pop­u­lar cot­tage in­dus­try among some women) and in the Cau­ca­sian re­pub­lics. This lat­ter re­gion, in par­tic­u­lar, ­served as a sup­ply zone and ­launch pad for the inter­nal So­viet sam­o­gon trade, with their of­fi­cials even at one point pe­ti­tion­ing the cen­ter for the le­gal­iza­tion of sam­o­gon pro­duc­tion as an es­sen­tial part of Cau­ca­sian tra­di­tional cul­ture and as the only vi­able way for peas­ants to save their sur­plus fruit from spoil­age. Al­though these Cau­ca­sian over­tures never re­ceived of­fi­cial ap­proval, they under­ lined the tol­er­ant ­soft-line pol­icy to­ward sam­o­gon pro­duc­tion in the Cau­cuses and re­vealed the dou­ble stan­dard that ex­isted ­between re­pub­lics on the ques­tion of the il­licit ­at-home pro­duc­tion of al­co­hol.153 Home­made Cau­ca­sian al­co­hol, some­times thou­sands of li­ters at a time, moved ­across inter­nal bor­ders to mar­kets in in­dus­trial areas under the guise of col­lec­tive farm prod­ucts and was sold in col­lec­tive farm mar­kets. Many of the il­le­gal mer­chants pos­sessed doc­u­ments from local Geor­gian and Ar­me­nian au­thor­ities al­leg­edly giv­ing them the right to pro­duce and sell home­made al­co­hol. When a Geor­gian man was ar­rested with 200 li­ters of il­licit al­co­hol, he tried to avoid pun­ish­ ment by pro­duc­ing an of­fi­cial cer­tif­i­cate (spravka) that tes­tified that the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



163

“Twenty-Fifth of Feb­ru­ary” Col­lec­tive Farm gave him the right to dis­till grape vodka (cha­cha). When an un­em­ployed Yere­van res­i­dent was ar­rested with 200 li­ters of cha­cha, he also ­showed the po­lice a cer­tif­i­cate (spravka) from his local vil­lage coun­cil (sel’sovet) that ­awarded him the right to “sell his own home­made vodka.”154 This trade sup­plied Ukrai­nian and Rus­sian in­dus­trial cen­ters with the il­licit liq­uor that ­fueled the drink­ing cul­ture of urban work­ers, ­placed fur­ther pres­sure on the ­center’s at­tempt to im­pose cul­tured lei­sure on the work­ing class, and under­mined cen­tral at­tempts to ­dampen con­sump­tion ­through plac­ing re­stric­tions on of­fi­cial re­tail out­lets. The ­state’s at­tempt to at­tack hoo­li­gan­ism by en­cour­ag­ing cul­tured lei­sure prac­tices saw only lim­ited suc­cess. On the one hand, this pol­icy left an im­pres­sive leg­acy of in­sti­tu­tions and in­di­vid­u­als ded­i­cated to spread­ing a wide array of cul­tured hob­bies and art forms. On the other hand, the per­sis­tent prob­lem of ­scarce re­sources, com­pet­ing eco­nomic pri­or­ities, and local mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion under­mined many of these gains. In ad­di­tion, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of ­working-class men re­jected the ­state’s vi­sion of en­light­ened en­ter­tain­ment and its of­fic­ ial high cul­ture, pre­fer­ring their own rep­er­toire of rough mas­cu­line prac­tices and pas­times to what they saw as the in­au­then­tic, bor­ing, and ­overly po­lit­i­cized world of of­fi­cial pub­lic cul­ture. Like­wise, the ­state’s at­tempt to fight hoo­li­gan­ism by ­cutting down on al­co­hol con­sump­tion was also system­at­i­cally under­mined. Local ad­min­is­tra­tors ­openly ­flouted cen­tral reg­u­la­tions. Local cit­i­zens ­proved un­can­nily able to sub­vert state re­stric­tions. And, as we have seen, local sites and sub­cul­tures of al­co­hol con­sump­tion ­proved re­mark­ably re­sist­ant and re­sil­ient to out­side state at­tacks.

Mak­ing Bet­ter So­viet Men: Vos­pit­a­nie and Hoo­li­gan­ism The So­viet state be­lieved that peo­ple were not born hoo­li­gans—that was an ­anti-Marxist and bio­log­i­cally de­ter­min­ist ar­gu­ment that ­echoed the dis­cred­ited ideas of the ­nineteenth-century crim­in ­ ol­og ­ ist Ce­sare Lom­broso. In­stead, they be­lieved that peo­ple, or more pre­cisely chil­dren, were made into hoo­li­gans ­through im­proper or in­at­ten­tive vos­pit­a­nie. Re­fer­ring to the moral ed­u­ca­tion and up­bring­ing of chil­dren and young peo­ple, vos­pit­a­nie was one of the key words of So­viet cul­ture. It was also one of the key con­cerns of the ­state’s ­anti-crime and ­anti-hooligan cam­paigns. Im­prov­ing vos­pit­a­nie would not only ­create more po­lite, po­lit­i­cally lit­er­ate, and pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens, it would also cut down on

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

164



Empowering Public Activism

­society’s pool of po­ten­tial crim­i­nal of­fend­ers by creat­ing more mo­rally up­right So­viet men. For a ­post-Stalinist state that was in­tent on civ­il­iz­ing its cit­i­zenry and win­ning the Cold War by dem­on­strat­ing the super­ior­ity of its so­cial­ist val­ues to the world, is­sues of mo­ral­ity and its ap­pro­pri­ate in­cul­ca­tion were mat­ters of prime so­cial con­cern. In com­par­i­son to the Sta­lin­ist pe­riod, the Khrush­chev era ­marked a ­golden age of So­viet mo­ral­ism—as ev­i­denced by the ­heated rhet­o­ric and media hype that sur­rounded the re­lease of the “Moral Code of the Build­ers of Com­mu­nism.”155 Dur­ing this pe­riod, count­less pamph­lets and ar­ti­cles dealt with the issue of com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity and good every­day be­hav­ior, urg­ing cit­i­zens to im­prove their eth­i­cal out­look and so­cial et­i­quette.156 Many more were de­voted to top­ics such as how to raise chil­dren in an en­light­ened man­ner or how to inter­vene into the eth­i­cal di­lem­mas of fel­low com­rades and mem­bers of the col­lec­tive—teach­ing oth­ers, and one­self in the pro­cess, how to be bet­ter, more moral cit­i­zens of a col­lec­ti­vist so­ci­ety.157 By mak­ing vos­pit­a­nie a vital part of its ­anti-hooligan ef­forts, the pa­ter­nal­ist So­viet state made it­self into the ul­ti­mate au­thor­ity, ar­bi­ter, and sup­porter of ­proper mo­ral­ity, good pa­rent­ing and eth­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion. It also in­serted it­self into the every­day men­tor­ing re­la­tion­ships that ex­isted ­between par­ents and chil­dren, teach­ers and pu­pils, and ­bosses and em­ploy­ees, urg­ing these au­thor­ity fig­ures to take their re­spon­ sibil­ities se­ri­ously as moral ed­u­ca­tors and ex­em­plars for the new So­viet gen­er­a­tion. Yet by em­pha­siz­ing the im­por­tance of vos­pit­a­nie, the state also took some of the ­stigma off the hoo­li­gans and ­placed it on the au­thor­ity fig­ures who supposedly ­failed to give them the ap­pro­pri­ate moral ed­u­ca­tion and eth­i­cal ex­am­ple. The main cul­prits, whose ab­sent au­thor­ity and in­at­ten­tion left a vac­uum of vos­pit­a­nie in the lives of the ma­tur­ing So­viet sub­ject, were fac­tory di­rec­tors, ­school teach­ers, and par­ents. Ac­cord­ing to angry of­fi­ cials and cit­i­zens, fac­tory di­rec­tors made their work­ers into hoo­li­gans by fail­ing to break the cycle of drink and de­vi­ance that ruled every­day life in ­workers’ dor­mi­to­ries. In­stead of tak­ing an inter­est in their moral ed­u­ca­tion and shep­herd­ing them on the cor­rect path to ­proper So­viet sub­jec­tiv­ity, many fac­tory di­rec­tors ne­glected the eth­i­cal im­prove­ment of their ­charges and fo­cused ex­clu­sively on ful­fill­ing eco­nomic goals. As a re­sult, em­ploy­ees were left to their own de­vices after work­ing hours, and the dorms be­came no­to­ri­ous dens of ­binge-drinking, petty crime, and de­bauch­ery.158

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



165

In re­port after re­port on the hoo­li­gan­ism of young work­ers, fac­tory di­rec­tors and of­fi­cials were sin­gled out for blame for ig­nor­ing the daily life and eth­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion of their work­ers, often fail­ing even to set foot in their ­enterprises’ dor­mi­tory in­sti­tu­tions. The pros­e­cu­tor of ­Moscow’s Oc­to­ber dis­trict, not­ing the link ­between man­a­ge­rial ne­glect and local hoo­li­gan­ism, mar­veled that “no­body read the news­papers to them [the work­ers] or held con­ver­sa­tions or gave re­ports of a moral, cul­tural, or ed­u­ca­tional char­ac­ter to them. These peo­ple were left com­pletely to them­selves.”159 Crit­i­cism for ­worker hoo­li­gan­ism was fo­cused not so much on the hoo­li­gan, but on fac­tory au­thor­ity fig­ures, rang­ing from the di­rec­tor to the dor­mi­tory guar­dian (vospitatel’).160 ­Through their ig­nor­ance and in­ac­tion, these ab­sen­tee au­thor­ities ­failed to ­create a cul­tured counter­point to the stan­dard dor­mi­tory cycle of drink and de­vi­ance that ruled their ­workforce’s lei­sure lives and, ­thereby, al­lowed them to de­scend into hoo­li­gan­ism. Of­fi­cials and cit­i­zens also ­argued that par­ents, like fac­tory di­rec­tors, made their chil­dren into ­present and fu­ture hoo­li­gans ­through poor moral ed­u­ca­tion, in­at­ten­tion, and lack of super­vi­sion. Im­a­gin­ing hoo­li­ gan­ism as the re­sult of ­faulty chil­drear­ing put par­ents and pa­rent­ing at the heart of the ­anti-hooligan cam­paign. As with the work­site, the state del­e­gated to the fam­ily the re­spon­sibil­ity for rais­ing ­well-built So­viet sub­jects ­through ­proper ed­u­ca­tion and pa­rent­ing. How­ever, So­viet com­men­ta­tors on hoo­li­gan­ism noted that many dys­func­tional fam­il­ ies, ­racked by ar­gu­ments, abuse, and al­co­hol­ism, could not and did not fash­ion ­well-ordered work­ers. In­stead, they ­created dis­or­dered de­vi­ants. ­Rather than as­sist­ing their off­spring on the road to adult­hood, ­singleparent fam­i­lies and pa­ren­tal ne­glect left un­super­vised and under­super­ vised chil­dren to be ­schooled by the shad­owy ­agents and harm­ful vices of the city ­street.161 The state ­sought to cut down on the role that ­faulty fam­i­lies ­played in mak­ing hoo­li­gans by po­lic­ing pa­rent­ing and by mak­ing par­ents an­swer for the sins of their chil­dren. Legal sanc­tion­ing was one pro­posed ­method for pres­sur­ing prob­lem care­giv­ers into im­prov­ing their pa­ren­tal per­for­mance.162 In of­fi­cial and un­of­fi­cial sites of dis­ci­pline, par­ents were made to an­swer for their role in mak­ing hoo­li­gans ­through the mech­a­nism of the ­faulty fam­ily. Fines, for ex­am­ple, were pro­posed for prob­lem par­ents, but ­rarely im­ple­mented.163 The ­courts also tried (mostly un­suc­cess­fully) to pros­e­cute cases when pa­ren­tal “drink­ing bouts and curs­ing in the pres­ence of chil­dren [led to the] def­or­ma­tion

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

166



Empowering Public Activism

of the ­child’s con­scious­ness” and the crea­tion of crim­i­nal­ity. How­ever, the lack of spe­cific legal ar­ti­cles with which to po­lice prob­lem pa­rent­ing (be­fore the crea­tion of the 1956 petty hoo­li­gan de­cree) made win­ning such cases ex­tremely dif­fic­ ult.164 More fre­quently, col­lec­tives dis­ci­plined prob­lem par­ents in the in­for­mal sites of sham­ing as­so­ciated with the work­place. Along with their hoo­li­gan off­spring, moth­ers and ­fathers were pub­licly ex­posed and sub­jected to scorn for their poor pa­rent­ing prac­tices. By ad­mit­ting their guilt in the crea­tion of crim­i­nal­ity ­through ­faulty chil­drear­ing, they were ­forced to en­gage in ri­tu­a­lis­tic ­self-criticism (sa­mok­ri­tika) be­fore the col­lec­tive and made to serve as an ex­am­ple to oth­ers not to dodge the du­ties of ­proper pa­rent­ing.165 Sham­ing and crim­i­nal sanc­tions were not the only ways to deal with the prob­lem of poor pa­rent­ing. In an ef­fort to re­in­force ­proper prac­tices, some local govern­ments ­created in­sti­tu­tions of con­tin­u­ing ed­u­ca­tion de­signed to boost pa­ren­tal per­for­mance. The Iv­a­novo re­gion ­created a “uni­ver­sity for par­ents” to pro­vide chil­drear­ing ­classes and im­prove vos­pit­a­nie. In other areas, pub­lic or­gan­iza­tions and ac­ti­vists were en­ cour­aged to look in on prob­lem fam­i­lies and ad­vise strug­gling par­ents on ap­pro­pri­ate chil­drear­ing tech­niques.166 Super­vi­sion was a key com­po­nent of the ­state’s pro­gram of ­proper pa­rent­ing that, given the gen­dered role ex­pec­ta­tions of the pa­tri­ar­chal fam­ily and the ­skewed sex ratio of post­war So­viet so­ci­ety, fell heav­ily on moth­ers. In par­tic­u­lar, sin­gle moth­ers were often tar­geted as the par­a­dig­matic prob­lem par­ents from whose ne­glect de­lin­quent chil­dren ­sprang, with some crit­ics even ar­guing that such sin­gle moth­ers ­should be ­stripped of their pa­ren­tal ­rights.167 De­spite their de­mon­iza­tion, sin­gle moth­ers and their under­super­vised chil­dren were the so­cial prod­ucts of the ­state’s pro­mo­tion of ­single-parent fam­i­lies fol­low­ing the dem­o­graphic dis­as­ter of World War II.168 By sanc­tion­ing the ­singleparent fam­ily as a ve­hi­cle for pop­u­la­tion re­place­ment but pro­vid­ing only lim­ited fi­nan­cial sup­port to those fam­i­lies, the state ­forced moth­ers to leave their ­out-of-wedlock off­spring un­super­vised to pur­sue the un­skilled, ­low-wage labor ­needed to shore up the house­hold bud­get. The state then ­blamed these moth­ers for fail­ing to super­vise their ­children’s lei­sure and for fail­ing to shep­herd them from cor­rupt­ing ­street in­flu­ences. After­school pro­grams were one way for the state to keep kids off the ­streets and under re­spon­sible adult super­vi­sion. In sup­port of this ­agenda, local govern­ments built up and pro­moted a wide va­riety of

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Empowering Public Activism



167

after­school sites of ar­tis­tic study and phys­i­cal cul­ture. In many in­stances, these in­sti­tu­tions pro­vided an en­light­ened al­ter­na­tive to the un­super­ vised ­street play that fed pub­lic fears of juve­nile de­lin­quency. In some cases, how­ever, local com­mu­nities ­failed to pro­vide ad­e­quate fund­ing for these pro­grams or ­poorly ad­min­is­tered them. In other cases, sin­gle moth­ers, ­trapped in low wage jobs and fac­ing ­chronic ar­rears in al­i­mony pay­ments from dead­beat dads, ­lacked the spare cash to pay for even in­ex­pen­sive after­school pro­grams and sum­mer camps.169 In ad­di­tion to sum­mer camps and after­school pro­grams, the state pro­moted board­ing ­schools (inter­naty) as a way of deal­ing with under­ super­vised chil­dren from ­single-parent and dys­func­tional fam­i­lies. How­ever, there were never ­enough of such in­sti­tu­tions to deal with the mass prob­lem of under­super­vised chil­dren. More­over, sin­gle moth­ers re­ported a bias in ad­mis­sions pol­i­cies at such in­sti­tu­tions that fa­vored chil­dren from priv­i­leged par­ents and left ­at-risk chil­dren to the temp­ta­ tions of the un­super­vised urban ­street.170 When draft­ing ­anti-crime meas­ures in the mid-1950s, one of the first de­crees that the Party con­sid­ered was an act on im­prov­ing vos­pit­a­nie that re­quired all So­viet bod­ies to play their part in rais­ing mo­rally sound and ­well-rounded cit­i­zens.171 ­Rather than being an in­con­se­quen­ tial side­show, such a meas­ure was an es­sen­tial part in the ­state’s ­fullspectrum strat­egy for com­bat­ing so­cial dis­or­der and ris­ing crime rates. It re­flected the be­lief that im­proper moral men­tor­ing made men into crim­in ­ als and that cor­rect guid­ance and eth­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion could cure so­ci­ety of crime. How­ever, im­prov­ing vos­pit­a­nie and get­ting au­thor­ity fig­ures to ac­cept their duty as moral men­tors ­proved any­thing but easy. Com­pet­ing pri­or­ities, ap­a­thy, and ma­te­rial con­straints often ­teamed up to undo the ­state’s grand pol­icy for mold­ing the next gen­er­a­tion into model So­viet men—men who would be free of the lit­tle vices and im­mo­ral­ities that made hoo­li­gan­ism.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 17:13:35.

5

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime Dur­ing the late 1950s, re­form re­placed pun­ish­ment as the ­state’s pri­mary re­sponse to petty ­crimes such as sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism. This new ­soft-line ap­proach to crime re­cen­tered the So­viet ­system of crim­i­nal jus­tice ­around the prin­ci­ples of hu­mane­ness ( gumannost’), re­form, and the ­non-isolation of the petty crim­i­nal from the so­cial col­lec­tive.1 The long man­da­tory cus­to­dial sen­tences that were an in­fa­mous part of the ­Stalin-era ap­proach to petty crim­i­nal­ity were ended. In their place, minor of­fend­ers would be given sus­pended sen­tences, re­manded to the cus­tody of their work col­lec­tives, re­formed ­through col­lec­tive labor and peer guid­ance, and re­con­structed into ap­pro­pri­ate So­viet sub­jects. ­Khrushchev’s soft line was based on the can­did as­sess­ment that the Sta­lin­ist ­system of crim­i­nal jus­tice, cen­tered on in­creas­ing ­prison time for petty crime, was un­sus­tain­able. In­stead of help­ing re­duce its de­vi­ant di­lemma, cus­to­dial pun­ish­ments wors­ened ­society’s crime prob­lem, c­ logged its labor camps, and bur­dened the ­state’s bud­get. By switch­ing to a ­soft-line po­si­tion based on re­form and re­ed­u­ca­tion, Khrush­chev and his col­leagues hoped to save minor of­fend­ers from the cor­rupt­ing in­flu­ence of camp crim­i­nals and re­make them into be­nign So­viet sub­ jects. ­Through de­crim­i­nal­iz­ing petty crime, they ­sought to keep triv­ial mat­ters from clog­ging over­crowded court sched­ules and con­serve re­ sources for the fight ­against se­ri­ous crime. By trans­fer­ring the dis­ci­plin­ing of petty de­vi­ants from state to pub­lic bod­ies, ­Khrushchev’s re­form­ers ­planned to ac­cel­er­ate the with­er­ing 168

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



169

away of the state and ­h erald the for­m a­t ion of the ­s elf-regulating Com­mu­nist so­ci­ety of the fu­ture. More im­por­tant, the ­de-Stalinizing Khrush­chev re­gime, by mak­ing the ­switch to the soft line, hoped to dis­tance and dif­fer­en­tiate it­self from the ter­ror tac­tics of its pre­de­ces­sor. With the soft line on petty crime, the Khrush­chev re­gime ­shifted its style of so­cial con­trol away from the cus­to­dial and pu­ni­tive ap­proach as­so­ciated with the dis­cred­ited Sta­lin and the de­mon­ized Beria in favor of a hu­mane ­system based on the rec­la­ma­tion of re­deem­able wrong­doers. ­Soft-line pun­ish­ments for petty ­crimes, such as sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism, were cer­tainly noth­ing new. Epi­sodes of de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion and ex­peri­ ments with var­i­ous strat­e­gies of col­lec­tive re­form had oc­curred through­ out the So­viet pe­riod.2 Key in­stru­ments of the ­soft-line re­form, like the sus­pended sen­tence, were com­mon ele­ments of the So­viet ­judiciary’s sen­tenc­ing rep­er­toire that len­ient j­udges had been ap­ply­ing to petty and ­first-time of­fend­ers for years with or with­out state prompt­ing. Key words of the cam­paign, such as col­lec­tive re­spon­sibil­ity or krugovaia po­ruka, gave the soft line a rich ­pre-Soviet ped­i­gree that ­linked it to the Rus­sian ­state’s tra­di­tional in­stru­ments of rural so­cial con­trol, in­stru­ ments that dated back to the Mus­co­vite pe­riod and the era of the peas­ant com­mune.3 As with the use of the dru­zhina and the ­comrades’ ­courts, the soft ­line’s in­sti­tu­tions and in­stru­ments were stan­dard parts of So­viet and ­pre-Soviet state­craft and crim­i­nal jus­tice. ­Rather than the nov­elty of its core ele­ments, it was the sheer scale and ­high-profile vis­ibil­ity of ­Khrushchev’s ­soft-line cam­paign that set it apart from ear­lier ex­peri­ ments in de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion and peer dis­ci­plin­ing. For much of 1959 and 1960, pub­lic­ity and pro­nounce­ments con­cern­ing the soft line ­filled the So­viet mass media and ­caught the at­ten­tion of a cit­i­zenry told that it was liv­ing at a cru­cial pivot point on the road to com­mu­nism. De­spite the long pre­his­tory of many of its core com­po­nents, the ­softline cam­paign was not pub­licly un­veiled and en­acted on a mass scale until Khrush­chev sig­naled his sup­port for re­form and re­ed­u­ca­tion in the ­spring of 1959. The tim­ing was not ac­ci­den­tal. This was also the year when the in­sti­tu­tions and agen­cies of ­obschestvennost’ were also un­leashed ­against the prob­lems of crime and so­cial dis­or­der. It was a pe­riod of search­ing out, spon­sor­ing, and set­ting loose ex­pli­citly non­ state so­lu­tions to ­long-standing so­cial pa­thol­o­gies that ­linked to­gether in­sti­tu­tions and prac­tices as di­verse as the dru­zhina, the ­comrades’ ­courts, and col­lec­tive peer re­form. It was the epi­cen­ter of ­Khrushchev’s

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

170



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

uto­pian­ism and the ­soft-line cam­paign fit in well with the ­period’s mas­t er dis­c ourse of op­t i­m ism, vol­u n­t ar­i sm, and im­m i­n ent so­c ial trans­for­ma­tion. As his plat­form for pro­mot­ing the soft line, Khrush­chev chose, ap­pro­pri­ately, the Third Con­gress of So­viet Writ­ers (May 1959), the pro­fes­sional meet­ing of a prom­i­nent or­gan­iza­tion as­so­ciated since the Sta­lin era with the re­en­gi­neer­ing of So­viet souls. In his ­speech to the Con­gress, Khrush­chev pre­sented a case study of a So­viet cit­i­zen gone ­astray: a pro­fes­sional crim­i­nal who had been con­victed nu­mer­ous times for theft. Tired of the cycle of drop­ping out of jobs and drift­ing back into crime, this lost So­viet soul wrote Khrush­chev re­quest­ing a meet­ing and rec­om­mit­ting him­self to a life of le­git­i­mate labor.4 Turn­ing to his ex­pert au­di­ence on so­cial en­gi­neer­ing, Khrush­chev told them how to ap­proach re­deem­able wrong­doers and, in the pro­cess, spoke the soft line into ex­is­tence.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

We could put such a per­son, who ­strays from the cor­rect path, in ­prison. But he would only be­come a more qual­ified thief there. We need this per­son for our pur­poses. In order to put this per­son on the cor­rect path, we need an­other ap­proach. We need to be­lieve in man and in his best qual­ities. Can this man be an ac­tive par­tic­i­pant in the con­struc­tion of com­mu­nism? He can, com­rades [stormy ap­plause]. . . . I am tell­ing you this in order to show you that the up­bring­ing (vos­pit­a­nie) and re­form (per­evos­pit­an ­ ie) of such peo­ple is a mat­ter of the great­est im­por­tance.5

Dur­ing his ­speech, Khrush­chev paid trib­ute to a man who was both a for­mer mem­ber of the ­Writers’ Union and a fa­mous ped­a­gogue cel­e­brated for his work on the re­form of prob­le­matic So­viet sub­jects: Anton Mak­a­renko.6 By fa­vor­ably men­tion­ing Mak­a­renko in his ­speech, Khrush­chev sig­naled his sup­port for the ­non-isolation of the of­fender and the use of the peer group in the re­form pro­cess. The in­vo­ca­tion of Mak­a­renko also re­in­forced Khrush­chev and the soft ­line’s mes­sage that re­pen­tant crim­i­nals were re­deem­able and could be re­made into pro­duc­ tive mem­bers of So­viet so­ci­ety.7 With the as­cent of the soft line, hu­man­ism or hu­mane treat­ment (var­i­ously ­phrased in the Rus­sian pri­mary ­sources as ­gumannost’ or gu­ma­nizm) be­came the order of the day and the cen­ter­piece of the ­state’s ap­proach to ­non-malicious hoo­li­gan­ism. In an era of trans­at­lan­tic con­ cern over juve­nile de­lin­quency and Cold War prop­a­ganda, the soft ­line’s hu­mane­ness ­showed the en­light­en­ment and super­ior­ity of the ­postStalinist ­system of crim­i­nal jus­tice in com­par­i­son with the cap­i­tal­ist

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



171

West.8 The ­stress on the word hu­mane­ness or hu­man­ism also con­cep­tu­ ally ­linked the ­soft-line cam­paign with the sec­u­lar ra­tion­al­ism of mod­ern West­ern civ­il­iza­tion and the penal re­forms of in­fluen­tial phi­lo­sophes such as Ce­sare Bec­caria.9 It ­showed the world that the So­viet Union had shed the bar­bar­ism of the Sta­lin era and the ir­ra­tion­al­ity of its co­er­cive meth­ods. It was now going to deal with its per­sis­tent hoo­li­gan prob­lem not with blunt in­stru­ments like pris­ons and po­lice units, but with be­nev­o­lent prac­tices that re­volved ­around sus­pended sen­tences and peer guid­ance.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Soft Line and the Vir­tual Vic­tory over Hoo­li­gan­ism Fol­low­ing ­Khrushchev’s pub­lic state­ment of sup­port, a se­ries of cen­tral de­crees di­rected all local law en­force­ment to apply, in a system­atic fash­ion, the main prem­ises of the soft line: the use of non­cus­to­dial sen­tences, the trans­fer of petty cases to pub­lic sites of dis­ci­pline that op­er­ated out­side the for­mal crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system, and the em­bed­ding and re­form of the of­fender ­within his peer col­lec­tive. The prom­ul­ga­tion of the soft line had a dra­matic down­ward ef­fect on hoo­li­gan­ism. In the run up to the soft line, hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions in the USSR had hov­ered ­around the 200,000­-­person level (1956: 196,558; 1957: 185,035; 1958: 207,587). Fol­low­ing the un­veil­ing of the soft line, the con­vic­tion rate for hoo­li­gan­ism de­clined 60 per­cent in the USSR and 62 per­cent in the RSFSR ­between 1959 and 1960. Al­though they fell ­across the range of hoo­li­gan cat­e­go­ries, con­vic­tion rates ­dropped most ­steeply for cases of sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism, fall­ing 82 per­cent in the USSR and 87 per­cent in the RSFSR dur­ing the 1959 to 1960 pe­riod. The 58 per­cent and 60 per­cent de­crease in ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism in the USSR and RSFSR dur­ing the same pe­riod ­showed that, de­spite ef­forts to keep ma­li­cious hoo­li­gans out of the re­form and re­ed­uc­ a­tion pro­cess, the soft line de­flated con­vic­ tion rates down­ward for more se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fenses as well. Even petty hoo­li­gan­ism, which as an ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fense was in­el­i­gible for ­soft-lining, de­creased mark­edly dur­ing the ­soft-line pol­icy push, drop­ ping 45 per­cent in both the USSR and the RSFSR from 1959 to 1960.10 The pre­cip­i­tous de­cline in the use of the crim­in ­ al ­courts as the venue of ­choice for pro­cess­ing petty (and not so petty) crime had a dra­matic down­ward ef­fect on sen­tenc­ing pat­terns for hoo­li­gan­ism.11 From a low level in the 1940s and 1950s, the use of ­soft-line meas­ures for hoo­li­gan­ ism ­picked up rap­idly in 1959 and 1960. In 1958, 5 per­cent of hoo­li­gan

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

172



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

con­victs re­ceived a con­di­tional sen­tence as pun­ish­ment for their crime. This per­cent­age in­creased to 12 per­cent in 1959 and 20 per­cent in 1960. When cor­rec­tive labor sen­tences are fac­tored into the mix, more than one out of three con­victed hoo­li­gans re­ceived a non­cus­to­dial pun­ish­ ment at the ­height of the ­soft-line spree in 1960. Many more hoo­li­gans had their ­charges ­dropped be­fore their ­trials and were ­slipped into the ­soft-line ­system for re­form and re­ed­u­ca­tion with­out ever ap­pear­ing in ­courts or crime reg­is­tries. Uto­pian rhet­o­ric often ac­com­pa­nied the ­soft-line ex­peri­ment in the ­kinder and gen­tler treat­ment of petty crim­i­nals. Re­ports or ru­mors of steep crime re­duc­tions swept ­through so­ci­ety, the mass media, and the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system and fed ex­pec­ta­tions that civic ac­ti­vism was lay­ing the foun­da­tion of the ­self-regulating, ­conflict-free, and har­mo­ ni­ous so­ci­ety of the com­mu­nist fu­ture. The un­leash­ing of ­obshchestvennost’ and ­Khrushchev’s ­soft-line pol­icy had seem­ingly con­quered crime. Breath­less com­men­ta­tors an­nounced that the So­viet Union had en­tered a “new stage in the de­vel­op­ment of so­ci­ety and so­cial re­la­tions.”12 “In the lit­tle town of ­Ves’egonsk,” an ar­ti­cle ­gushed, “they are clos­ing their ­prison. They have no­body left to put in it.”13 ­Through the ­soft-line ­system of the late 1950s, the So­viet Union ap­peared to have ­solved its hoo­li­gan prob­lem. How­ever, it soon be­come ap­par­ent that the state had per­formed this en­vi­able feat not by stop­ping de­vi­ance, but by send­ing it “off­shore” or out of the for­mal crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. To make hoo­li­gan­ism dis­ap­pear, local legal work­ers ­dropped ­charges ­against petty crim­i­nals or gave them sus­ pended sen­tences and sent them to labor col­lec­tives where they were dis­cretely dis­ci­plined “off the books.” In­stead of re­duc­ing hoo­li­gan­ism, local ac­tors sim­ply trans­ferred it to sites where it was not ­counted in of­fi­cial crime sta­tis­tics. ­Through mov­ing hoo­li­gans from ­courts to col­ lec­tives and using peer re­form ­rather than crim­i­nal pun­ish­ment, legal work­ers kept crime off the books, drove down local con­vic­tion rates, and ar­ti­fi­cially low­ered crime sta­tis­tics. By set­ting up al­ter­na­tive dis­ci­ pli­nary sites out­side the for­mal crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system and by cook­ing their crime books using fraud­u­lent ac­count­ing prac­tices, they fol­lowed cen­tral ­soft-line pol­i­cies and, at the same time, ­claimed a vir­tual vic­tory over the per­sis­tent prob­lem of hoo­li­gan­ism.14 The crime re­duc­tions re­ported at the local and union level were not due to a de­crease in crime but to a ­change in the way crime, es­pe­cially petty ­crimes like ­non-malicious hoo­li­gan­ism, were being pro­cessed ­through (or more spe­cif­i­cally ­around) the ­system. A 1961 re­port on the

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



173

re­sults of the soft line ­stated: “The re­duc­tion of crime in the USSR in 1959 and 1960 was only ­partly due to a re­duc­tion in crime it­self. The main rea­son [was that] crim­i­nal cases were sent to the ­courts less and there was a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced [be­cause] pros­ec­ u­tors and in­ves­ti­ga­tive or­gans sent a great num­ber of per­sons who had com­mit­ted less dan­ger­ous ­crimes to pub­lic (obsh­chest­ven­nye) or­gan­iza­tions and ­workers’ col­lec­tives.”15 In a 1960 let­ter to the USSR Su­preme So­viet, a man from the Kui­by­shev re­gion also ex­plained that the crime re­duc­tions ­claimed by local of­fi­cials were due to a re­jec­tion of the crim­i­nal ­courts ­rather than a de­crease in crim­in ­ al­ity.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Now cases are being tried less in the ­courts. This is a fact. The num­ber of per­sons who are being sen­tenced to ­prison has de­creased. But is it pos­sible from this to make any con­clu­sion about the com­po­si­tion of crime? No, it is im­pos­sible. Here in our city, the ­amount of crime has in­creased in com­par­i­son with last year. Yet in re­al­ity the num­ber of con­vic­tions has be­come less and those re­ceiv­ing pun­ish­ments even less. In our coun­try they are clos­ing pris­ons in some cit­ies be­cause they say there is no need for them be­cause there ­aren’t any crim­i­nals. This is ri­dic­u­lous.16

Of­fi­cials ­quickly be­came con­scious that local crime re­ports ob­scured as much as they in­formed. An­swer­ing the ques­tion of why, in 1960, crime had de­creased in his re­gion by 50 per­cent in com­par­is­ on with 1950, the pros­e­cu­tor of the Sar­a­tov re­gion re­ported that minor ­crimes ( prav­o­nar­u­she­niia) were being tried by pub­lic or­gan­iza­tions (obsh­che­ st­ven­nye or­gan­i­zat­siia) and, in this way, “a great army of per­sons was freed from crim­i­nal sen­tence.”17 The Oren­burg re­gional Party com­mit­ tee, like­wise, ad­mit­ted that the 34 per­cent re­duc­tion in crime re­corded for 1960 in their re­gion was due to the fact that “some in­sig­nif­i­cant ­crimes [such as hoo­li­gan­ism] were not being sent to court but ­handed over to pub­lic (obsh­chest­ven­nye) or­gan­iza­tions and ­workers’ col­lec­tives” for cor­rec­tion and re­form.18 The wide­spread un­der­re­port­ing of crime due to the use of ­off-thebooks dis­ci­plin­ing made many of the sta­tis­tics on crime open to doubt. The au­thors of a re­port to the Pre­sid­ium of the USSR Su­preme So­viet com­plained that in Kursk and “other re­gions” pros­ec­ u­tors were com­ pil­ing in­for­ma­tion on crime that had no basis in re­al­ity and was a “mud­dle.”19 At a con­fer­ence in July 1961, the pros­ec­ u­tor of the Tad­zhik Re­pub­lic la­mented to his peers that “data on the num­ber of ­crimes reg­is­tered [for 1960] does not re­flect the real ex­ist­ing state of af­fairs.”20 Warn­ing that crime sta­tis­tics might not match crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity, the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

174



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

sa­tir­ical jour­nal Krok­o­dil cau­tioned its read­ers in 1961: “Num­bers are a very sub­tle thing (tsi­fry—delo ved’ ton­koe). Every­thing de­pends on how you look at them.”21 At a spe­cial meet­ing of the USSR Pro­cu­racy, the head of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee De­part­ment of Ad­min­is­tra­tive Or­gans, N. R. Mir­o­nov, an­nounced his dis­be­lief in cen­tral sta­tis­tics that ­showed steep re­duc­tions in crime. Crit­i­ciz­ing the as­sem­bled pros­e­cu­tors for fal­sify­ing sta­tis­tics and en­gi­neer­ing a vir­tual drop in crime, he ­argued that sta­tis­tics ­should re­flect re­al­ity ­rather than dis­tort it. It would seem that we could make the con­clu­sion that the po­si­tion with crime has im­proved but this is not so. . . . The sta­tis­ti­cal ­records of the Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs and the Pro­cu­racy al­ways used to ac­cu­rately re­flect the state of crime. We can­not pass off what we want for what ­really is and to ad­just sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion in order to cover up the real state of af­fairs. . . . It is im­por­tant that ­things be real and cor­rect. If a crime is com­mit­ted then the sta­tis­tics ­should re­flect this be­cause that is how it is in re­al­ity. . . . It is pleas­ant, of ­course, to see a re­duc­tion in the ­growth in crime, but it is pleas­ant when this re­duc­tion takes place in life and not only on paper.22

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Cit­i­zens also ex­pressed skep­ti­cism about the ­cooked sta­tis­tics the vir­tual vic­tors cited on the crime de­crease. A pen­sioner, for ex­am­ple, spoke about his skep­ti­cism to­ward crime sta­tis­tics that a local pros­e­cu­ tor cited dur­ing a ­speech to a meet­ing of re­tir­ees. In his [the ­prosecutor’s] ­speech he said that at ­present the num­ber of ­crimes, such as hoo­li­gan­ism and ban­ditry, has be­come less and less. . . . It would be inter­est­ing to know did the pros­e­cu­tor make a sim­ple slip of the ­tongue (ogov­o­ril­sia) when he spoke of the re­duc­tion of these ­crimes or did he speak sim­ply in order to de­ceive? I don’t under­stand on the basis of what sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion such a con­clu­sion was made. I don’t know how it is in the rest of the USSR but here for the last few years and es­pe­cially in 1959 the real sit­u­a­tion di­rectly contra­dicts what the pros­e­cu­tor said in his ­speech.23

The USSR and its of­fic­ ials did not re­duce hoo­li­gan­ism, they re­routed it by mov­ing it out of the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system and into the col­lec­tives. As court­room con­vic­tions and sta­tis­ti­cal in­di­ca­tors ­dropped, they pro­ claimed a vir­tual vic­tory over de­vi­ance. By point­ing to ­cooked sta­tis­tics that ­seemed to show dra­matic de­creases in crime, local of­fic­ ials ­showed the cen­ter that crime was with­er­ing away and that pub­lic input in the po­lic­ing and pro­cess­ing of petty of­fend­ers (an in­di­ca­tor of ap­proach­ing com­mu­nism and an­other key state pri­or­ity) was pro­gress­ing ad­mir­ably. More im­por­tant, they ­brought them­selves to the at­ten­tion of a state that

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

one line long

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



175

was will­ing to lav­ish ­praise and ­prizes on those who could re­al­ize their in­creas­ingly un­re­al­iz­able cam­paign goals. The sta­tis­ti­cal ­sleight of hand ­created by the soft line was, in its way, a sign of the times that res­o­nated ­strongly with the ­Party’s pre­dic­tions on the wan­ing of crime in the count­down to com­mu­nism. It bore more than a pass­ing re­sem­blance to the con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous La­ri­o­nov af­fair of 1959 and 1960, in which ­Riazan’ of­fi­cials pad­ded their meat pro­duc­ tion fig­ures ­through du­bi­ous means and crea­tive ac­count­ing to ful­fill ­Khrushchev’s cam­paign ­pledge to over­take the ­United ­States in ag­ri­ cul­tu­ral out­put.24 Like the La­ri­o­nov af­fair, the vir­tual vic­tory over hoo­li­ gan­ism was a minor sta­tis­ti­cal scan­dal that re­sulted from the ef­forts of em­bat­tled and am­bi­tious local ­agents to ful­fill the uto­pian plans of their boast­ful super­i­ors. How­ever, the ­claims of a vir­tual vic­tory over crime contra­dicted the knowl­edge of both pub­lic and state that crime re­mained a con­stant, if not grow­ing, prob­lem in So­viet so­ci­ety. As the in­for­ma­ tional dis­tor­tion, ­off-the-books dis­ci­plin­ing, and trans­par­ent ­claims of vic­tory multi­plied, ­anti-soft line sen­ti­ment began to grow among state ­elites and or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Soft Line and Its Dis­con­tents The soft line was not only crit­i­cized for al­low­ing crime to dis­ap­pear t­ hrough a sta­tis­ti­cal ­sleight of hand, it was also crit­i­cized for cod­dling hard­ened crim­i­nals. Al­though the ­soft-line ­system was not open to them, crit­ics noted that many work col­lec­tives were “ground­lessly” send­ing peer re­form pe­ti­tions to the ­courts on be­half of dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and re­cid­i­vists re­quest­ing that they be re­mit­ted to their care.25 A col­lec­tive in Ir­kutsk pe­ti­tioned the court on be­half a man who ­stabbed his preg­nant wife sev­eral times after find­ing a di­vorce no­tice from her in the local paper.26 The col­lec­tive at the “Dawn of Com­mu­nism” col­lec­tive farm in the Altai re­gion also pe­ti­tioned the court to grant a sus­pended sen­tence to a man who had ­beaten his ­mother to death.27 An­other col­lec­tive farm sent such a pe­ti­tion in the case of a man who raped a ­fifteen-year-old girl.28 The ­collectives’ mis­use of their pe­ti­tion­ing pow­ers not only ­slipped in­ap­pro­pri­ate of­fend­ers into the ­soft-line ­system, it ­prompted com­plaints that the soft line was shift­ing from a “hu­mane form of pub­lic ref­or­ma­tion” into “a means to save peo­ple who have com­mit­ted dan­ger­ous ­crimes from crim­i­nal re­spon­sibil­ity.”29 The large vol­ume of ground­less pe­ti­tions for sus­pended sen­tences and peer re­form, which some local ­courts es­ti­mated ac­counted for ­around 40 per­cent of all the pe­ti­tions for­warded to them, re­quired that

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

176



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

lower ­courts ex­er­cise dil­i­gent over­sight to weed se­ri­ous fel­ons out of the ­soft-line ­system.30 How­ever, the high ac­cep­tance rate for work­place pe­ti­tions (91 per­cent in the RSFSR dur­ing the 1959–1960 ­soft-line peak) ­showed that the ­courts rou­tinely ­rubber-stamped the re­quests that work­places sent on be­half of their crim­i­nal col­leagues with lit­tle or no over­sight. Under acute pres­sure to ­over-fulfill the ­soft-line cam­paign, lower ­courts ­handed out sus­pended sen­tences and re­manded vi­o­la­tors to the cus­tody of their labor col­lec­tives on a wide and often in­dis­crim­i­ nate scale.31 As pe­ti­tion vol­umes and ac­cep­tance rates ­soared, ju­di­cial over­sight of the pe­ti­tion pro­cess waned and al­lowed se­ri­ous crim­i­nals, such as mur­der­ers and rap­ists, to be mis­ta­kenly ad­mit­ted into the ­softline ­system—a move that would, in the end, ­greatly under­mine sup­port for ­large-scale, ­reform-based ­anti-crime pol­i­cies.32 Op­po­nents of len­ient ­anti-crime pol­i­cies ­argued that the soft line did not pun­ish crim­i­nals se­verely ­enough. The wide­spread use of non­ cus­to­dial pun­ish­ments and the prac­tice of ­off-the-books dis­ci­plin­ing, which by­passed the tra­di­tional pu­ni­tive triad of court, ­prison, and camp, meant that many petty (and not so petty) crim­i­nals re­mained free de­spite their crim­in ­ al mis­con­duct. Crit­ics inter­preted this as an in­jus­tice that de­graded the law’s abil­ity to deter fu­ture of­fend­ers from com­mit­ting crime. Com­plain­ing that ­district-level pros­e­cu­tors had an “in­cor­rect under­stand­ing of the tasks ­placed be­fore them,” the pros­ec­ u­ tor of the Bel­go­rod re­gion la­mented that, even for se­ri­ous ­crimes, ­courts were ap­ply­ing pun­ish­ments “that ­frighten nei­ther the crim­i­nal him­self nor, even less, or­di­nary per­sons.”33 Ar­me­nian jus­tice A. A. Alek­sa­nian, at a Sep­tem­ber 1960 Ple­num of the USSR Su­preme Court, noted that “crim­i­nals are con­vinced that they [the ­courts] will not give them the full pun­ish­ment.”34 He urged the USSR Su­preme Court to in­crease pun­ish­ments, pro­claim­ing that “crim­i­nals ­should feel con­demned and ­afraid . . . which at the mo­ment they do not.”35 Even a fer­vent sup­porter of the new pol­icy such as USSR Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor R. A. Ru­denko was ­forced to admit that there were many in­stances when “in­stead of pun­ish­ing we have in­dulged [crim­i­nals].”36 Look­ing at the sit­u­a­tion the soft line had en­gen­dered, many ­hard-line ad­vo­cates came to the con­clu­sion that local po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­courts had “lost all sense of meas­ure.”37 In­stead of ­cutting down on crime by re­form­ing re­deem­able of­fend­ers, the ­soft-line ­system, ac­cord­ing to its crit­ics, ­created an at­mos­phere of im­pu­nity and le­niency that en­cour­aged ­first-time petty crime. “The lib­eral ap­proach to ma­li­cious crim­i­nals,” the pros­e­cu­tor of the Stav­ro­pol

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



177

re­gion com­plained, “has given rise to an un­healthy opin­ion among the pop­u­la­tion that now it is not so scary to com­mit a crime be­cause ­obshchestvennost’ will come to your res­cue.”38 By re­duc­ing the po­ten­tial costs of com­mit­ting minor of­fenses, crit­ics ­argued that ­soft-line pol­i­cies dis­man­tled the struc­ture of dis­in­cen­tives that ­scared peo­ple away from crime and ­opened an ex­pand­ing space for rel­a­tively ­risk-free ex­per­i­men­ ta­tion with de­vi­ant be­hav­ior. “It is now pos­sible to hear re­marks among the un­dis­ci­plined part of the youth,” a man from ­Ul’ianovsk wrote “that it is safe to com­mit a ­non-major crime at least once be­cause they [the ­courts] will only give you a sus­pended sen­tence and hand you over to the col­lec­tive [rather than to the ­prison].”39 Ex­em­plify­ing the lack of con­cern many crim­i­nals felt about fac­ing a ­soft-line crim­in ­ al jus­tice ­system, two ar­rested crim­i­nals, when asked why they were not fright­ ened by their loom­ing trial for theft, re­plied: “Why ­should we be [scared]? The col­lec­tive will pe­ti­tion the court to give us a sus­pended sen­tence and re­mand us to its cus­tody. Now this is the fash­ion.”40 As the soft line fil­tered down the so­cial struc­ture, crit­ics ­argued that de­vi­ant com­mu­nities ­picked it up and inter­preted it as a li­cense to en­gage in anti­so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. “All the hoo­li­gans are well in­formed about this po­si­tion,” a 1959 let­ter to ­Pravda ­warned the ed­i­tors “Re­mem­ ber, they are lit­er­ate too.”41 In these un­of­fi­cial con­texts, the state lost con­trol of its ­soft-line rhet­o­ric as of­fend­ers in­vested it with a dif­fer­ent con­tent that re­made it into a jus­tifi­ca­tion for the ­crimes it was meant to cur­tail. The ­state’s ­soft-line rhet­o­ric not only al­lowed it to ad­ver­tise a new ­post-Stalinist ­system of crime and pun­ish­ment and to score ­points in the Cold War clash of civ­il­iza­tions; it also in­ad­ver­tently in­formed ex­ist­ing and po­ten­tial of­fend­ers of the ex­pand­ing pa­ram­e­ters of per­ mis­sible mis­con­duct and gave a mixed mes­sage about the ­state’s ­stance on petty crime. De­spite con­cern over the ­policy’s ­crime-promoting ef­fects, rates of re­cid­i­vism among ­soft-lined of­fend­ers were, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial sta­tis­ ­ ism rates, tics, ex­tremely low. Of­fic­ ials often ­pointed to these low re­cid­iv in many ­places as low as 1 per­cent, as ev­i­dence of the vi­abil­ity of its soft tac­tics.42 In some lo­cal­ities, ­soft-line pol­i­cies had seem­ingly con­quered re­cid­i­vism it­self. ­Riazan’, Nov­go­rod, Tomsk, Ka­luga, and the Kras­no­ dar re­gions all ­claimed, for in­stance, that there was no re­cid­i­vism among crim­i­nals given sus­pended sen­tences and re­mit­ted for peer re­ form dur­ing the key 1959 ­kick-off year.43 How­ever, anec­do­tal in­for­ma­tion sug­gests that re­cid­i­vism was a per­ sis­tent prob­lem for the ­soft-line ­system. A. N. Iak­i­menko, the chair­man

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

178



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

of the Ukrai­nian Su­preme Court, noted in a 1960 Ple­num of the USSR Su­preme Court that send­ing cases to the ­soft-line ­system “has ­brought great harm in the fight ­against crime,” be­cause the “super­vi­sion (kontrol’) of such per­sons is very bad and they fre­quently com­mit new ­crimes.”44 ­Soft-line crit­ics ­widely re­ported on the ­lapses and re­peat of­fenses of ­soft-lined of­fend­ers in order to ques­tion the ef­fi­cacy of ­reform-based ­anti-crime pol­i­cies. In one tell­ing ex­am­ple, Sasha, a twice ­soft-lined stu­dent in Le­nin­grad, be­came the head of a gang of ­thieves and ­robbed seven local ­stores—all while pre­sum­ably under the re­for­ma­tive care and super­vi­sion of his vo­ca­tional ­school col­lec­tive.45 ­Sasha’s story was a fa­mil­iar one for the ­soft-line ­system. For the ­system’s crit­ics, it was a story of un­worthy of­fend­ers given in­ap­pro­pri­ate pun­ish­ments. It con­firmed their be­lief that the soft line was too len­ient and only hin­dered ­rather than ­helped the prob­lem of fight­ing crime. Yet, the story of Sasha also told an­other tale about the ­soft-line ­system: a tale of the peer col­lec­tive, its at­tempt to re­deem one of its own, and of the prom­ises and prob­lems that beset the pro­cess of con­vert­ing crim­i­nals to the So­viet cause.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Sav­ing Crim­i­nals for the So­viet ­System In the ­soft-line vi­sion, the work­place was the epi­cen­ter of the re­form and rec­la­ma­tion pro­cess. It was where the trans­for­ma­tive power of work and com­rade­ship would take ef­fect and where ­yesterday’s hoo­li­ gans would be con­verted into ­tomorrow’s model work­ers. Draw­ing on the re­forg­ing rhet­o­ric of an ear­lier So­viet era, au­thor­ities saw the peer re­form pro­cess as a con­ver­sion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence in which the of­fender would, by work­ing and being ­worked on by the col­lec­tive, re­find his place in So­viet so­ci­ety and re­ded­i­cate him­self to the task of com­mu­ nist con­struc­tion. The soft line was cen­tered ­around con­ver­sion and ­around faith: faith in (to quote Khrush­chev again) “men and in their best qual­ities” and faith in the power of the col­lec­tive to re­deem lost men ­through pa­tient re­form and per­sis­tent re­ed­u­ca­tion. In the­ory, a ­collective’s de­ci­sion to take part in the soft line and its ­hands-on pro­gram of con­vert­ing crim­i­nals was vol­un­tary. Col­lec­tives that ­wanted to re­ed­u­cate a fal­len com­rade had to send a pe­ti­tion to the court in­di­cat­ing their will­ing­ness to do so. Upon re­ceiv­ing such a pe­ti­ tion from the col­lec­tive, the judge would then de­cide ­whether the ­offender’s char­ac­ter and crime war­ranted the grant­ing of a sus­pended sen­tence and trans­fer to the ­collective’s care.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



179

In prac­tice, local ­judges and pros­e­cu­tors some­times did not wait for the con­sent of the col­lec­tive and often com­pelled labor col­lec­tives and fac­tory di­rec­tors to par­tic­i­pate in ­soft-line pro­grams. In­stead of com­ing from the ­workers’ de­sire to re­claim their lost col­leagues, watch­dogs re­ported that in some areas, local Party of­fi­cials and legal per­son­nel ­forced peer re­form pe­ti­tions on work­places.46 In many in­stances, the de­ci­sion to ­soft-line an of­fender was de­cided for, ­rather than by, the col­lec­tive. In at least one lo­cal­ity, the local po­lice de­cided on be­half of local col­lec­tives that all minor of­fend­ers would be ­soft-lined and ­merely re­quired local di­rec­tors, with­out con­ven­ing the col­lec­tive, to sign off on a pre­ar­ranged pro­cess.47 The de­ci­sion to re­form and re­ed­u­cate an of­fender was not al­ways based on the se­ver­ity of the ­offender’s crime, the con­tent of his char­ac­ter, or the ­collective’s will­ing­ness to per­form the ­state’s re­form ­agenda. In­stead, the de­ci­sion to re­form was some­times de­cided by the ef­fec­tive­ ness and den­sity of the ­offenders’ friend­ship cir­cles, kin­ship ­groups, and pat­ron­age con­nec­tions. ­Rather than wait­ing for a col­lec­tive to ex­tend an offer for peer re­form, of­fend­ers mo­bi­lized their fam­ily and friend­ship net­works to inter­vene and in­flu­ence col­lec­tives and to se­cure such pe­ti­tions from them.48 In cases where col­lec­tives were un­will­ing to pe­ti­tion the ­courts for the re­lease of of­fend­ers, crim­i­nals ap­pealed to local Party and ad­min­is­tra­tive pa­trons to pres­sure labor col­lec­tives into re­think­ing their re­fu­sals. In the most ex­treme cases, pa­trons se­cured ­soft-line sen­tences for their cli­ents and got ­around stub­born col­lec­tives by forg­ing work­place pe­ti­tions them­selves.49 In other in­stances, ar­rested crim­i­nals hired law­yers to lobby their work col­lec­tives to re­ceive the pe­ti­tion ­needed for a ­soft-line sen­tence.50 By ca­jol­ing cau­tious col­lec­tives into sign­ing pe­ti­tions for sus­pended sen­tence and peer re­form, fam­ily mem­ber, ­friends, and pa­trons hi­jacked the ­soft-line ­system for their in­di­vid­ual ends and trans­formed it from a means of con­vert­ing re­deem­ able crim­i­nals to a way of ex­tract­ing their in­ti­mates from the of­fi­cial crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system.51 Such in­di­vid­ua­ ls were inter­ested in the ­soft-line ­system for rea­sons that ran coun­ter to the ­state’s goal of con­vert­ing re­deem­able wrong­ doers. They did not want to save petty of­fend­ers for the So­viet pro­ject. In­stead, they ­sought to save their ­friends and fel­low work­ers from the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system and the pu­ni­tive sites of court and camp that were as­so­ciated with it. Pro­cu­racy of­fic­ ials sent to the Kem­e­rovo re­gion in the fall of 1960 re­ported: “Meet­ings are sum­moned not in order to con­demn the un­worthy ac­tions of a mem­ber of the col­lec­tive but in

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

180



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

order to hide the ­guilty from court . . . and de­ci­sions are taken not in the inter­ests of the state but out of a feel­ing of pity for the vi­o­la­tor.”52 An­im ­ ated by sym­pa­thy for the crim­i­nal, work­place as­sem­blies be­came “a ­friendly form of res­cue, a way to free a man from legal trou­ble.”53 These col­lec­tives saw the soft line as a way to come to the aid of crim­i­ nal col­leagues and, there­fore, “ex­tolled of­fend­ers in every pos­sible way” for fear that, if they did oth­er­wise, “they would put this per­son in ­prison.”54 ­Through their local ac­tions, these col­lec­tives did not con­vert the crim­i­nal. In­stead, they con­verted the ­system it­self and its goals. By turn­ing the ­soft-line ­system into a kin­dler, gen­tler way of con­ceal­ing petty crim­i­nals ­rather than con­vert­ing them, local col­lec­tives ma­nip­u­ lated the often un­reg­ul­ ated op­por­tu­nity the soft line gave them to graft new mean­ings onto the peer re­form and rec­la­ma­tion pro­cess. Shame was at the cen­ter of the ­soft-line ­system’s con­ver­sion drama. Be­fore they could be saved for the So­viet ­system, of­fend­ers had to be ­shamed and made to ac­knowl­edge the grav­ity of their of­fense. To enact this pro­cess of sham­ing and ­status re­ver­sal, of­fi­cials re­quired that work­places con­vene a spe­cial as­sem­bly for the pub­lic dis­cus­sion and col­lec­tive con­dem­na­tion of the crim­i­nals in their care. Of­fend­ers (and some­times their par­ents as well) were ex­hib­ited in front of the full col­ lec­tive as their col­leagues spoke out ­against their ac­tions. After en­dur­ing the gaze and cri­tique of their labor col­lec­tive, the crim­i­nal would con­fess to his mis­deeds, ex­press ­thanks for the ­collective’s trust in him, and, at the ­height of the con­ver­sion drama, rec­om­mit him­self to fam­ily, fac­tory, and so­cial­ist so­ci­ety. Aside from ex­po­sure, ­speech was the ­collective’s key ­weapon in the fight to re­fash­ion the of­fender. The cru­cial im­por­tance of ­speech in the con­ver­sion pro­cess made lan­guage, and the ways in which it was used, an issue of vital im­por­tance to the as­sem­bly spec­ta­cle and the se­quence of sham­ing and crit­i­cism/­self-criticism at its foun­da­tion. De­spite local ­watchdogs’ at­tempts to reg­u­late, super­vise, and ­script the ­workers’ as­sem­blies, the state often had trou­ble get­ting work­ers to talk about their ­colleagues’ ­crimes in ways that were ac­cept­able and that ad­vanced the ­shame-based pro­cess of sav­ing crim­i­nals. The as­sem­bly spec­ta­cle re­volved ­around the fa­mil­iar So­viet ­speech acts of crit­i­cism and ­self-criticism (kri­tika i sa­mok­ri­tika) and fol­lowed a basic nar­ra­tive plan of con­fron­ta­tion, con­fes­sion, and con­ver­sion.55 Yet ­rather than being ­trapped ­within the rit­u­al­ized con­fines of these gen­res, work­ers spoke out about crime and the crim­i­nal in a lan­guage that fre­quently went ­off-script and com­pli­cated the ex­pected sce­nario of the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



181

work­place as­sem­bly. For ex­am­ple, work­ers often sub­verted ex­pected as­sem­bly ­scripts by re­fus­ing to crit­i­cize their co­work­ers and en­gage in the ex­pected rit­ual of col­lec­tive con­dem­na­tion. In­stead of speak­ing crit­i­cally and neg­a­tively about crime and the crim­i­nal, mem­bers of the col­lec­tive used their voice and the lim­ited auton­omy the un­reg­u­lated and am­big­u­ous as­sem­bly for­mat gave them to ex­cuse, ra­tion­al­ize, and even ­praise their fal­len col­leagues. The pros­e­cu­tor of Dage­stan, for in­stance, re­ported in dis­may that in ­workers’ meet­ings the par­tic­ip ­ ants did not at­tack the of­fender but “only speak pos­i­tively [about him].”56 ­Rather than tak­ing the floor to crit­i­cize their col­leagues, re­gional ­judges noted that ­workers’ col­lec­tives stood up “in de­fense of ma­li­cious hoo­li­ gans and those who have com­mit­ted dan­ger­ous ­crimes,” “ex­tolled the of­fend­ers in every pos­sible way,” and ­failed to give them “the nec­es­sary re­buffs.”57 By speak­ing about “the most hor­rible ac­tions in glow­ing terms,” col­lec­tives de­parted from the gen­eral sce­nar­ios and ­scripts that dic­tated how they ­should talk about the crime and crim­i­nals be­fore them.58 By re­fus­ing to fol­low such ­scripts and by opt­ing out of col­lec­tive con­dem­na­ tion, work­ers under­mined the sup­pos­edly crit­i­cal and con­fron­ta­tional work­place as­sem­bly and re­made it into a space that de­fended de­vi­ants as much as it dis­ci­plined them. They also ­showed that their lan­guages about crime, es­pe­cially the ­crimes of their com­rades and co­work­ers, were more dif­fer­en­tiated, com­plex, and flex­ible than the state had im­a­gined. Crime was a con­stant con­cern for many So­viet work­ers dur­ing the ­post-Stalin era (see the let­ters in the next sec­tion). In their let­ters to those in power, So­viet work­ers spoke about crime and crim­in ­ als in harsh and un­yield­ing terms, using im­ages of elim­in ­ a­tion, dis­ease, and dirt. How­ ever, when So­viet work­ers came face to face with of­fend­ers at the work­ place as­sem­bly, col­lec­tives found a new vo­cab­u­lary to talk about the petty (and some­times not so petty) mis­deeds of their col­leagues—a lan­guage of le­niency that sur­prised a state con­di­tioned to the harsh ­anti-crime im­agery of ­workers’ let­ters. At its most ex­treme, work­ers ­turned the ­state’s ­anti-crime ­speech on its head by ex­press­ing their ad­mi­ra­tion of the ­criminal’s cou­rage, re­mark­ing on his in­ge­nu­ity, and won­der­ing about how they could have com­mit­ted a bet­ter crime and ­avoided cap­ture.59 More com­mon was the ­collectives’ use of lan­guage to con­tex­tu­al­ize crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity and to give a human face to the of­fender. By fo­cus­ing on the ­offender’s youth, war­time ser­vice, fam­ily ob­li­ga­tions, or na­iveté

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

182



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

to ex­plain away mis­c on­duct, work­e rs used the as­s em­bly and the speak­ing op­por­tu­nity it gave them to talk about crime in nu­anced ways that bal­anced de­fense with de­nun­ci­a­tion. Col­lec­tives like­wise ­sought to argue away bad be­hav­ior by plac­ing it ­within the con­text of a ­hitherto ­well-lived life, “limit[ing] their re­marks to the past ac­com­plish­ments (zas­lugy) of the vi­o­la­tor ­rather than to the in­tol­er­abil­ity of his [present] be­hav­ior.”60 In their ­speeches, col­lec­tives often em­ployed a pro­duc­ti­vist under­stand­ing of per­sonal value that drew on ear­lier dis­courses of Sta­ k­ha­no­vite labor. They would argue, crit­ics noted, that “if [an of­fender] ful­fills his quota then he’s a good per­son.”61 In­stead of blast­ing the crim­i­nal and his crime, the col­lec­tive often de­fended him by ob­serv­ing that “he works well” or that “he ful­fills the plan.”62 De­signed as a space where the com­mu­nity could speak out in one voice ­against crime and its local costs, the as­sem­blies often be­came ­places where lan­guages about crime ­clashed. If they were ­present, state rep­re­sen­ta­tives (such as local pros­ec­ u­tors) kept ­on-message and ­within the gen­eral sce­nario ex­pected at such as­sem­bly meet­ings. How­ever, the ­state’s sham­ing rhet­o­ric sat un­eas­ily with the ­collective’s more sym­pa­ thetic ap­proach and its ­members’ un­will­ing­ness to “con­demn ei­ther the be­hav­ior of vi­o­la­tors or the ­crimes that they have com­mit­ted” or to show the ex­hib­ited crim­i­nal “angry cen­sure”—­off-message ac­cents that under­mined the ­assembly’s abil­ity to shame ­soft-lined of­fend­ers.63 The ­soft-line ­system was hin­dered, in part, by the mixed mes­sages of the work­place as­sem­bly. It was, per­haps more fun­da­men­tally, ­harmed by the ex­pec­ta­tions it ­placed on its two key par­ties: petty crim­in ­ als and labor col­lec­tives. ­Soft-line sup­port­ers be­lieved that petty crim­i­nals, such as ­non-malicious hoo­li­gans, were re­deem­able wrong­doers who, ­through the labor pro­cess and the pa­tient guid­ance of their co­work­ers, could re­fash­ion them­selves into ­proper So­viet sub­jects and re­find their place in the com­mon pro­ject of com­mu­nist con­struc­tion. Sup­port­ers of the new ­soft-line pol­icy also had faith in local fac­tory of­fi­cials and labor col­lec­tives and in their abil­ity and will­ing­ness to under­take the ar­du­ous pro­cess of re­mak­ing and re­form­ing their fal­len ­friends and com­rades. These ex­pec­ta­tions would prove to be a trou­ble­some prob­lem for the soft line and would pro­vide fuel to its grow­ing ­chorus of crit­ics. In­stead of being will­ing sub­jects in the soft ­line’s con­ver­sion­ary pro­ject, many hoo­li­gans ­proved dif­fi­cult ob­jects to re­form and re­claim. In some cases, the hoo­li­gans sent to col­lec­tives did not yield to at­tempts to re­ed­u­cate them and were a con­tin­ued haz­ard to pro­duc­tiv­ity, labor dis­ci­pline, and shop floor ­safety.64 In other cases, hoo­li­gans took

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



183

ad­van­tage of the ­system’s poor sur­veil­lance and over­sight to slip out of the soft line and evade the in­flu­ence of the col­lec­tive. In its sim­plest form, hoo­li­gans ex­ited the ­system by sim­ply fail­ing to re­port to their as­signed work col­lec­tive for re­form. By going on the road, switch­ing res­i­dences, or not going to work, hoo­li­gans ­avoided the soft line, ­stayed un­mon­i­tored and un­re­pen­tant, and put heavy de­mands on the ­system’s lim­ited struc­ture of reg­u­la­tion and over­sight. A few hoo­li­gans ­slipped ­through the ­system’s ­cracks be­cause they were un­em­ployed and/or home­less and thus did not be­long to a col­lec­ tive to which they could be trans­ferred for re­for­ma­tive re­ed­u­ca­tion. Such root­less of­fend­ers were often at­tached to ran­dom labor col­lec­tives for re­form or were given sus­pended sen­tences and al­lowed to slip ­through the ­system with­out being cou­pled to a col­lec­tive.65 In an at­tempt to pre­vent home­less and un­em­ployed of­fend­ers from avoid­ing the ­soft-line ­system, some local pros­e­cu­tors de­layed charg­ing un­ em­ployed sus­pects with ­crimes, pres­sured them to find em­ploy­ment, and ­waited for them to find a work­place to which they could be trans­ ferred for re­ed­u­ca­tion.66 Labor col­lec­tives often (though not al­ways) ­proved as un­re­li­able as the hoo­li­gans they ­sought to re­form. On the most basic level, many labor col­lec­tives had no idea how to re­form peo­ple, let alone re­fash­ion them into model So­viet sub­jects. De­spite the fre­quent ap­peals col­lec­ tives sent for help and input into the crim­i­nal con­ver­sion pro­cess, local au­thor­ities pro­vided lit­tle guid­ance on the every­day op­er­a­tion of shop floor re­form and re­ed­u­ca­tion ef­forts.67 Lack of knowl­edge and low mo­rale meant that col­lec­tives often ig­nored the crim­i­nals who were re­manded to their work­places and took lit­tle ef­fort to coun­sel, men­tor, or sup­port them. Watch­dogs often com­plained that “ab­so­lutely no­body does any work to re­form these peo­ple [soft-lined of­fend­ers].”68 The Kos­troma Col­lege of Law­yers, for ex­am­ple, out­lined the ref­or­ma­tion rou­tine of an 18­-­year-old soft liner: “He ­doesn’t study any­where. After work, he goes out onto the ­streets and en­gages in ­street ­brawls. Some­times, he is drunk. Yet de­spite this, no­body in the col­lec­tive wor­ries about him.”69 These same law­yers also told of a 17­-­year-old trans­ferred to a local labor col­lec­tive for re­ed­u­ca­ tion: “At work, he has vi­o­lated labor dis­ci­pline on sev­eral oc­ca­sions. He ­doesn’t want to study and he ­doesn’t read any­thing. He ­rarely goes to the mo­vies. As a rule, he ­avoids the the­a­ter. After work, he is left to his own de­vices.”70 In ad­di­tion, many work­ers were less than en­thu­ sias­tic about re­ac­cept­ing vi­o­lent crim­i­nals back into their col­lec­tives

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

184



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

and re­frained from re­form­ing them out of fear of cur­rent or fu­ture vic­tim­iza­tion.71 Fol­low­ing the work­place as­sem­bly, many col­lec­tives ended their re­form ef­forts and ­failed to take ad­di­tional steps to re­ed­u­cate the of­fend­ers who were re­manded to their care. The RSFSR Su­preme Court, for in­stance, com­plained that some work col­lec­tives “con­sider the work of re­form fin­ished as soon as they have held a meet­ing and sent a pe­ti­ tion for peer re­form to the court.”72 Other col­lec­tives were con­tent to ac­cept ­first-time con­fes­sions and prom­ises ex­tracted dur­ing the as­sem­bly at face value as in­di­ca­tors of suc­cess­ful con­ver­sion. A ­speaker from the Le­nin­grad ­branch of Zna­nie de­scribed such a case to his col­leagues:

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

They [a work col­lec­tive] dis­cuss the case of some drunk at a meet­ing. He [the drunk] ­leaves this meet­ing and says: “Lis­ten every­body, I will not drink any­ more. I will tell my chil­dren not to drink and I will order my grand­chil­dren not to drink.” Then they [the col­lec­tive] make the mis­taken con­clu­sion that this man has re­formed him­self. If it were so easy to re­form peo­ple, we would not be hold­ing semi­nars on this topic, schol­ars would not be bust­ing their heads think­ing of new meth­ods of re­form. But the col­lec­tive ­thinks: “Hur­rah, hur­rah! Long live the col­lec­tive. This man has re­formed him­self.”73

Watch­dogs com­plained that work­places did not take the ­system se­ri­ously ­enough and car­ried out their peer re­form re­quire­ments in a “for­mal” man­ner.74 To max­imize at­ten­dance and limit dis­rup­tions to the pro­duc­tion pro­cess, fac­tory ­bosses would hold im­promptu as­sem­blies dur­ing smok­ing or lunch ­breaks—a move that re­sulted in short meet­ings (some­times only the ­court’s sen­tence was read aloud and the meet­ing ad­journed) that had lim­ited au­di­ence input and lit­tle re­form value for the of­fend­ers in­volved.75 In some fac­to­ries, the col­lec­tive aban­doned its re­form re­spon­sibil­ities, ­ejected un­re­deem­able of­fend­ers, and al­lowed ­hard-core hoo­li­gans to es­cape the re­form pro­cess by fir­ing them. At a ship­build­ing fac­tory in the Kras­no­dar re­gion, three of the ten hoo­li­gans sent to the fac­tory col­lec­tive for re­ed­u­ca­tion were fired after a short time “and their be­hav­ior was never dis­cussed.”76 Some­times ­soft-lined of­fend­ers were even fired, often at their own re­quest, the day after they were trans­ ferred to the ­workers’ col­lec­tive for re­form.77 Such man­age­ment moves de­stroyed the soft ­line’s re­for­ma­tive ­stance by sep­ar­at­ing hoo­li­gans from the labor col­lec­tive and ­showed the often am­biv­a­lent or hos­tile at­ti­tude these col­lec­tives had to­ward the soft line and the re­form pro­ject they were sup­posed to be under­tak­ing.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



185

The im­per­fect op­er­a­tion of the re­form pro­cess and the in­abil­ity of many col­lec­tives to re­claim their fal­len com­rades did much to under­ mine sup­port for the ­soft-line ­system as a whole. Al­though of­fi­cial­dom ­housed many ­hard-line crit­ics of the ­state’s new ­soft-line ­anti-crime ­stance, the most vocal and vi­ol­ ent op­po­nents of ­Khrushchev’s new crime pro­gram came from among So­viet cit­i­zens them­selves. “The work­ers,” Cen­tral Com­mit­tee de­part­ment head N. R. Mir­o­nov told re­pub­li­can pros­e­cu­tors, “are ­amazed by the in­de­ci­sive­ness, soft­ness and, some­times, in­ac­tiv­ity of state or­gans in the fight ­against crime.”78 As news of ­abuses ­spread, a pol­i­tics of pun­ish­ment ­emerged that pit­ted hu­mane prac­tices ­against harsh pun­ish­ments and that po­si­tioned a ­soft-line state ­against a vocal, ­hard-line seg­ment of its cit­iz­ enry.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Pop­u­lar Re­sponses to ­Soft-Line Pol­i­cies Many So­viet cit­i­zens, to judge by their let­ters to au­thor­ity, were not sup­port­ers of the ­state’s ­soft-line ­stance on petty crime. In­stead, they ad­vo­cated a ­hard-line po­si­tion of strength­en­ing the law’s pu­ni­tive force and ­called for a more con­fron­ta­tional and ag­gres­sive pol­icy to­ward the hoo­li­gan. Dur­ing a time when state ac­tors were sof­ten­ing the ­system’s co­er­cive power, many So­viet cit­i­zens ­argued for the re­in­sti­tu­tion of severe pun­ish­ments for crim­i­nals. Let­ter writ­ers ­sought to dis­credit the new ­anti-crime dis­course by at­tack­ing the key­word of the ­state’s ­soft-line pol­icy: hu­mane­ness ( gumannost’). They ­argued that hu­mane­ness res­o­nated with the crim­i­nal under­world ­rather than with the ­state’s core con­stit­u­ency of urban labor. A ­worker from Mos­cow, for ex­am­ple, wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet: “The word hu­man­ism (gu­ma­nizm) ­sounds very noble . . . but this slo­gan is harm­ful to the peo­ple.”79 A let­ter from Sverd­lovsk la­mented that “It is good that we have such hu­mane peo­ple in our coun­try, but it is rare, very rare, that such hu­mane­ness ­serves any use­ful pur­pose for so­ci­ety. It only helps the crim­i­nal.”80 Hu­man­ism was re­jected be­cause it de­fended the crim­i­nal by shield­ing him from the pu­ni­tive sites of court and camp and hin­dered real ­anti-crime ef­forts. A Mus­co­vite wrote in a let­ter to the Pre­sid­ium of the USSR Su­preme So­viet: “Why isn’t a sin­gle group in our govern­ment dis­turbed by ‘the hu­mane ­approach’ to hoo­li­ gans. Do the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the ­courts and the Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs under­stand their mis­sion as only to de­fend mur­der­ers and hoo­li­gans? Isn’t it time to end this com­edy? Isn’t it time to begin a real fight ­against these crim­i­nals?”81

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

186



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

Let­ter writ­ers ­blasted the soft line for its le­niency. Again, they in­vested the key­word of the soft line dis­course, hu­man­ism, with spe­cial con­tempt. A col­lec­tive let­ter from a group of work­ers com­plained that “our laws are too soft and too hu­mane.”82 A group of let­ter writ­ers from ­Ul’ianovsk noted that “our laws ­weaken pun­ish­ments and there is too much hu­mane­ness ( gumannost’) in them.”83 Let­ter writ­ers de­cried the soft line pol­icy for giv­ing non­cus­to­dial pun­ish­ments and sen­tences below the legal mini­mum. A let­ter ­writer from the ­Primor’e re­gion wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet ask­ing them “in the inter­ests of the sim­ple, hon­est work­ers to re­nounce the the­ory of some jur­ists, who in­sist on re­duc­ing the sen­tences of crim­i­nals under the cover that this is hu­man­ism ( gu­ma­nizm).”84 Like other ­hardline ad­vo­cates, let­ter writ­ers ­doubted that weak laws and weak pun­ish­ ments would deter peo­ple from com­mit­ting ­crimes. “What will it cost a hoo­li­gan to beat a man,” a let­ter ­writer from Riga noted, “when he al­ready knows that no se­ri­ous pun­ish­ment threat­ens him?”85 Many let­ter writ­ers cau­sally ­linked the weak­ness of the law with the ­growth of crime. A ­people’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive (using a quote from Sta­lin) re­marked to the chair of the USSR Su­preme ­Soviet’s Pre­sid­ium, K. E. Vo­rosh­i­lov: “Only the weak­ness of our laws in re­la­tion to pun­ish­ment can ex­plain why ban­dits and hoo­li­gans are now mak­ing at­tempts on the lives of So­viet cit­i­zens, the most pre­cious cap­i­tal in the world and the build­ers of com­mu­nism.”86 At a time when many mem­bers of the legal com­mu­nity were work­ing to make the laws more len­ient, let­ter writ­ers were call­ing for the pas­sage of new laws that would pun­ish crim­i­nals “se­verely” and “strictly.” A Don­bass ­worker ad­vised Vo­rosh­i­lov: “Do not be ­afraid to make the law as se­vere as pos­sible be­cause all hon­est peo­ple will only thank the Su­preme So­viet and their ­elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives for this.”87 Fac­tory work­ers from ­Ul’ianovsk wrote on the ne­ces­sity of pass­ing a “se­vere” ­anti-crime law: “Not only we but all hon­est cit­i­zens of the en­tire So­viet Union de­mand that a new se­vere law be ­passed. Every­where we say that a man’s life is pre­cious, but alas these are only words that exist on paper. Where is the good life? Why don’t we pro­tect this life? They cut peo­ple like pigs in every ­street and alley in the So­viet Union. . . . It is a shame . . . and all be­cause there are no ­strict meas­ures.”88 A let­ter ­signed by ­twenty-five teach­ers com­plained that “for a long time the peo­ple have been wait­ing for a law from the govern­ment that would ­really pun­ish en­e­mies of the peo­ple, such as hoo­li­gans and ban­dits, and, even ­though the press has been cov­er­ing their vile

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



187

deeds for quite some time, still there is no new law.”89 Many writ­ers urged the govern­ment not to be ­afraid to adopt bru­tal meas­ures of phys­i­cal co­er­cion in the ­anti-crime fight. In­stead of re­form and re­in­te­gra­tion, many let­ter writ­ers ­argued that crim­i­nals ­needed to be liq­ui­dated. In a let­ter en­ti­tled “We De­clare Mer­ci­less War on Ban­dits and Hoo­li­gans,” a Mus­co­vite wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet: “All the peo­ple under­stand that we need to talk not about hu­man­ism, but about the phys­i­cal de­struc­tion of all of these vil­lains (mraz).”90 On the sub­ject of hoo­li­gan­ism, fac­tory work­ers ad­vised Vo­rosh­i­lov: “We must not act lib­er­ally with hoo­li­gans but wage a cruel strug­gle ­against them that in­cludes phys­i­cal de­struc­tion.”91 A col­lec­tive let­ter from a group of Mos­cow pro­fes­sors ­argued that it was use­less to re­form en­e­mies of so­ci­ety and urged the govern­ment to “fin­ish them [the hoo­li­gans] off with­out mercy.”92 Let­ter writ­ers ad­vised the state that petty crim­i­nals ­should be ex­iled from so­ci­ety, in­stead of being em­bed­ded in peer ­groups and re­in­te­grated into their labor col­lec­tives as the soft line ad­vo­cated. One ad­vo­cate for exile wrote to Vo­rosh­i­lov: “There is no place for hoo­li­gans in our so­ci­ety and we must iso­late them for­ever so that we will never have to see them again be­fore our eyes.”93 A Party mem­ber from Mag­nit­o­gorsk sug­gested that “we send them to the taiga so that they can never come back.”94 The rocky re­cep­tion of the soft line shows us that not all of ­Khrushchev’s Thaw re­forms found a pos­i­tive and ap­pre­cia­tive pub­lic. In our story, a ­soft-line state found it­self, until 1960, work­ing ­against the ­wishes of a ­hard-line seg­ment of its so­ci­ety that ­wanted to use co­er­cion and in­car­ cer­a­tion to solve the ­USSR’s prob­lem with petty crime. In its at­tempt to enact the soft line, the ­de-Stalinizing re­gime ran up ­against the Sta­lin­ist lan­guage and leg­a­cies that were still ­deeply em­bed­ded in cer­tain ­layers of its so­ci­ety. In­stead of ca­pit­ul­ at­ing and re­vers­ing pol­icy po­si­tions in the face of grow­ing crit­i­cism, the heads of the USSR Pro­cu­racy and the USSR Su­preme Court de­fended the ­government’s ­soft-line ­stance. Fac­ing crit­i­cism from his ­republican-level col­leagues, USSR Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor Ru­denko com­mented de­fen­sively: “The line that the court and pros­e­cu­ to­rial or­gans has taken, on or­ders from the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee, is cor­rect. . . . Of ­course, it is dif­fi­cult to pro­ceed with­out some mis­takes in this great en­deavor. How­ever we can­not trace these few mis­takes to the ­system as a whole.”95 Pres­sur­ing skep­ti­cal col­leagues to sub­or­di­nate the ­courts to cen­tral pol­i­cies and the uto­pian po­lit­i­cal pro­grams that but­tressed them, A. F. Gor­kin cau­tioned his fel­low jus­tices that they

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

188



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

must fol­low the ­center’s soft line. “This line is the po­lit­i­cal pro­gram for the ac­tiv­ity of the ­courts and the op­er­a­tion of jus­tice,” the chair­man of the USSR Su­preme Court de­clared. “We must con­sis­tently and stead­ fastly fol­low it in life.”96 In the face of grow­ing ev­i­dence that local of­fi­ cials were ma­nip­u­lat­ing the pol­i­cies of peer re­form to hide crime and crim­i­nals, Gor­kin did not de­nounce the pol­icy but in­stead rec­om­ mended that: “We must trans­fer cases to the ­comrades’ ­courts and ­workers’ col­lec­tives more ­boldly. . . . We can­not re­strict such a prac­tice but, on the ­contrary, we must ­strive to con­stantly ex­pand its usage.”97 Gor­kin and Ru­denko in­formed their col­leagues that, de­spite the ­abuses, the pol­icy de­par­ture ­marked by the soft line was per­ma­nent and that it was nei­ther pos­sible nor de­sir­able to re­turn to the co­er­cive po­si­tions of the past. At an ad­dress to the Kom­so­mol Cen­tral Com­mit­tee in Feb­ru­ary 1960, Ru­denko ­claimed: “We do not have the same way of doing ­things that we had ear­lier under Beria. All those ways of op­er­at­ing van­ished into eter­nity (ka­nuli v ­vechnost’) along with Beria.”98 On the de­fen­sive con­cern­ing ­soft-line ­abuses, Gor­kin cau­tioned his col­leagues that: “No­body is al­lowed to re­turn to the old, ob­so­lete meth­ods of fight­ing crime. There can be no talk about any turn­ing back.”99 Lit­tle did Gor­kin and Ru­denko know that the RSFSR would re­pu­di­ate many of its ­soft-line po­si­tions ­within a few weeks of their state­ments on the ­policy’s sup­posed ir­re­ver­sibil­ity. The RSFSR, chang­ing its pol­icy di­rec­tion, would take steps to re­fill ­rather than empty pris­ons and sanc­ tion the use of phys­i­cal force ­rather than re­in­te­gra­tive re­form as the prin­ci­pal plank of its ­anti-hooligan cam­paign. In the ­course of a few weeks in the sum­mer of 1960, the pol­icy on and cam­paign ­against petty crime swung from one ex­treme to the other.

The Hard Line In the be­gin­ning of 1960, signs of ­anti-soft line back­lash ­started ap­pear­ ing. The cen­tral press began to es­ca­late its crit­i­cism of the over­ap­pli­ca­tion and abuse of ­soft-line meas­ures and their un­an­tic­i­pated ex­ten­sion to se­ri­ous crim­i­nal cases, such as mur­der and rape. Ar­guing that not every case was suit­able for the soft line, Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, in an ed­i­to­rial com­ment, com­plained that “it is im­pos­sible to trans­form the splen­did words ‘sus­pended sen­tence and trans­fer to the ­collective’ into the oblig­a­ tory end­ing line of every ju­di­cial sen­tence.”100 Blast­ing the over­ex­ten­sion of ­soft-line sen­tences, the sec­re­tary of the Le­nin­grad Kom­so­mol noted

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



189

“that peer re­form is a very good, cor­rect, hu­mane, and nec­es­sary meas­ure, but this meas­ure has be­come some kind of fash­ion.”101 How­ever, it was not until the sum­mer of 1960 that the ­anti-soft line po­si­tion re­ceived of­fi­cial sup­port from a top Party organ. In Au­gust 1960, the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee Bu­reau for the RSFSR (Biuro TsK KPSS po RSFSR) re­leased the de­cree “On the State of the Fight ­against Crime in the RSFSR and Po­lit­i­cal and Re­form Work in ­Places of Con­fine­ment” and put an end to ­soft-line prac­tices in the RSFSR. The de­cree crit­ic­ ized local legal work­ers for being “weak” and for mis­us­ing peer re­form pol­i­cies to cod­dle crim­i­nals. Ar­guing that the trans­fer of crim­i­nals to their labor col­lec­tives had al­lowed se­ri­ous of­fend­ers to es­cape jus­tice, the Bu­reau ­called for in­creased reg­u­la­tion and super­vi­sion of the pun­ish­ment pro­cess.102 The ef­fect of the de­cree on pun­ish­ment prac­tices was im­me­di­ate. By bring­ing hoo­li­gans in from “off­shore” sites and lim­it­ing ­off-thebooks dis­ci­pline, the de­cree ­caused a sharp spike in con­vic­tions for hoo­ li­gan­ism. In 1961, the num­ber of peo­ple con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism in the USSR ­jumped 120 per­cent from its 1960 ­soft-line low. In the RSFSR, hoo­li­gan con­vic­tion rates rose 125 per­cent from 1960 lev­els. The ­growth of sim­ple hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions from 1960 to 1961 was par­tic­u­larly ex­plo­sive, sky­rock­et­ing 563 per­cent in the USSR and 737 per­cent in the RSFSR. In both the USSR and the RSFSR, ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan con­vic­ tions dou­bled and petty hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions rose more than 60 per­cent. Fol­low­ing the fall of the soft line, con­vic­tion rates would stay at such rel­a­tively high lev­els for the rest of the Khrush­chev pe­riod. The ap­pli­ca­tion of cus­to­dial meas­ures of pun­ish­ment in­creased ­across the board as ­courts aban­doned loop­holes and began to sen­tence more of­fend­ers to pris­ons and labor camps.103 Re­newed state sur­veil­ lance of sen­tenc­ing prac­tices put local ­courts under pres­sure to in­car­ cer­ate, even in cases of petty crime. The pros­ec­ u­tor of the Bel­o­rus­sian SSR, ac­knowl­edg­ing the im­plicit and ex­plicit pres­sures that pow­ered the surge in in­car­cer­a­tion rates, com­plained to his col­leagues that “court and Pro­cu­racy work­ers have begun to get ­scared and even when they ­clearly don’t need to in­car­cer­ate they do any­way just to be safe.”104 The in­crease in court­room con­vic­tions trans­lated into in­creases in re­corded crime rates as of­fend­ers, whose cases would have been ­dropped and trans­ferred “off­shore” dur­ing the soft line cam­paign, were now being sent to ­courts, con­victed, and en­tered into crime reg­is­ters. ­Higher crime rates in 1961 were not due to ac­tual in­creases in crim­i­nal­ity, but to the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

190



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

fact that more cases were now being sent to the ­courts and fewer cases were being trans­ferred and hid­den in al­ter­na­tive dis­ci­pli­nary sites, such as labor col­lec­tives and ­comrades’ ­courts.105 In con­cert with the ­hard-line shift, the mass media ­changed its re­port­ing on crime, de­vi­ance, and so­cial­ist hu­man­ism. In­stead of re­form­ing and re­in­sert­ing crim­i­nals back into so­ci­ety, ar­ti­cles in the So­viet press ­called for a harsh con­fron­ta­tion with the hoo­li­gan. In the sum­mer of 1961, the Le­nin­grad Kom­so­mol organ, Smena, pub­lished an ar­ti­cle by the ­mother of a man mur­dered by a hoo­li­gan. En­ti­tled “Show the Hoo­li­gans No Mercy,” the ar­ti­cle ended with a call for an in­tense cam­paign ­against de­vi­ants: “We must not show any pity or for­give­ness [for crim­i­nals] but only anger and in­tol­er­ance. . . . . Do not spare the hoo­li­gans. Do not in­dulge them. Fight ­against them mer­ci­lessly!”106 In the very next edi­tion, Smena pub­lished an­other ar­ti­cle that dis­cussed the mur­der of a model So­viet ­worker and dru­zhin­nik by a crim­in ­ al who had ben­efi ­ t­ted from ­soft-line pol­i­cies. In­stead of por­tray­ing the de­vi­ant as a re­deem­able wrong­doer who could be saved for the So­viet cause, the ar­ti­cle in­formed read­ers that “the hoo­li­gan hates every­thing that is dear to us: work, friend­ship, love, and our prin­ci­ples of com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity. Can we show such a per­son any hu­mane­ness? . . . The hoo­li­ gan needs not a del­i­cate touch, but a cruel hand ­that’s not ­afraid to ­strike out at these thugs.”107 The jour­nal­ist ended the piece with the rhe­tor­i­cal ques­tion: “Isn’t show­ing com­pas­sion to the crim­i­nal also show­ing ­cruelty to hon­est So­viet cit­i­zens?”108 In the next issue of Smena, the ed­i­tors pub­lished ex­cerpts from the diary of the mur­dered dru­ zhin­nik. Fol­low­ing these pas­sages, the ed­i­tors at­tacked the soft line by re­de­fin­ing the con­cept of so­cial­ist hu­man­ism at its heart. In­stead of de­fin­ing this key con­cept by re­fer­ring to ­themes of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and peer re­form, the ed­i­tors ­stated that “hu­man­ism has noth­ing in com­mon with lib­er­al­ism or an ­all-forgiving at­ti­tude. So­viet hu­man­ism means un­dy­ing ha­tred for the en­e­mies of our peo­ple.”109 The mean­ing of hu­man­ism in the So­viet crim­i­nal jus­tice ­sphere had ­turned up­side down. So­viet legal work­ers now ­argued that giv­ing soft meas­ures of pun­ish­ment to crim­i­nals in order to re­claim them for the col­lec­tive was “not an ex­am­ple of hu­man­ism but of a lib­er­al­ism that is alien to the inter­ests of strength­en­ing So­viet jus­tice.”110 In­stead of giv­ing len­ient pun­ish­ments to sal­vage­able law­break­ers, hu­man­ism now meant ap­ply­ing “strict meas­ures of pun­ish­ment to per­sons ­guilty of se­ri­ous ­crimes.”111 In­stead of being just about show­ing “del­i­cacy, at­ten­tive­ness, and sym­pa­thy to peo­ple who have com­mit­ted ­crimes,” a

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



191

jus­tice of the USSR Su­preme Court re­minded read­ers of a prom­i­nent legal jour­nal that “so­cial­ist hu­man­ism also has a sec­ond side. In nec­es­ sary cases it al­lows for the use of rev­o­lu­tion­ary vi­o­lence, not just per­sua­sion but also co­er­cion and the ap­pli­ca­tion of ­strict and se­vere meas­ures of pun­ish­ment.”112 In­stead of being told to stick to the soft line, ­judges and pros­e­cu­tors were now re­minded that “there are ­crimes which by their char­ac­ter do not de­serve any kind of in­dul­gence and in these cases hu­man­ism must be shown to so­ci­ety and to the vic­tims of crime.”113 Co­er­cive meth­ods and con­fron­ta­tional at­ti­tudes were just as cen­tral to the ­state’s ­hard-line pol­icy shift as the re­vi­val of court­room con­vic­ tions and the rise in the ap­pli­ca­tion of cus­to­dial sen­tences. Fol­low­ing wide­spread calls for the use of co­er­cive meas­ures in the ­anti-hooligan cam­paign in the mass press, legal pe­ri­od­i­cals, and let­ters from the pub­lic, the RSFSR de­cided, in June 1962, to re­sort to phys­i­cal force in its con­fron­ta­tion with the hoo­li­gan. Rub­ber trun­cheons, tear gas, and hand­cuffs (items So­viet prop­a­ganda had ­linked with the re­pres­sive equip­ment cap­i­tal­ist po­lice used to com­bat their res­tive lower ­classes and ra­cial mi­nor­ities) were dis­trib­uted to se­lect re­gional po­lice ­forces. A pol­icy of “spe­cial meas­ures” was ­drafted and en­acted that en­a­bled po­lice to use non­deadly force ­against de­vi­ants. Al­most two years after Ru­denko an­nounced the im­pos­sibil­ity of re­turn­ing to a co­er­cive ­Beriatype style of crim­i­nal jus­tice, the RSFSR moved from a ­soft-line ­stance em­pha­siz­ing re­form and re­in­te­gra­tion to a po­si­tion that ­echoed the ­public’s call for a harsh, mer­ci­less, and vi­o­lent con­fron­ta­tion with the hoo­li­gan. Vocal and angry cit­i­zens had been call­ing for ex­pand­ing the ­police’s abil­ity to use vi­ol­ ent force ­against hoo­li­gans since at least the mid-1950s. They ­argued that the law “dis­armed” the po­lice by de­priv­ing them of the abil­ity to use vi­o­lence in the ap­pre­hen­sion of crim­i­nals.114 These cit­i­zens ­called for “ex­pand­ing the ­rights of the po­lice to use weap­ons and phys­i­cal force” ­against crim­i­nals gen­er­ally and hoo­li­gans spe­cif­i­ cally.115 To ­change the “ten­der” ap­proach to the hoo­li­gan, they ­wanted to ­change the laws that made the po­lice “afraid to lay their hands on the hoo­li­gans for fear that they will cause them some pain.”116 Some his­to­rians have ­argued that it was the June 1962 mass dis­tur­ bance at Nov­o­cher­kassk that ­prompted Khrush­chev (who by na­ture seems to have been sus­pi­cious of strength­en­ing po­lice power) to sup­port such con­fron­ta­tional pol­i­cies and grant the po­lice new co­er­cive ca­pa­bil­ities.117 How­ever, ev­i­dence from K ­ hrushchev’s pub­lic ­speeches

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

192



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

shows that he was con­tem­plat­ing arm­ing the po­lice and al­low­ing them to use non­deadly force to pre­serve pub­lic order ­months be­fore the Nov­o­cher­kassk in­ci­dent. In an April 1962 ­speech to the Kom­so­mol, Khrush­chev an­nounced his new sup­port for arm­ing the po­lice and al­low­ing them to fight back ­against hoo­li­gans. As with the cam­paign to un­leash ­obshchestvennost’, he pre­sented the de­ci­sion to use force ­against hoo­li­gan­ism as a ­self-defense meas­ure that ex­panded the ­overly nar­row pa­ram­e­ters of per­mis­sible vi­o­lence: “A hoo­li­gan can ­strike a po­lice­man and then say to him: ‘You have no right to ­strike me back.’ The hoo­li­gan has the right [to ­strike a po­lice­man] but the po­lice­man has no right to de­fend him­self. We in the govern­ment have come to the con­clu­sion that this in­eq­ui­ta­ble sit­u­a­tion must be ­changed (shouts of ap­proval and ­stormy ap­plause).”118 Even ear­lier, at the XXII Con­gress of the Com­mu­ nist Party of the So­viet Union in 1961, Khrush­chev and his col­leagues had ex­pressed their sup­port for get­ting tough on crime and dis­or­der. Pre­sid­ium mem­ber and lead­ing Party ideo­logue Mi­khail Sus­lov, for ex­am­ple, ex­pli­citly ­endorsed the ­hard-line pol­i­cies that ad­vo­cated phys­i­cal force, call­ing in his ­speech at the con­gress for the ­anti-crime cam­paign to be con­ducted “with­out any hes­i­ta­tion in the use of co­er­ cion: our pun­ish­ing sword must be ­brought down on ma­li­cious and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals, hoo­li­gans, ­thieves, par­a­sites, and other ­anti-social ele­ments.”119 Fol­low­ing such un­a m­b ig­u ­ous calls for es­c a­lat­ing co­er­c ion and con­fron­ta­tion, the Rus­sian re­pub­lic, in June 1962, gave the po­lice the right to fight back ­against hoo­li­gans with rub­ber trun­cheons and hand­ cuffs. In the same month, the RSFSR Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Af­fairs ­drafted an order and in­struc­tional let­ter out­lin­ing the dis­tri­bu­tion pro­cess and enu­mer­at­ing the rules of en­gage­ment in the ­state’s phys­i­cal con­fron­ta­ tion with the hoo­li­gan. Im­pa­tient with the soft line and con­vinced that hoo­li­gan­ism could not be con­tained ­through re­form and peer men­tor­ing, the RSFSR de­cided to make vi­ol­ ent force a prom­i­nent part of its ­antihooligan rep­er­toire.120 The RSFSR MVD’s in­struc­tional let­ter per­mit­ted po­lice units to use trun­cheons to stop ma­li­cious hoo­li­gans in cases when hoo­li­gans were as­sault­ing cit­i­zens, govern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, po­lice­men, or dru­zhin­ niki and in cases when sus­pects re­sisted ar­rest or at­tempted to flee from po­lice cus­tody. The trun­cheons were first intro­duced in the Oren­burg, Kui­by­shev, and ­Primor’e re­gional po­lice units, but the in­struc­tional let­ter al­lowed other re­gional po­lice units to pe­ti­tion for the right to arm their units with trun­cheons as well. Call­ing for ­strict con­trol of the use

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



193

of vi­o­lent force, the RSFSR MVD cau­tioned ­against the abuse of trun­ cheons and lim­ited their dis­tri­bu­tion to those po­lice­men “who know the reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing how to use them and can use them cor­rectly.” All cases in which trun­cheons were used “and the re­ac­tion of the pub­lic to their use” were to be re­ported to local Party and govern­ment bod­ies and to the RSFSR MVD.121 The order to sanc­tion the intro­duc­tion of rub­ber trun­cheons in local po­lice units was ac­com­pa­nied by a set of de­tailed ­top-secret in­struc­tions on how these “spe­cial meas­ures” were to be ­adopted. The in­struc­tions for­bade of­fi­cers to use trun­cheons ­against women, chil­dren under 16, the eld­erly, in­va­lids “who bear vis­ible signs of dis­abil­ity,” and foreign­ers. It also ­strictly for­bade the use of vi­o­lent force ­within po­lice sta­tions or ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ings. The use of vi­o­lence was sup­posed to be a “last re­sort” that the of­fi­cer used only after warn­ing the of­fender.122 The dis­tri­bu­tion of rub­ber trun­cheons was pref­aced by an ­MVDinitiated media cam­paign that, in order to jus­tify the use of vi­o­lence, ob­jec­tified the hoo­li­gan as a ­well-armed pred­a­tor stalk­ing the rep­re­sen­ ta­tives of state and so­ci­ety. Of­fi­cials pre­pared press re­leases on the “bra­zen acts of hoo­li­gans” for use in local press, radio, and tele­vi­sion out­lets in an ef­fort to pre­pare pub­lic opin­ion for the new ­hard-line pol­icy. The MVD pre­pared ­stands on which they dis­played weap­ons that hoo­li­gans used. Many of these s­ tands were ­erected at meet­ings of labor col­lec­tives at which the new pol­icy was an­nounced.123 Be­fore the new wea­pon­iza­tion pro­gram was en­acted, there was a ­flurry of pub­lic hear­ings at work­places and other in­sti­tu­tional sites. Ac­ti­vists ad­dressed labor col­lec­tives and, some­times, for­mer vic­tims of hoo­li­gan­ism added their own ­graphic tes­ti­mo­nies. The media blitz the RSFSR MVD ­mounted in the r­ un-up to the new wea­pon­iza­tion pro­gram put a spin on the ­government’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the hoo­li­gan that was fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent from ­soft-line or­tho­ doxy. As we have seen, Khrush­chev and oth­ers had rep­re­sented the hoo­li­gan as an av­er­age per­son who had made a mis­take or been led ­astray and who could and ­should be re­made, via peer group men­tor­ing, into a full and use­ful mem­ber of so­ci­ety. Such a view was cen­tral to the soft line. How­ever, the MVD’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the hoo­li­gan por­trayed him as an ir­re­deem­able pred­a­tory an­i­mal that was a real and con­stant ­threat to pub­lic ­safety. Re­form and re­in­te­gra­tion were nei­ther pos­sible nor de­sir­able. The re­la­tion of state and so­ci­ety to the hoo­li­gan was no ­longer that of men­tor to mis­guided but one of mor­tal en­e­mies ­locked in a “kill or be ­killed” strug­gle. In Oren­burg, a ­worker in the local silk

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

194



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

fac­tory whose eye had been “beaten out of her head” by hoo­li­gans ad­dressed the fac­tory as­sem­bly: “I am ­twenty-four years old. What you see on my face is the re­sult of hoo­li­gan ac­tiv­ity. The hoo­li­gan is a beast and he ­doesn’t care ­whether you are young or a woman or ­whether you are a child. We must de­stroy such ­beasts.”124 The new MVD spin on the hoo­li­gan co­in­cided with the ­population’s ­hard-line ­stance to­ward hoo­li­gan­ism. In their new co­er­cive and rep­re­ sen­ta­tional tac­tics, they moved ­closer to the ­public’s vi­sion of a cruel cam­paign of de­struc­tion ­against hoo­li­gan­ism and far­ther from for­mer ­soft-line or­tho­dox­ies. At meet­ings of col­lec­tives and at spe­cially held as­sem­blies, many peo­ple ex­pressed their en­thu­siasm and ap­proval of the new pol­icy of wea­pon­iza­tion and con­fron­ta­tion. An en­gi­neer in Vlad­i­vos­tok, for ex­am­ple, de­clared “it’s about time that we ex­panded the ­rights of the po­lice and put a real ­weapon in their hands.”125 After being ­showed weap­ons that the po­lice con­fis­cated from ar­rested hoo­li­ gans, a Vlad­i­vos­tok ­sailor ex­claimed: “Against their [the ­hooligans’] brass knuck­les and ­knives, we must raise our armed and pun­ish­ing hand.”126 “We must do every­thing,” a lathe op­er­a­tor en­thused, “so that the earth burns be­neath the feet of hoo­li­gans and ­thieves.”127 “For every blow given by a hoo­li­gan,” said a ­worker in Vlad­i­vos­tok, “we must an­swer with two or three blows of our own.”128 Some peo­ple did, how­ever, ex­press their res­er­va­tions about arm­ing the po­lice. They ­argued that the dis­tri­bu­tion and use of weap­ons long as­so­ciated with po­lice bru­tal­ity and re­pres­sion was not ap­pro­pri­ate for a coun­try that was ap­proach­ing com­mu­nism.129 Other work­ers ­argued that the po­lice, never known to be a mag­net of prime human cap­i­tal, could not be ­trusted to use their new weap­ons in ac­cor­dance with reg­u­ la­tions.130 Some work­ers asked that only the best po­lice­men be given trun­cheons to limit their po­ten­tial mis­use. Oth­ers ­called on the po­lice to re­view their cadre pol­icy care­fully to weed out those who might abuse their new pow­ers.131 These ­voices of cau­tion, how­ever, were over­ whelmed by the ­voices of con­fron­ta­tion. The new pol­icy of con­fron­ta­tion and vi­o­lent co­er­cion ex­panded in con­cert with the re­trac­tion of the soft line. In Au­gust 1965, the MVD ­RSFSR’s suc­ces­sor or­gan­iza­tion, the Min­is­try for the Pro­tec­tion of Pub­lic Order (MOOP), re­ported that rub­ber trun­cheons were being used in ­twenty-six re­gions in the RSFSR (the Bash­kir and Komi auton­o­ mous re­pub­lics; the Altai, ­Primor’e, ­Stavropol’, and Khab­a­rovsk re­gions; and the ­Arkhangel’sk, As­tra­khan, Vol­go­grad, Vol­o­gda, Vor­o­nezh, Iv­a­novo, Ir­kutsk, Ka­luga, Kam­chatka, Kirov, Kos­troma, Mur­mansk,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



195

Mos­cow, Oren­burg, Perm’, Ros­tov, ­Riazan’, Sar­a­tov, Sverd­lovsk, and Smo­lensk re­gions) and five rail­roads (the East­ern Si­ber­ian, North­ern Cau­ca­sian, the North­ern, the Sverd­lovsk, and the ­Far-Eastern rail­ roads).132 The MOOP RSFSR re­ported that, ­between July 1962 (when the Vlad­i­vos­tok po­lice were first is­sued their rub­ber trun­cheons) and April 1965, po­lice used rub­ber trun­cheons in 12,466 in­ci­dents in­volv­ing hoo­li­gans. They noted that the ap­pli­ca­tion of spe­cial meas­ures (spets­ s­redstvo) was “ef­fec­tive” and that “after their ap­pli­ca­tion the hoo­li­gan stops his row­di­ness and ful­fills the legal de­mands of the po­lice­man.” The pub­lic “sup­ported,” ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the pol­icy of using trun­cheons ­against hoo­li­gans and there were no “neg­a­tive re­ac­tions on the part of the pop­u­la­tion to the use of spe­cial meas­ures.”133 The wide­spread adop­tion of spe­cial meas­ures re­veals the ex­tent to which au­thor­ities in Rus­sia ­rolled back the soft line on petty crime. ­Softline pol­i­cies of re­in­te­gra­tive re­form, in­creas­ingly dis­cred­ited by state and so­ci­ety as in­ef­fec­tive and in­op­er­a­tive, were ­scaled back. In their place, a new hard line was de­fined that res­o­nated with pub­lic de­mands to el­e­vate the crime strug­gle into a cam­paign of phys­i­cal con­fron­ta­ tion and vi­o­lent co­er­cion. The rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the hoo­li­gan as a mis­ guided mem­ber of so­ci­ety who could be re­claimed for so­cial­ism ­through the in­flu­ence of his peer group was also de­em­pha­sized. The hoo­li­gan was now seen as an an­i­mal that acted out­side of the so­cial col­lec­tive and that had to be cap­tured, en­caged, and, if nec­es­sary, ­beaten into sub­mis­sion.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Con­clu­sion De­spite the sharp pol­icy turn from 1959 to 1962, the story of the shift from the soft line to the hard line ­should not be read as the com­plete aban­don­ment of the for­mer for the ­full-scale adop­tion of the lat­ter. Like the di­lemma of dis­en­tan­gling the inter­twined pub­lic and pri­vate ­spaces dis­cussed in chap­ter 2, the soft line and hard line co­ex­isted through­out the Khrush­chev era and re­ject easy an­a­lyt­i­cal un­pack­ing into pure pol­icy ­stages. ­Rather than fol­low­ing one after the other se­ri­ally, the soft line and hard line were inter­con­nected through­out the Thaw. At some ­points dur­ing this pe­riod, one pole of this en­tan­gled or­ien­ta­tion was em­pha­ sized over the other. In 1959, for ex­am­ple, ­soft-line po­si­tions were ­stressed and be­came dom­i­nant. By 1962, ­hard-line ­anti-hooliganism was as­cen­dant. Dur­ing nei­ther of these epi­sodes, how­ever, was the op­p os­i ng or­i en­t a­t ion to­w ard crime ei­t her com­p letely ef­f aced or

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

196



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

elim­i­nated; ­rather, ele­ments of each con­tin­ued to exist and op­er­ate even under the ­shadow of its other. As a re­sult of this un­stable mix­ture of op­po­sites, contra­dic­tions rid­dled ­Khrushchev’s ex­peri­ment in po­lic­ing and pun­ish­ing petty crime. As we have seen, the soft line hoped to re­in­te­grate fal­len cit­iz­ ens and re­turn them to the so­cial col­lec­tive. Yet, dur­ing the hey­day of ­softline dom­i­na­tion, an ­a nti-parasite cam­p aign was in­t en­s ify­i ng that prom­ised to pur­ify So­viet com­mu­nities ­through giv­ing their mem­bers the abil­ity to exile per­sis­tent trou­ble­mak­ers.134 Like­wise, the soft line ­stressed a style of pun­ish­ment that fa­vored per­sua­sion and re­form over co­er­cion and force. Yet the same year that saw the soft ­line’s as­cent also wit­nessed the re­form of ­self-defense leg­is­la­tion and the ac­ti­va­tion of the dru­zhina, ac­tions that ­seemed to en­cour­age the use of vig­i­lante vi­o­lence ­against local hoo­li­gans. Even at the level of the in­di­vid­ual, contra­dic­tions and ten­sions ­abounded. As we have seen, many So­viet cit­i­zens ( judg­ing from their let­ters to au­thor­ity) ­seemed un­easy with the hu­mane pol­ic­ ies of the soft line and fa­vored Sta­lin­ist strat­e­gies of in­car­cer­a­tion and con­fron­ta­tion. Yet when con­fronted with the hoo­li­gans in their own col­lec­tives, many of these same cit­i­zens found it dif­fi­cult to con­demn them in un­equiv­ocal terms and, in­stead, ­sought to save them from the harsh­ness of the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. These contra­dic­tions ­should not be ex­plained away. In­stead, they ­should be seen as the hall­marks of an un­cer­tain era. Just as the Se­cret ­Speech and the petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign ­showed how an il­lib­eral pol­icy of ar­bi­trary and un­re­strained so­cial re­pres­sion could co­ex­ist with a call for lib­er­al­iza­tion and so­cial­ist le­gal­ity, the contra­dic­tory under­cur­rents of the soft line show that re­form and re­ac­tion were inter­woven through­ out the Khrush­chev era. ­Rather than creat­ing a co­her­ent fore­run­ner of “so­cial­ism with a human face,” ­Khrushchev’s hes­it­ ant re­forms ­called into being a con­fus­ed and un­set­tled so­cial­ism: a so­cial­ism of un­re­solved op­po­sites ­within whose Janus face So­viet cit­i­zens saw both a past and a fu­ture ­filled with pen­al­ties and lim­its as well as prom­ises and pos­sibil­ities. In this way, the Thaw in petty crime pol­icy (and, pre­sum­ably, in other pol­icy areas as well) re­sists easy sep­ar­a­tion into se­quen­tial ­stages of pure ­soft-line and ­hard-line po­si­tions. Such an easy bi­fur­ca­tion ­misses the messi­ness and the multi­di­men­sion­al­ity of what Ste­phen Bitt­ner has pro­voc­a­tively ­termed the “lived ex­pe­ri­ence of the Thaw.”135 In­stead, re­form and re­ac­tion ex­isted in in­sep­a­ra­ble ten­sion with one

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime



197

an­other through­out the Thaw and ­called forth com­plex and dif­fi­cult to cat­e­go­rize re­sponses of un­ease, ex­cite­ment, dread, con­fu­sion, and dis­gust from the era’s con­stit­u­ent in­sti­tu­tions, fac­tions, and par­tic­i­pant ob­serv­ers. Seen in this man­ner, the rise and fall of ­Khrushchev’s soft line is not a story of the life and death of le­niency in the treat­ment of ­non-malicious hoo­li­gans and other petty crim­i­nals. After the end of the soft-line cam­paign in 1962, sus­pended sen­tences and ­peer-based re­form and re­ ed­u­ca­tion pro­grams would still be used for dis­ci­plin­ing petty de­vi­ants, but on a ­smaller and sub­tler scale. In­stead, the eb­bing of the soft line ­marked an un­ex­pected shift in the pre­dom­i­nant so­cial con­trol style of the Khrush­chev re­gime, a pen­du­lum swing away from sus­pended sen­tences and peer re­form and to­ward its inter­twined op­po­site of using ­prison stays and armed po­lice bat­ta­lions as the pri­mary means for pun­ish­ing hoo­li­gan­ism. The waning of the soft line also ­showed the ­regime’s sag­ging faith in its own re­form­ist ­agenda. With the swing away from the soft line, the re­gime began to lose faith in the ef­fi­cacy of len­ient, non­cus­to­dial meas­ures in con­trol­ling crime rates, in the abil­ity of local of­fi­cials and ­obshchestvennost’ to carry out re­spon­sible re­form ef­forts, and in the ­status of the hoo­li­gan as a re­deem­able wrong­doer who could be re­turned to re­spect­able So­viet so­ci­ety. The post-1960 hard­en­ing of pun­ish­ment pol­i­cies was the ac­tion of a state ­second-guessing it­self: a state ques­tion­ing ­whether its re­forms had gone too far too fast and won­der­ing ­whether len­ient meas­ures were en­cour­ag­ing ­rather than elim­i­nat­ing ­anti-social ac­tiv­ity. In re­sponse to push­back from the pub­lic and legal pro­fes­sion­als over the len­ient soft line and reel­ing from the con­tin­ued ex­is­tence of so­cial dis­or­der on a large (e.g., Nov­o­cher­kassk) and small scale, the state had to re­think its re­la­tion to force and the ap­pli­ca­tion of vi­o­lence to ­anti-social ac­tiv­ity. The ­hard-line de­ci­sion to hit out at hoo­li­gans, to arm the po­lice, and to add non­deadly force to the unsettled ­state’s ­anti-hooligan rep­er­toire was the re­sult of this re­think. When ­placed into its his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, the roll­back of the soft line fits into a se­ries of re­form roll­backs that ­shifted the pol­icy po­si­tions of the Khrush­chev re­gime from cau­tious re­form to con­ser­va­tive re­pres­ sion dur­ing the 1960 to 1962 pe­riod. In the cul­tural ­sphere, the Ma­nezh ex­hibit of 1962 ­rolled back the ­regime’s lim­ited ex­peri­ment with avantgarde cul­tural ex­pres­sion and ­marked a re­turn to ­state-supported so­cial­ist re­al­ist pol­i­cies and ex­em­plars.136 In the legal ­sphere, the death pen­alty began to be used with in­creas­ing fre­quency for a host of new

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

198



The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

non­p o­l it­i ­c al ­c rimes, in­c lud­i ng cur­r ency spec­u ­l a­t ion, brib­e ry, and egre­gious theft of state prop­erty.137 In the so­cial ­sphere, the ­anti-parasite cam­paign ­showed the ­regime’s de­sire to re­move and re­press un­de­sir­ ables ­rather than re­form and re­turn them to the col­lec­tive. ­Rather than de­vi­at­ing from the norm, the de­cline of the soft line in petty crime pun­ish­ments fol­lowed a gen­eral trend of re­think­ing lim­ited lib­eral and len­ient po­si­tions and re­em­pha­siz­ing in­tol­er­ant at­ti­tudes and ­heavy-handed tac­tics. The story of the soft line and its ­eclipse tells us some­thing about the chro­nol­ogy (or chro­nol­o­gies) of the Thaw in the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­sphere: a chro­nol­ogy that ­reached its peak in the late 1950s and then ­rolled back in on it­self in 1962 as a di­verse se­ries of ­events, from the Nov­o­cher­kassk riot to the Ma­nezh ex­hi­bi­tion, ­caused a re­eval­u­a­tion of ­soft-line re­forms ­across a wide range of pol­icy po­si­tions.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:32.

Con­clu­sion

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Plus ça ­change, plus c’est la même chose: Hoo­li­gan­ism after Khrush­chev

In the sum­mer of 1966, the Brezh­nev re­gime un­veiled a se­ries of tough ­anti-crime meas­ures. On July 23, 1966, the Com­mu­nist Party Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and the USSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters re­leased the de­cree “On Meas­ures for Strength­en­ing the Fight ­against Crime.”1 Three days later, the Pre­sid­ium of the USSR Su­preme So­viet is­sued a com­pan­ion de­cree “On Strength­e n­i ng Re­s pon­s ibil­i ty for Hoo­l i­g an­i sm.” 2 With these meas­ures, the ­hard-line ­stance on hoo­li­gan­ism, which ex­isted under the Khrush­chev re­gime in the 1960s, was so­lid­ified and strength­ened. The lim­ited ­soft-line ex­peri­ments of the Khrush­chev era based on ­peergroup re­form, pun­ish­ment re­duc­tions, and the re­in­te­gra­tion and re­ ed­u­ca­tion of ap­pro­pri­ate of­fend­ers were ­plainly and pub­licly re­nounced. A blow ­against re­form­ist crim­i­nol­og ­ ists, the 1966 ­hard-line ­anti-hooligan cam­paign rep­re­sented the total vic­tory for ad­vo­cates of ­tougher po­lice power and in­creased in­car­cer­a­tions.3 The 1966 Brezh­nev cam­paign is nor­mally seen as a con­ser­va­tive re­ac­tion ­against ­Khrushchev-era pol­ic­ ies.4 How­ever, there was not, as we have seen, a sin­gle uni­tary ­Khrushchev-era pol­icy. The Khrush­chev era bal­anced soft- and ­hard-line prac­tices and swung, at the end of 1960, from an em­pha­sis on the for­mer ap­proach to a ­stress on the lat­ter. Ele­ments of the ­Brezhnev-era cam­paign that con­tem­po­rary au­thors de­cried, such as the use of trun­cheons, were ac­tu­ally con­tin­u­a­tions of 199

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

200



Conclusion

­ ard-line pol­i­cies in­itiated under Khrush­chev.5 The 1966 cam­paign was h not a cat­e­gor­i­cal re­jec­tion of ­Khrushchev-era prac­tices. In­stead, it was an à la carte pol­icy that se­lec­tively ap­pro­pri­ated some ­Khrushchev-era ­anti-hooligan prac­tices and elim­i­nated oth­ers. By bal­anc­ing re­ten­tion, re­vi­sion, and re­jec­tion, the 1966 Brezh­nev cam­paign ­created a hy­brid style of so­cial con­trol in the ­anti-hooligan ­sphere that com­bined old ele­ments with new ap­proaches. To begin with what was new, the 1966 Brezh­nev cam­paign, in ­contrast to the Khrush­chev cam­paign of a ­decade ear­lier, ­sought to crack down on hoo­li­gan­ism by in­creas­ing pun­ish­ments ­across the board. As we have seen, Khrush­chev ­sought to get tough on hoo­li­gan­ ism by giv­ing more peo­ple ­lighter sen­tences for less se­ri­ous forms of ­anti-social be­hav­ior. By crack­ing down on minor mis­be­hav­ior, the Khrush­chev re­gime ­sought to stop the root ­causes that led to major crime. In its ef­fort to cut down on crim­i­nal de­vi­ance, the Brezh­nev re­gime took an op­po­site ap­proach from its pre­de­ces­sors. By creat­ing a new type of ­heavy-duty hoo­li­gan­ism that gave ­harsher pun­ish­ments to the most egre­gious hoo­li­gan of­fenses, ­Brezhnev’s pol­icy dif­fer­en­tiated de­vi­ance up­ward ­rather than down­ward. ­Termed “es­pe­cially ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism” (osobo zlost­noe khu­li­gantsvo), this more se­ri­ous form of de­vi­ance was de­fined as hoo­li­gan­ism “ac­com­pa­nied by the use or at­tempted use of a fire­arm, knife, brass knuck­les, or other ob­ject used to in­flict bod­ily harm.” Its pun­ish­ment, dep­ri­va­tion of free­dom for three to seven years, was ­harsher and ­longer than any other form of hoo­li­gan pun­ish­ment.6 In­stead of wa­ter­ing down de­vi­ance and try­ing to stop hoo­li­gan­ism by giv­ing more peo­ple ­smaller pun­ish­ments, the Brezh­nev re­gime ­sought to fight hoo­li­gan­ism by im­pris­on­ing of­fend­ers for a ­longer time under a ­harsher and more ­heavy-duty def­i­ni­tion of hoo­li­gan ac­tiv­ity. With its launch­ing of a new hoo­li­gan label, the Brezh­nev re­gime fol­lowed the trend, ­started in the Sta­lin era and con­tin­ued in the Khrush­chev pe­riod, of dif­fer­en­tiat­ing de­vi­ancy and creat­ing new hoo­li­gan cat­e­go­ries. As be­fore, this move in­creased the menu of crim­i­nal mis­be­hav­ior, multi­ plied cat­e­gory con­fu­sion among prac­ti­cal work­ers, and ­created new ­classes of hoo­li­gan ac­tors and ac­tions. By ac­ti­vat­ing local po­lice, pros­e­cu­ tors, and ­judges and arm­ing them with yet an­other cat­e­gory of hoo­li­gan crime, the 1966 Brezh­nev cam­paign ­pushed the boun­dar­ies of this broad crime out­ward and ­boosted con­vic­tion rates up­ward.7 In­stead of being ­caused by in­creased re­sis­tance, the rise in hoo­li­gan­ism that

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Conclusion



201

ac­com­pa­nied the 1966 cam­paign, just as with the Khrush­chev cam­paign, was ­caused by the ways in­creased re­pres­sion, po­lice em­pow­er­ment, and the crea­tion of new hoo­li­gan cat­e­go­ries com­bined to ex­pand the do­main of de­vi­ance in So­viet so­ci­ety. The crea­tion of an es­pe­cially egre­gious form of hoo­li­gan­ism did not mean that the Brezh­nev re­gime re­jected the ­Khrushchev-era petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram. On the ­contrary, the Brezh­nev re­gime saw petty hoo­li­gan­ism, along with al­co­hol abuse, as one of the pri­mary ­causes ( per­vop­ri­chiny) of crime and ­sought to ­strengthen the petty hoo­li­gan ­system by re­vis­ing it and rec­tify­ing its er­rors.8 To make sure that petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees were being used for man­da­tory phys­i­cal labor and al­le­vi­ate over­crowd­ing, the RSFSR Min­is­try for the Pro­tec­tion of Pub­lic Order (MOOP) began to set up spe­cial hold­ing cen­ters (spet­spriem­niki ) spe­cif­i­cally for petty hoo­li­gans in major cit­ies and re­gional cap­it­ als.9 To coun­ter crit­ic­ ism that the ­system was in­suf­fi­ciently se­vere, de­ten­tion con­di­tions were rough­ened up. De­tai­nees slept on plank beds, they were not al­lowed to smoke, they were not al­lowed to sup­ple­ment their ­prison diet with out­side food­stuffs or re­ceive pack­ages from rel­a­tives, and they were given hot food only every other day (on the days when no hot food was dis­trib­uted, de­tai­nees re­ceived only their bread ra­tion plus salt and water).10 To force de­tai­nees to per­form their man­da­tory labor, the state au­thor­ized local ­judges to tack on ad­di­tional ­thirty-day sen­tences to un­coop­er­a­tive and idle ar­res­tees.11 The state also used food as an in­cen­tive to in­crease the pro­duc­tiv­ity of petty hoo­li­gans by prom­is­ing that de­tai­nees who ex­hib­ited a “con­scien­tious at­ti­tude to their work” would be given hot food every day.12 The Brezh­nev re­gime also con­tin­ued to aug­ment its po­lic­ing and pros­e­cu­tory pow­ers by out­sourc­ing cases to ­obshchestvennost’. ­Obshche­stvennost’’s key or­gan­iza­tional af­fil­i­ates, the dru­zhina and the com­rades ­courts, still func­tioned (at least in the­ory if not al­ways in prac­tice) as mass sites of vol­un­teer ac­ti­vism and so­cial ­self-policing. To im­prove their per­for­mance, au­thor­ities de­creed that more ­awards and bo­nuses would be dis­trib­uted to dil­i­gent obsh­chest­ven­niki.13 In op­po­si­tion to the old re­gime, Brezh­nev and his bu­reau­crats saw the or­gan­iza­tions of ­obshchestvennost’ more as prac­ti­cal ap­pend­ages to state power than as state sub­sti­tutes or the seeds of a fu­ture com­mu­nist so­ci­ety.14 Like Khrush­chev, the Brezh­nev re­gime ­sought to en­cour­age phys­i­cal con­ fron­ta­tion ­between the col­lec­tive and the crim­i­nal and to un­leash the power of pop­u­lar vi­o­lence in the ­anti-hooligan strug­gle. In the 1966 de­cree, the state ­opened a wide space for cit­i­zens to prac­tice vi­o­lent

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

202



Conclusion

vig­i­lant­ism, de­clar­ing: “Ac­tions that are di­rected at stop­ping crim­i­nal acts or de­tain­ing crim­i­nals are legal and will not re­sult in crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion even if these ac­tions cause in­jury to the crim­i­nal.”15 These meas­ures ­should be seen as part of a pro­cess, ­started a ­decade ear­lier under Khrush­chev, to sof­t en re­stric­t ive ­self-defense laws and to push out the boun­dar­ies of per­mis­sible vi­o­lence in the fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism. Dur­ing the late 1960s, the pros­e­cu­tion of do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism con­tin­ued un­abated. As we have seen, hoo­li­gan­ism was grad­u­ally do­mes­ti­cated dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod, as this flex­ible catch­all cat­e­gory was in­creas­ingly used to crim­i­nal­ize do­mes­tic dys­func­tion, spou­sal bat­tery, and child abuse. The novel link­age of hoo­li­gan­ism and home re­made hoo­li­gan­ism from a crime of anon­y­mous vi­o­lence to a crime of in­ti­mate vi­o­lence, pro­blem­a­tized the en­tan­gled boun­dar­ies of pub­lic space and pub­lic re­spon­sibil­ity, and ex­panded the ­state’s pu­ni­ tive reach ­deeper down into the every­day world of home and ­hearth. It also ­created a new hoo­li­gan at odds with the stereo­typ­ic­ al ­street ­brawler that pre­oc­cu­pied the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion. Dur­ing the Brezh­nev pe­riod, local po­lice, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges con­tin­ued the pro­cess of do­mes­ti­cat­ing hoo­li­gan­ism. Many re­gions noted that the home was the main site of hoo­li­gan­ism and that hoo­li­ gans vic­ti­mized their wives and chil­dren more than any other group.16 These de­vel­op­ments show that the prob­le­matic So­viet do­mes­tic ­sphere was more than a zone of state inter­ven­tion, a space for cul­tured lei­sure, or a site of un­en­cum­bered close­ness, au­then­tic­ity, and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion. As some crim­i­nol­o­gists were be­gin­ning to sus­pect, the So­viet home was, for some un­for­tu­nate fam­i­lies, a place of dis­or­der, dis­si­pa­tion, and in­ti­mate vi­ol­ ence where de­vi­ance was ­taught to the next gen­er­a­tion and fu­ture hoo­li­gans were ­formed from trau­ma­tized chil­dren.17 The his­tory of hoo­li­gan­ism, how­ever, does not end with Khrush­chev and Brezh­nev. Hoo­li­gan­ism is just as much a prob­lem in ­today’s cap­i­ tal­ist coun­try as it was in ­yesterday’s so­cial­ist super­power. Yet while the crime re­mains the same, ­deviance’s legal def­i­ni­tion and pros­e­cu­tion dy­nam­ics have con­tin­ued to ­change in ac­cor­dance with con­tem­po­rary inter­ests and agen­das. In­stead of ex­pand­ing ­hooliganism’s legal def­i­ni­ tion, for in­stance, the Putin ad­min­is­tra­tion has nar­rowed it, man­uf­ ac­ tur­ing a pre­cip­i­tous drop in this once most com­mon form of Rus­sian crime.18 Such a shift ­contrasts with the loose con­struc­tion and soar­ing con­vic­tion rates of the Khrush­chev pe­riod.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Conclusion



203

Yet both pol­i­cies, past and ­present, under­line one of the main ar­gu­ ments of this study: con­vic­tion rates for hoo­li­gan­ism were (and are) ex­tremely sen­si­tive to the way this amor­phous crime was (and is) de­fined in for­mal legal terms. Sharp sta­tis­ti­cal ­swings in hoo­li­gan­ism, ­thereby, were not ­driven ­solely by so­cial dis­or­der or moral panic over the ap­pear­ance of new sub­cul­tures and be­hav­iors. ­Rather, they often re­flected the im­pact that new legal for­mu­la­tions of hoo­li­gan­ism had on the way local po­lice­men, pros­e­cu­tors, and ­judges under­stood and en­forced the chang­ing con­tours of this elas­tic crim­i­nal cat­e­gory. By re­ de­fin­ing de­vi­ance in ­looser or ­tighter terms, such def­i­ni­tional ­shifts de­ter­mined (and still de­ter­mine now) how ag­gres­sively local ac­tors could apply this elas­tic label to the ugly, every­day be­hav­iors oc­cur­ring ­around them. While its legal con­struc­tion has re­cently ­contracted, ­hooliganism’s ap­pli­ca­tion and under­stand­ing in the ­post-Communist pe­riod have con­tin­ued to ­evolve in un­ex­pected ways to cover the new con­cerns, new con­texts, and new ­crimes of a rad­i­cally re­mod­eled Rus­sian so­ci­ety. By sub­sum­ing new types of ac­tions under the elas­tic con­cept of hoo­li­ gan­ism, con­tem­po­rary Rus­sian law en­forc­ers have ­created new ­classes of hoo­li­gans and new uses for this catch­all crim­i­nal cat­e­gory. A dis­ turb­ing ex­am­ple of this crea­tive pro­cess of open­ing hoo­li­gan­ism to new ­groups of peo­ple and types of prac­tice is the hool­i­gan­iza­tion of hate crime in ­Putin’s Rus­sia. In re­cent years, Rus­sia has wit­nessed a se­ries of vi­o­lent skin­head and ­neo-Nazi-related hate ­crimes di­rected ­against eth­nic mi­nor­ities and ­foreign stu­dents. In re­gional cen­ters such as Vor­o­nezh and show­case cit­ies such as St. Pe­ters­burg, skin­head ­groups have as­saulted and ­killed ­foreign stu­dents and Cen­tral Asian im­mi­grants. In Feb­ru­ary 2004, a gang of Orel skin­heads, nick­named the “White ­Wolves,” at­tacked stu­dents from Bu­ri­a­tiia and an ath­lete from Mon­go­lia.19 In Mos­cow, a group of skin­heads bru­tally beat and ­stabbed three Cau­ca­sians in the Mos­cow sub­w ay fol­l ow­i ng the ­B eslan mas­s a­c re (they re­p ort­e dly ­shouted at their vic­tims: “That’s what you get for ter­ror­ism”).20 In an es­pe­cially ­tragic in­ci­dent from Feb­ru­ary 2004, a group of skin­heads armed with ­chains, bats, metal rods, and ­knives and shout­ing “Rus­sia for Rus­sians” ­stabbed to death a ­seven-year-old Tajik girl who was re­turn­ing home from a skat­ing rink with her ­father and cou­sin.21 When the ver­dicts were an­nounced in the trial of the ­girls’ at­tack­ers, they were not found ­guilty of mur­der. They were found ­guilty of hoo­li­gan­ism.22 As this ver­dict sug­gests, ex­tre­mist vi­o­lence ­against foreign­ers is often

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

204



Conclusion

tried as hoo­li­gan­ism ­rather than under ­Russia’s hate ­crimes stat­ute.23 “Skin­heads who are ar­rested are ­charged with hoo­li­gan­ism, as a rule,” a jour­nal­ist noted, “not with in­cit­ing eth­nic dis­cord.”24 The fact that hoo­li­gan­ism was some­times used dur­ing the So­viet pe­riod to pun­ish in­ci­dents of ra­cial slurs and as­sault gives the con­tem­ po­rary hool­i­gan­iza­tion of hate crime his­tor­i­cal prec­e­dent and per­spec­ tive.25 How­ever, human ­rights ­groups crit­i­cize and ac­cuse re­gional po­lice of­fi­cials and pros­e­cu­tors of using hoo­li­gan­ism not to pun­ish hate crime, but to hide it and triv­i­al­ize it.26 ­Through trans­form­ing skin­heads into hoo­li­gans, local law en­force­ment of­fi­cials trans­late the trou­bling new phe­nom­e­non of vi­o­lent ­neo-Nazi ­street gangs into a fa­mil­iar and less threat­en­ing cat­e­gory of mis­be­hav­ior. In the pro­cess, ­though, they mis­use the hoo­li­gan label to cod­dle per­pe­tra­tors with light sen­tences and to sweep em­bar­rass­ing in­ci­dents under the table. By mak­ing hate crime “hoo­li­gan,” they open up new under­stand­ings of what it means to be hoo­li­gan in ­post-Soviet Rus­sia. By re­fus­ing to in­ves­ti­gate or to pros­ec­ ute ra­cially mo­ti­vated in­ci­dents as hate ­crimes, they also en­cour­ age inter­ra­cial vi­o­lence and turn a blind eye to the ­growth of xeno­pho­bic ex­trem­ism on the Rus­sian ­street. Hoo­li­gan­ism has not only been re­im­a­gined in ­today’s Rus­sia in re­la­ tion to the topic of hate crime; in ad­di­tion, the po­lit­i­cal au­thor­ities have also ­started to use the hoo­li­gan label as a use­ful ­weapon ­against ­postSoviet civil so­ci­ety. The use of hoo­li­gan­ism as a way to pun­ish po­lit­ic­ al op­po­si­tion and crit­i­cal ­speech has been em­ployed since the Brezh­nev era, when So­viet law en­force­ment began to use de­vi­ant cat­e­go­ries as a way to sti­fle and stig­ma­tize dis­sent with­out draw­ing the neg­a­tive at­ten­ tion and inter­na­tional em­bar­rass­ment of po­lit­i­cal show ­trials.27 Their ­post-Soviet suc­ces­sors have con­tin­ued this pro­cess of se­lec­tively ap­ply­ ing hoo­li­gan­ism as an easy way to si­lence in­de­pen­dent ­speech and stop po­lit­i­cal ­protest. As a flex­ible in­stru­ment of easy in­car­cer­a­tion and in­tim­id ­ a­tion, the ­Khrushchev-era cat­e­gory of petty hoo­li­gan­ism has be­come an en­ trenched part of the ­anti-civil so­ci­ety ar­senal of your av­er­age ­postSoviet dic­ta­tor—one that il­lib­eral lead­ers ­across the for­mer So­viet space have used to hoo­lig­a­nize and ha­rass a wide array of in­de­pen­dent ac­tors, from po­lit­i­cal pro­test­ers to in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. In the un­free po­lit­ic­ al en­vi­ron­ment of Bel­arus, for ex­am­ple, the au­thor­ities used the ­charge of petty hoo­li­gan­ism both to de­tain a po­lit­i­cal pro­tes­tor who ­ripped apart a pic­ture of Bel­a­ru­sian dic­ta­tor Alek­sandr Lu­ka­shenko

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Conclusion



205

and to ar­rest the hun­dreds of dem­on­stra­tors who pub­licly pro­tested the ­rigged March 2006 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.28 In Rus­sia, the ­fast-track pun­ish­ment pro­cess and flex­ible am­bi­gu­ity of the petty hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory have made it a use­ful ­weapon for pun­ish­ ing and preempt­ing po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion. In July 2000, a Vlad­i­vos­tok judge, for ex­am­ple, de­tained local news­paper ed­i­tor Irina Greb­neva on petty hoo­li­gan ­charges for pub­lish­ing the tele­phone tran­scripts of con­ver­sa­tions in which re­gional pol­i­ti­cians con­spired to rig local elec­tions.29 In an­other in­ci­dent, po­lice ar­rested An­drei Ba­bits­kii, the ­much-persecuted re­porter for Radio Lib­erty, at a Mos­cow air­port for petty hoo­li­gan­ism and de­tained him for five days to pre­vent him from travel­ing to the scene of the ­then-unfolding ­Beslan hos­tage cri­sis.30 More re­cently, Noize MC, a pop­u­lar and con­tro­ver­sial Rus­sian rap­per, was given a ­ten-day pun­ish­ment for petty hoo­li­gan­ism after al­leg­edly curs­ing at po­lice­men dur­ing a 2010 Vol­go­grad con­cert: an in­ci­dent that was ­widely inter­preted as aimed at si­lenc­ing and in­tim­i­dat­ing a pop­u­lar voice crit­i­cal of po­lice bru­tal­ity and po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion (the ­chorus of Noize MC’s best known ­anti-police an­them pro­claims: “Cit­i­zen, halt! Halt! Turn out your pock­ets, slap, slap. Now your kid­neys, kick, kick. Well, off you go. . . .”).31 The catch­all crime of hoo­li­gan­ism ­played a sim­i­lar sup­pres­sive role in the March 2012 “elec­tions” that re­turned Vlad­i­mir Putin to the pres­i­ dency. To pre­vent the ­round-the-clock mass pro­tests that ­brought down the ­Kuchma re­gime in ­Ukraine’s ­Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, ­Moscow’s mayor Ser­gei So­bi­a­nin, a loyal ­client of ­Putin’s po­lit­i­cal ma­chine, ­warned that any­o ne at­t empt­i ng to set up a ­M aidan-style tent city in Mos­c ow (mod­eled on the one that oc­cu­pied ­Kiev’s In­de­pen­dence ­Square fol­low­ ing the cor­rupt and con­tested 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions) would be im­me­di­ately ar­rested and tried for hoo­li­gan­ism.32 In other cases of po­lit­i­ cally mo­ti­vated hoo­li­gan­ism, those who were suc­cess­ful in cri­tiqu­ing the un­fair and cor­rupt cam­paign pro­cess were also ­quickly si­lenced and ­whisked off the pub­lic stage ­through this con­ven­iently ­all-purpose and eas­ily pros­ec­ ut­able crim­i­nal label. The fem­in ­ ist Rus­sian punk band Pussy Riot, for in­stance, was de­tained and ­charged with hoo­li­gan­ism in early 2012 for barg­ing up to the ic­o­nos­ta­sis and hold­ing an im­promptu per­for­mance of their ­anti-Putin song “Holy Shit” at ­Moscow’s ­Christ the Sav­ior Ca­the­dral, a space ­closely as­so­ciated with the ­post-Communist po­lit­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment and cozy, ­state-connected re­li­gious hier­archs (parts of the pur­pose­fully of­fen­sive and pro­voc­a­tive song ­mocked the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

206



Conclusion

mu­si­cal mode of the Rus­sian Or­tho­dox lit­urgy and con­tained lyr­ics call­i ng on the “Holy ­M other of God to cast out [the evil ­s pirit] Putin”).33 Petty hoo­li­gan­ism, in par­tic­u­lar, con­tin­ued to pro­vide au­thor­ities with a quick and easy tool for seiz­ing, quiet­ing, and in­tim­i­dat­ing crit­ics of the 2012 elec­tion. At ­Putin’s own pol­ling sta­tion in Mos­cow, for in­stance, three mem­bers of ­Ukraine’s in­fa­mous fem­in ­ ist/­protest/ex­hi­ bi­tion­ist or­gan­iza­tion FEMEN were ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism after they took off their tops, ­shouted that Putin was a thief, at­tempted to steal the bal­lot box, and ex­hib­ited ­anti-Putin slo­gans on their naked ­chests (“I will steal [votes] for Putin”).34 A Khab­a­rovsk ac­ti­vist for re­form­ing ­Russia’s electo­ral pro­cess was like­wise ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism after he or­ga­nized a “flash mob” out­side a local pol­ling cen­ter and laid a make­shift fu­neral ­wreath at its en­trance that ­mourned the death of free and fair elec­tions (the po­lice­man who ar­rested the ac­ti­vist in­itially claimed that he had lit­tered by plac­ing a hand­ful of red car­na­tions on the side­walk out­side the pol­ling sta­tion and had, ­thereby, com­mit­ted a petty hoo­li­gan act).35 Hoo­li­gan­ism has ­emerged on the po­lit­i­cal scene not only as a flex­ible ­weapon for sup­press­ing civil so­ci­ety, it has also be­come an un­likely asset that savvy han­dlers can use to com­bat po­lit­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion, mo­bi­lize vot­ers, and at­tract media at­ten­tion in the rough and tum­ble world of ­Russia’s man­aged de­moc­racy. ­Kremlin-affiliated po­lit­i­cal par­ties, for ex­am­ple, have been ac­cused of out­sourc­ing some of their se­cur­ity and “at­tack” op­er­a­tions to no­to­ri­ous de­vi­ant gangs, such as the Spar­tak soc­cer hoo­li­gans. In a re­cent in­ci­dent, ­thirty to forty ­masked men armed with base­ball bats and al­leg­edly wear­ing sym­bols of the ­pro-Kremlin Nashi youth move­ment at­tacked a meet­ing of mem­bers of rad­i­cal youth or­gan­iza­tions and se­ri­ously in­jured some of the par­tic­i­ pants. By using these non­state de­vi­ant sub­contrac­tors as hired mus­cle to rough up op­po­si­tion ­groups, the Krem­lin has ­co-opted se­lect hoo­li­ gans into its strug­gle ­against in­de­pen­dent youth ­groups who they fear of con­spir­ing to ­create a col­ored rev­o­lu­tion in Rus­sia.36 Hoo­li­gan­ism has also ­emerged in the un­likely arena of ­post-Soviet pol­i­tics as an ef­fec­tive cam­paign prac­tice and style of ­self-presentation. In the realm of ­self-promotion, po­lit­i­cal spec­ta­cle, and media grand­ stand­ing, Vlad­i­mir ­Zhirinovsky’s Lib­eral Dem­o­cratic Party and Ed­u­ard ­Limonov’s Na­tional Bolshe­viks have ­achieved sur­pris­ing electo­ral suc­cess and pop­u­lar sup­port by using hoo­li­gan per­so­nas and tac­tics to ap­peal to al­ien­ated vot­ers and dis­af­fected youth.37 Al­though hoo­li­gan­ism

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Conclusion



207

has been an em­bar­rass­ing and un­planned part of Rus­sian and So­viet po­lit­i­cal spec­ta­cle since ­Khrushchev’s shoe and ­Yeltsin’s ­drunken con­ duct­ing, Zhir­i­nov­sky has per­fected the art of pur­pose­fully using out­ ra­geous ac­tion, ob­scen­ity, and pro­voc­a­tive ­speech to score po­lit­i­cal gain.38 In sep­ar­ate in­ci­dents, he has ­punched a woman, spat at his fel­low par­lia­men­tar­ians, and ­started fist­fights in the Duma (for which the Pro­cu­racy con­sid­ered strip­ping him of his par­lia­men­tary im­mu­nity and charg­ing him with hoo­li­gan­ism).39 In an age of ­Kremlin-controlled media and man­aged de­moc­racy, Lim­o­nov (him­self a for­mer petty crim­i­nal and ­street tough who has writ­ten ­widely on his ex­pe­ri­ence grow­ing up amid the hoo­li­gans and sti­li­agi of the urban under­world of So­viet ­Khar’kov) and his Na­tional Bolshe­vik Party have been able to ­spread its ­anti-Putin ideol­ogy and cap­ture pub­lic at­ten­tion ­through hoo­li­gan ­stunts such as oc­cu­py­ing the of­fices of the Min­is­try of ­Health, throw­ing a por­trait of Putin out the win­dow, and shout­ing “min­is­ters to the guil­lo­tine.”40 An­other fa­vor­ite tac­tic of the Na­tional ­Bolshevik’s ­self-described “vel­vet ter­ror” is throw­ing may­on­naise and to­ma­toes at ­Kremlin-connected pol­i­ti­cians and cul­tural per­son­al­ities, like for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Mi­khail ­Kas’ianov and film di­rec­tor Ni­kita Mik­hal­kov.41 In­stead of wit­ness­ing the death of hoo­li­gan­ism, the ­post-Soviet pe­riod has seen its dis­place­ment onto new sites and sit­u­a­tions. Hoo­li­gan­ism has found re­newed usage as a way to hide hate crime, as a way to con­trol civil so­ci­ety, and as a way to ag­gres­sively court po­lit­i­cal sup­port. Out­ side the for­mal legal arena, the hoo­li­gan label has con­tin­ued to func­tion in the wider world of every­day Rus­sian ­speech as a blan­ket term for de­cry­ing ir­re­spon­sible, re­pug­nant, and so­cially un­de­sir­able be­hav­ior, a usage loose ­enough to allow Putin to pub­licly con­demn the ­American ­government’s ex­pan­sion­ary mon­e­tary and fis­cal pol­i­cies as a form of eco­nomic “hoo­li­gan­ism.”42 By creat­ing new ap­pli­ca­tions and under­ stand­ings of what it means to be hoo­li­gan in a ­post-Soviet age, the prac­tices of con­tem­po­rary po­lice­men, dem­a­gogues, pol­i­ti­cians, and ­publicity-seekers have added yet an­other di­men­sion of mean­ing to the elu­sive and un­fold­ing cat­a­log of hoo­li­gan ­crimes. They have also ­primed the de­vi­ant pro­duc­tion pro­cess to make a new gen­er­a­tion of hoo­li­gans out of a di­verse col­lec­tion of ­present-day ac­tions and ac­tors (even one as un­likely as Ba­rack Obama).

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved. LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:43.

Notes

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Intro­duc­tion 1. Gos­u­darst­ven­nyi ark­hiv Ros­siis­koi Fed­e­rat­sii (GARF), fond (f.) 9474, opis’ (op.) 16, delo (d.) 645, list (l.) 54. 2. ­Tsentral’nyi ­munitsipal’nyi ark­hiv g. ­Moskvy (TsMAM), f. 493, op. 1, d. 420, l. 72. In an­other ­sex-related case, a woman was ar­rested for hoo­li­gan­ism and sen­tenced to four years for hav­ing sex “on the river­bank close to the road.” Inter­est­ingly, her male part­ner was given only a ­fifteen-day ad­min­is­tra­tive pun­ish­ment. For this case, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 469, ll. 96–97. For the case of a woman whose com­mu­nal apart­ment neigh­bors de­nounced her as a hoo­li­gan for bring­ing multi­ple sex part­ners to her room, see TsMAM, f. 1918, op. 2, d. 92, ll. 3–4. 3. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 443, l. 35. 4. R. W. Burch­field, ed., A Sup­ple­ment to The Ox­ford En­glish Dic­tion­ary, vol. 2 (Ox­ford, UK: Cla­ren­don Press, 1976), 145–146. The dic­tion­ary also lists such lit­tle used de­riv­a­tives as the ad­jec­tive “hool­i­ganic” and the verb “to hoo­lig­a­nize.” 5. As the sub­ject of sen­sa­tion­al­ized crime re­port­ing and music hall bur­lesque, the hoo­li­gan strad­dled the ­worlds of pop­u­lar anx­iety and pop­u­lar en­ter­tain­ment. For the pos­sible der­i­va­tions of the word, see Sean McMa­hon and Jo O’ Don­o­ghue, ­Brewer’s Dic­tion­ary of Irish ­Phrase and Fable (Lon­don: Wei­den­feld and Nic­ol­son, 2004), 375–376; Eric Par­tridge, A Dic­tion­ary of Slang and Un­con­ven­tional En­glish (New York: Rout­ledge, 1984), 1383; and Hugh Raw­son, ­Wicked Words: A Treas­ury of ­Curses, In­sults, ­Put-Downs, and Other For­merly Un­print­able Terms from the ­AngloSaxon Times to the ­Present (New York: Crown, 1989), 197–198. For a treat­ment of hoo­li­gan­ism in late ­nineteenth- and early ­twentieth-century En­gland, see Geof­frey Pear­son, Hoo­li­gan­ism: A His­tory of Re­spect­able Fears (New York: ­Schocken Books, 1984); and Ste­phen Hum­phries, Hoo­li­gans or ­Rebels? An Oral His­tory of Work­ing Class Child­hood and Youth, 1889–1939 (Ox­ford, UK: Black­well, 1981). For an inter­est­ing first­hand ac­count of the early En­glish hoo­li­gans, see

209

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

210



Notes to pages 4–5

Clar­ence Rook, The Hoo­li­gan ­Nights: Being the Life and Opin­ions of an Un­re­pen­tant Crim­i­nal (Lon­don: G. Rich­ards, 1901). 6. This does not mean that there were not ex­am­ples of soc­cer hoo­li­gan­ism in the So­viet Union. For cases of soc­cer hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing this pe­riod, see Sem ­Narin’iani, “V odnom go­rode,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, Oc­to­ber 29, 1955, 2; and A. Ak­i­mov, “Si­lo­vaia ­bor’ba? Net, ­grubost’,” Iz­ves­tiia, May 31, 1959, 6. For a car­toon on out­ra­geous fan be­hav­ior in the soc­cer sta­dium, see the car­toon “There Are All Kinds of Spec­ta­tors at the Sta­diums,” Krok­o­dil, no. 31 (1955): 1. For in­for­ma­tion on soc­cer hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the So­viet pe­riod, see Rob­ert Ed­el­man, Se­ri­ous Fun: A His­tory of Spec­ta­tor Sport in the USSR (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1993), 53, 56, 95, 99, 210, 213. 7. De­pend­ing on the year, hoo­li­gan­ism was ei­ther the first or sec­ond most com­mon of­fense tried in So­viet crim­i­nal ­courts. The only other crime that was as com­mon was petty theft of state and pub­lic prop­erty (mel­koe khish­che­nie gos­u­darst­ven­nogo i obsh­chest­ven­nogo imush­chestva). For more in­for­ma­tion on the fre­quency of hoo­li­gan­ism over the Khrush­chev pe­riod, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 57; and GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, ll. 78–80. 8. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, l. 83. 9. At the be­gin­ning of the Khrush­chev pe­riod on April 1, 1953, hoo­li­gans ­formed 6.5 per­cent of the ­Gulag’s total in­mate pop­ul­ a­tion (2,224,566). The per­cent­age of in­mates in the Gulag for trea­son (the larg­est con­tin­gent of the counter­rev­o­lu­tion­ary ­crimes group) was only ­slightly ­higher at 8.3 per­cent. For the full pop­u­la­tion break­down, see Marc Elie, “Les an­ciens dét­e­nus du Gou­lag: lib­ér­a­tions mas­sives, réin­ser­tion et ré­ha­bil­i­ta­tion dans l­ ’URSS post­stal­i­nienne, 1953–1964” (PhD diss., ­L’École des ­hautes ­études en sci­ences so­ci­ales, 2007), 451. The ­reader who wants to learn more about crime, pris­on­ers, am­nes­ties, and much more dur­ing the Khrush­chev era could do lit­tle bet­ter than to con­sult ­Elie’s ad­mir­able and ex­haus­tive work. 10. Gulag (Glav­noe up­rav­le­nie la­ge­rei), 1917–1960, ed. A. I. Kok­u­rin and N. V. Pe­trov (Mos­cow: Mezh­du­na­rod­nyi fond De­mok­ra­tiia, 2000), 437. This shift in the crim­i­nal com­po­si­tion of the det­ainee pop­u­la­tion to­wards of­fenses like hoo­li­gan­ism and away from counter­rev­o­lu­tion­ary ­crimes was due to ­changes in am­nesty pol­i­cies and ­crime-fighting pri­or­ities after 1955 that fa­vored the ex­pan­sion of the for­mer co­hort and the shrink­age of the lat­ter. For more on these inter­nal ­shifts in the Gulag, see Ste­ven A. ­Barnes, Death and Re­demp­tion: The Gulag and the Shap­ing of So­viet So­ci­ety (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011), 237. 11. As Joan Neu­ber­ger has shown, the hoo­li­gan fig­ure was the sub­ject of pop­u­lar anx­iety and po­lice per­se­cu­tion in the ur­ba­niz­ing areas of Eu­ro­pean Rus­sia prior to the ad­vent of So­viet power. As the im­me­di­ate ­post-Revolutionary writ­ings of Lenin also dem­on­strate, the hoo­li­gan re­mained a focus of re­gime re­pres­sion even in the first ­stages of the for­ma­tion of the So­viet state. For hoo­li­ gan­ism in the Im­pe­rial pe­riod, see Joan Neu­ber­ger, Hoo­li­gan­ism: Crime, Cul­ture, and Power in St. Pe­ters­burg, 1900–1914 (Berke­ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1993). Inter­est­ingly, Lenin, in the im­me­di­ate ­post-Revolutionary pe­riod, ­equated the hoo­li­gan with a di­verse array of ­agents who ­sought to de­sta­bi­lize the new so­cial­ist state and ­called for their sum­mary ex­e­cu­tion. In “The So­cial­ist

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 5–6



211

Father­land in Dan­ger,” he wrote: “Agents of the enemy, such as spec­u­la­tors, par­tic­i­pants in po­groms, hoo­li­gans, counter­rev­o­lu­tion­ary ag­i­ta­tors and Ger­man spies, ­should be shot on sight.” For ­Lenin’s re­marks on hoo­li­gan­ism, see the Feb­ru­ary 2, 1918, de­cree of the Coun­cil of ­People’s Com­mis­sars (Sov­nar­kom) “The So­cial­ist Father­land in Dan­ger” and the May 4, 1918, Sov­nar­kom de­cree “On the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Tri­bu­nals” in V. I. Lenin, Pol­noe sob­ra­nie soch­in ­ e­niia, vol. 35, 358. How­ever, these Rus­sian/So­viet cam­paigns ­against the con­stant crime of hoo­li­gan­ism cy­cled ­between ac­tiv­ity and in­ac­tion and were ­marked by ir­reg­u­lar ­on-again, ­off-again ­rhythms. De­spite the wave of de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion that drove down ­prison sen­tences for other of­fenses, court­room con­vic­tions and cus­to­dial sen­tences for hoo­li­gan­ism were high dur­ing the im­me­di­ate ­post-Revolutionary pe­riod, es­pe­cially dur­ing the mid-1920s. Fol­low­ing this cam­paign peak, con­vic­ tion rates fell ­sharply as hoo­li­gan cases were pun­ished ad­min­is­tra­tively ­through fines or ­handed off to al­ter­na­tive dis­ci­pli­nary ve­nues, such as fac­tory ­comrades’ ­courts and rural lay ­courts, to re­lieve an over­crowded crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system. From this mo­men­tary lull, ­anti-hooligan ef­forts in­creased ­sharply in the mid1930s as the state strug­gled to con­tain a wave of vi­o­lent ­street crime and ­crafted ­longer cus­to­dial sen­tences for more se­ri­ous types of hoo­li­gan­ism in­volv­ing knife fight­ing and phys­i­cal as­saults. Be­fore fall­ing ­sharply dur­ing the war years, hoo­li­gan­ism ­reached its pre­war peak in 1940 as the ­state’s at­tempt to up­hold labor dis­ci­pline led it to in­sti­tute a new range of ­anti-hooligan in­itia­tives that ­created hun­dreds of thou­sands of new hoo­li­gan crim­i­nals. For more in­for­ma­ tion on these a­ nti-hooligan cam­paigns, see David R. Shear­ing, Po­lic­ing S ­ talin’s So­cial­ism: Re­pres­sion and So­cial Order in the So­viet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), 53–57, 183–189, 231–233; Paul Ha­gen­loh, ­Stalin’s Po­lice: Pub­lic Order and Mass Re­pres­sion in the USSR, 1926–1941 (Wash­ ing­ton, DC: Woo­drow Wil­son Cen­ter Press, 2009), 158–161, 177–178, 317–320; Peter H. Sol­o­mon, Jr., So­viet Crim­i­nal Jus­tice under Sta­lin (New York: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), 58–59, 132–133, 224–225, 332; Peter H. Ju­viler, Rev­o­lu­ tion­ary Law and Order: Pol­i­tics and So­cial ­Change in the USSR (New York: Free Press, 1976), 58. For more on the use of al­ter­na­tive and non­cus­to­dial pun­ish­ ments for hoo­li­gan­ism, see Sol­o­mon, “Crim­i­nal­iza­tion and De­crim­i­nal­iza­tion in So­viet Crim­i­nal Pol­icy, 1917–1941,” Law and So­ci­ety Re­view, no. 1 (1981–1982): 9–44. For hoo­li­gan­ism in the ­post-WWII pe­riod, see Ju­li­ane Fürst, ­Stalin’s Last Gen­er­a­tion: So­viet ­Post-War Youth and the Emer­gence of Ma­ture So­cial­ism (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2010). 12. Har­o ld Ber­m an, Jus­t ice in the USSR: An Inter­p re­t a­t ion of So­v iet Law (Cam­bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1963), 66–96. 13. This study is cer­tainly not the first to point out this ten­sion. Schol­ars such as Har­old Ber­man, Yoram Gor­lizki, and Mir­iam Dob­son have also ex­plored this claim. This study is the first, how­ever, to ex­am­ine this ten­sion ­through the com­mon­place crime of hoo­li­gan­ism. 14. The lit­er­a­ture on the so­ci­ol­ogy of de­vi­ance is im­mense. My goal in this short historio­graph­i­cal intro­duc­tion is not to give an ex­haus­tive over­view of this cor­pus but to focus on those ca­nonic inter­pre­tive frame­works that have in­flu­enced the way his­to­rians have ­looked at hoo­li­gan­ism in Rus­sia.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

212



Notes to pages 6–7

15. For the clas­sics of the so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion ­school, see Rob­ert E. Park, Er­nest W. Bur­gess, and Rode­rick D. McKen­zie, The City (Chi­cago: Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago Press, 1967); Rob­ert E. L. Faris, So­cial Dis­or­gan­iza­tion (Chi­cago: Ro­nald Press, 1948); Clif­ford Shaw, Frede­rick M. For­gaugh, Henry D. McKay, and Le­o­nard S. Cot­treel, De­lin­quency Areas (Chi­cago: Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago, 1929); and Clif­ford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay, Juve­nile De­lin­quency and Urban Areas: A Study of Rates of De­lin­quency in Re­la­tion to Dif­fe­ren­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Local Com­mu­nities in ­American Cit­ies (Chi­cago: Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago Press, 1969). For his­tor­i­cal back­ground on the so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion theo­rists and the Chi­cago ­School of so­ci­ol­ogy, see Ste­phen Pfohl, Im­ages of De­vi­ance and So­cial Con­trol: A So­ci­olog­i­cal His­tory (New York: ­McGraw-Hill, 1994), 169–213. 16. Stan­ley Cohen, Folk ­Devils and Moral Pan­ics: The Crea­tion of the Mods and Rock­ers (Lon­don: Mac­Gib­bon and Kee, 1972). For ex­pan­sions and cri­tiques of ­Cohen’s model, see Ken­neth Thomp­son, Moral Pan­ics (New York: Rout­ledge, 1998); and Erich Goode and Nach­man ­Ben-Yehuda, Moral Pan­ics: The So­cial Con­struc­tion of De­vi­ance (Ox­ford, UK: Black­well, 1994). 17. Geof­frey Pear­son, for ex­am­ple, has ­traced early ­twentieth-century En­glish fears over hoo­li­gan­ism to ­upper-class con­cerns in­volv­ing En­gland’s de­clin­ing im­pe­rial power, wors­en­ing so­cial har­mony, and rest­less lower ­classes. See Pear­son, Hoo­li­gan­ism. 18. In her study of hoo­li­gan­ism in ­turn-of-the-century St. Pe­ters­burg, Joan Neu­ber­ger ­argues that the hoo­li­gan was a po­tent sym­bol of the un­ease urban in­tel­lec­tu­als felt to­ward in­dus­trial mod­ern­iza­tion and the ­ill-effect it had on the ­empire’s iden­tity cat­e­go­ries and so­cial con­trol ca­pa­bil­ities. ­State-sponsored pro­cesses of rapid in­dus­tri­al­iza­tion ­flooded the ­empire’s ex­pand­ing cit­ies with mi­grant wage labor and gave birth to new ­working-class sub­cul­tures that chal­ lenged es­tab­lished elite no­tions of cor­rect city con­duct and cul­tured liv­ing. By creat­ing new ­classes of up­wardly mo­bile ur­ban­ites that did not fit into the ­empire’s out­moded ­system of ­estate-based so­cial cat­eg ­ o­ries, in­dus­trial mod­ern­ iza­tion, Neu­ber­ger ­argues, under­mined old re­gime ­status dis­tinc­tions and ­created an iden­tity cri­sis among the urban elite. ­Caught ­between so­cial ­change and ­status in­se­cur­ity, urban in­tel­lec­tu­als, Neu­ber­ger ex­plains, used the hoo­li­ gan “other” to re­af­firm their dis­tinc­tive core val­ues and fash­ion a ­stable sense of group iden­tity in an un­stable world. Ex­press­ing anx­iety over hoo­li­gans in the mass press al­lowed the old urban elite to re­af­firm the va­lid­ity of its moral vi­sion, as­sert its so­cial dif­fer­ence from newly mo­bile peas­ants and pro­fes­sion­als, and to ­protest ­against the in­dus­trial mod­er­nity that was rap­idly under­min­ing and re­mod­el­ing the urban old re­gime. For ­Neuberger’s dis­cus­sion of hoo­li­gan­ ism, see her stud­ies Hoo­li­gan­ism and “Sto­ries of the ­Street: Hoo­li­gan­ism in the St. Pe­ters­burg Pop­u­lar Press,” ­Slavic Re­view, no. 2 (1989): 177–194. Hoo­li­gan­ism, ac­cord­ing to Neu­ber­ger, was pri­mar­ily a phe­nom­e­non of the urban ­street. Neil Weiss­man dis­agrees, ar­guing in an ar­ti­cle on hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the im­pe­rial pe­riod that hoo­li­gan­ism was pri­mar­ily a rural and Rus­sian prob­lem that re­sulted from the in­fil­tra­tion of urban cul­ture into the pre­vi­ously ­closed world of the peas­ant vil­lage. Like Neu­ber­ger, Weiss­man iden­tifies the mi­grant rural la­borer and the mass media as ­Russia’s key pro­duc­ers of de­vi­ance. These ac­tors and in­sti­tu­tions, ac­cord­ing to Weiss­man, car­ried de­sta­bi­liz­ing

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Note to page 7



213

urban in­flu­ences and ­anti-authoritarian at­ti­tudes from city to coun­try. Weiss­ man does not deny that rural drink­ing cul­ture and the de­clin­ing au­thor­ity of state and cler­i­cal au­thor­ities ­played a part in pre­cip­i­tat­ing hoo­li­gan­ism in the under­pol­iced coun­try­side. How­ever, he ­argues that ­hooliganism’s pri­mary pro­ducer was the so­cial ­change ­wrought by in­dus­trial mod­ern­iza­tion, a trans­ for­ma­tive pro­cess that in­jected cap­i­tal­ist con­su­mer­ism and urban cul­ture into the peas­ant vil­lage, under­mined tra­di­tional pa­tri­ar­chal power re­la­tions, and ­fueled inter­nal con­flict. Al­though they sit­u­ate the main site of hoo­li­gan­ism in dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions, both Neu­ber­ger and Weiss­man argue ­within the con­tours of the so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion and moral panic par­a­digms by link­ing ­pre-Soviet hoo­li­gan­ism to so­cial ­change, up­rooted urban mi­grant labor, cul­tural com­pe­ti­ tion, anx­ious au­thor­ities, and emerg­ing mass media tech­nol­og ­ ies such as the penny press. Neil B. Weiss­man, “Rural Crime in Tsar­ist Rus­sia: The Ques­tion of Hoo­li­gan­ism, 1905–1914,” ­Slavic Re­view, no. 2 (1978): 228–240. Al­though they sit­u­ate the main site of hoo­li­gan­ism in dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions, both Neu­ber­ger and Weiss­man argue ­within the con­tours of the so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion and moral panic par­a­digms by link­ing ­pre-Soviet hoo­li­gan­ism to so­cial ­change, up­rooted urban mi­grant labor, cul­tural com­pe­ti­tion, anx­ious au­thor­ities, and emerg­ing mass media tech­nol­o­gies. Stud­ies of ­Soviet-era hoo­li­gan­ism also lo­cate de­vi­ance dur­ing times of so­cial ­stress and anx­iety over cul­tural com­pe­ti­tion and ideo­log­i­cal chal­lenge. For ex­am­ple, Anne Gor­such, in her study of 1920s youth cul­ture, ­argues that the ­state’s ­anti-hooligan hys­teria re­flected its ­larger ideo­log­i­cal anx­iety over the New Eco­nomic Pol­icy (NEP) and the cor­rupt­ing in­flu­ence they ­feared it was hav­ing on So­viet youth. As West­ern pop­u­lar cul­ture and mass en­ter­tain­ment in­vaded the So­viet city, youth sub­cul­tures, Gor­such main­tains, multi­plied in the un­super­vised urban under­world and ­created cul­tural clash ­between of­fi­cial state ideol­ogy and al­ter­na­tive ­street-level life­styles. By trac­ing the dis­ease meta­phors that au­thor­ities de­ployed in their ­anti-deviance dis­course, Gor­such shows that the ­regime’s ­anti-hooliganism re­volved ­around its pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with re­gain­ing its ideo­log­i­cal in­teg­rity and re­in­sti­tut­ing con­trol over a wild youth lost to ­NEP-era com­pro­mises with ­Western-style cap­i­tal­ism, con­su­mer­ ism, and cos­mo­pol­i­tan­ism. Anne Gor­such, Youth in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Rus­sia: En­thu­ siasts, Bo­he­mians and De­lin­quents (Bloom­ing­ton: Uni­ver­sity of In­di­ana Press, 2000), 167–176; and Anne Gor­such, “Flap­pers and Fox­trot­ters: So­viet Youth in the Roar­ing Twen­ties,” Carl Beck ­Papers in Rus­sian and East Eu­ro­pean Stud­ies, no. 1102 (1994): 1–33. ­Themes of cul­tural con­tam­i­na­tion and so­cial in­stabil­ity also in­form treat­ ments of ­post-Stalinist hoo­li­gan­ism. Mir­iam Dob­son ­argues that mass Gulag am­nes­ties and state fears over the at­trac­tion of the ­camps’ crim­i­nal sub­cul­ture to its youth led to a surge in ­anti-hooliganism at the be­gin­ning of the Khrush­chev era. Mir­iam Dob­son, ­Khrushchev’s Cold Sum­mer: Gulag Re­turn­ees, Crime and the Fate of Re­form after Sta­lin (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), 109–132. In his study of mass pub­lic dis­or­der in the ­post-Stalin pe­riod, V. A. Koz­lov also ­relies on so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion to ex­plain hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the 1950s. By fo­cus­ing on am­nesty pol­ic­ ies, the ef­fect of ­war-related mor­tal­ity on chil­drear­ing prac­tices, youth un­em­ploy­ment, and the under­pol­ic­ing of ­high-migration

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

214



Notes to pages 7–11

fac­tory towns, Koz­lov ­treats hoo­li­gan­ism as the out­growth of an un­stable so­ci­ety under­go­ing dis­or­derly ­change. V. A. Koz­lov, Mas­so­vye bespor­i­adki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve (No­vos­i­birsk, Rus­sia: Si­birs­kii khron­og ­ raf, 1999), 184– 216. For an ­abridged En­glish trans­la­tion, see V. A. Koz­lov, Mass Up­ris­ings in the USSR, trans. and ed. ­Elaine McClar­nand MacK­in­non (Ar­monk, NY: M. E. ­Sharpe, 2002). 19. Neu­ber­ger, Hoo­li­gan­ism. 20. Neu­ber­ger, “Cul­ture ­Besieged: Hoo­li­gan­ism and Fu­tur­ism,” in Cul­tures in Flux: Lower Class Val­ues, Prac­tices, and Re­sis­tance in Late Im­pe­rial Rus­sia, ed. Ste­phen P. Frank and Mark D. Stein­berg (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994), 185–204. ­Weissman’s ­imperial-era hoo­li­gans, like ­Neuberger’s, were re­sist­ers whose de­vi­ance had both a gen­er­a­tional and a class com­po­nent. By lash­ing out ­against eld­ers and Stol­y­pin home­stead­ers, rural hoo­li­gans, Weiss­ man p ­ oints out, ­worked ­within the sa­li­ent so­cial cleav­ages of the late im­pe­rial vil­lage, strik­ing out at the ­forces of pa­tri­ar­chal au­thor­ity and ­Stolypin-style agrar­ian re­form. Weiss­man, “Rural Crime in Tsar­ist Rus­sia,” 228–240. 21. V. A. Koz­lov, Mas­so­vye bespor­i­adki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve (No­vos­i­birsk, Rus­sia: Si­birs­kii khron­o­graf, 1999), 184–216. For an ­abridged En­glish trans­la­tion, see Koz­lov, Mass Up­ris­ings in the USSR. 22. An in­spi­ra­tion for my ap­proach is the work of Peter Sol­o­mon. Sol­o­mon, in his study of the Sta­lin­ist crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system, shows the cam­paign ­rhythm under­lin­ing the ­state’s ­anti-hooliganism. Over­worked and under­staffed, the crim­i­nal jus­tice ­system quix­ot­ic­ ally ­brought its at­ten­tion to the per­en­nial hoo­li­ gan prob­lem inter­mit­tently and ir­reg­u­larly. By under­lin­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties that the au­thor­ities had in mak­ing ­ill-trained and non­pro­fes­sional legal work­ers carry out ­strict cen­tral pol­ic­ ies in re­gard to hoo­li­gan­ism, he shows us how local ac­tors could sub­vert state ­anti-hooligan cam­paigns and im­ple­ment them in un­fore­seen ways based on their ­unique local under­stand­ings and inter­ests. Sol­om ­ on, So­viet Crim­in ­ al Jus­tice under Sta­lin, 225, 330–331. 23. The no­tion of as­cribed iden­tity is taken from ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick, “As­crib­ ing Class: The Con­struc­tion of So­cial Iden­tity in So­viet Rus­sia,” The Jour­nal of Mod­ern His­tory, no. 4 (1993): 745–770. 24. For the clas­sic works in la­bel­ing the­ory, see Ho­ward ­Becker, ed., The Other Side: Per­spec­tives on De­vi­ance (New York: Free Press, 1964); Ho­ward ­Becker, Out­sid­ers: Stud­ies in the So­ci­ol­ogy of De­vi­ance (New York: Free Press, 1963); Edwin Le­mert, So­cial Pa­thol­ogy: A System­atic Ap­proach to the The­ory of So­ ci­opathic Be­hav­ior (New York: ­McGraw-Hill, 1951); and Edwin Schur, La­bel­ing De­vi­ant Be­hav­ior: Its So­ci­olog­i­cal Im­pli­ca­tions (New York: ­Harper and Row, 1971). 25. For the slip­peri­ness of the label “Trots­kyite,” see J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Nau­mov, The Road to Ter­ror: Sta­lin and the ­Self-Destruction of the Bolshe­viks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1999), 272–274. For the slip­peri­ness of the “kulak” label, see ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick, ­Stalin’s Peas­ants: Re­sis­t­ ance and Sur­vi­val in the Rus­sian Vil­lage after Col­lec­tiv­iza­tion (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994), 28–32. 26. Emile Durk­heim, The Rules of the So­ci­olog­i­cal ­Method, trans. W. D. Hall (New York: Free Press, 1982). 27. Kai Erick­son, Way­ward Pu­ri­tans: A Study in the So­ci­ol­ogy of De­vi­ance (New York: Wiley, 1966). Wal­ter Con­nor, in his study of So­viet juve­nile de­lin­quency

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 11–17



215

and al­co­hol­ism, ­argues in a func­tion­al­ist fash­ion that de­vi­ance was not a sign of ­ ussia’s un­set­tled and dis­or­dered so­ci­ety. For ­Connor’s take on the func­tion­al­ity R of So­viet de­vi­ance, see Wal­ter D. Con­nor, De­vi­ance in So­viet So­ci­ety: Crime, De­lin­quency, and Al­co­hol­ism (New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1969). 28. Of ­course, that does not mean that there were no ­anti-regime acts of hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod. Cer­tainly, there were such cases, and the fluid line ­between hoo­li­gan­ism and Ar­ti­cle 58 of­fenses shows the dif­fi­ cul­ties au­thor­ities faced in dis­en­tan­gling de­vi­ance from dis­si­dence. For ex­am­ple, a man, after break­ing a win­dow, ­climbed onto the ledge at the Bel­o­russ­kii train sta­tion in Mos­cow. He began throw­ing ­broken glass at pe­des­trians and shout­ ing that the po­lice were “fas­cists” and “ver­min” and that “all com­mu­nists were trai­tors.” After being dis­lodged and de­tained with the help of a fire hose, the man was not con­victed for ­anti-Soviet ag­i­ta­tion. In­stead, he re­ceived an ad­min­is­ tra­tive pun­ish­ment for petty hoo­li­gan­ism. For this case, see TsMAM, f. 1078, op. 1, d. 173, ll. 1–5. For a stim­u­lat­ing col­lec­tion of es­says that has some­thing to say about the re­la­tion ­between crime and re­sis­tance, see Lynne Viola, ed., Con­ tend­ing with Sta­lin­ism: So­viet Power and Pop­u­lar Re­sis­tance in the 1930s (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2002). 29. For in­for­ma­tion on the link ­between hoo­li­gan­ism and al­co­hol, see chap­ter 1. For data on the per­cent­age of hoo­li­gans who were drunk when ar­rested, see GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 34, ll. 12–13; and GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 363, l. 12. 30. For data on the age break­down of con­victed hoo­li­gans, see chap­ter 1 and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 58. 31. For data on the gen­d er dis­t ri­b u­t ion of con­v icted hoo­l i­g ans, see GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 28. ­Hooliganism’s gen­dered na­ture ­should, per­haps, not come as a sur­prise. Crim­i­nol­o­gists, stud­y­ing a wide range of so­ci­eties, have long rec­og­nized that men are more prone to com­mit many types of crime than women. 32. On the dis­tinc­tion ­between rough and re­spect­able ­working-class cul­tures, see Ste­phen Meyer, “Work, Play, and Power: Mas­cu­line Cul­ture on the Auto­ mo­tive Shop Floor, 1930–1960,” Men and Mas­cu­lin­ities, no. 2 (1999): 115–134; and Ste­phen Meyer, “Rough Man­hood: The Ag­gres­sive and Con­fron­ta­tional Shop Cul­ture of Auto Work­ers dur­ing World War II,” Jour­nal of So­cial His­tory, no. 1 (2002): 125–147. My ideas on man­li­ness, ­working-class cul­ture, and rough mas­cu­lin­ity have also been in­flu­enced by the fol­low­ing works: Gail Be­der­man, Man­li­ness and Civ­il­iza­tion: A Cul­tural His­tory of Gen­der and Race in the ­United ­States, 1880–1917 (Chi­cago: Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago Press, 1995); and Lisa Fine, The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Com­mu­nity in Auto­town USA (Phil­a­del­phia: Tem­ple Uni­ver­sity Press, 2004). 33. Neu­ber­ger, Hoo­li­gan­ism, 1–21; and Koz­lov, Mass Up­ris­ings in the USSR, 206–216.

Chap­ter 1.  A Por­trait of Hoo­li­gan­ism and the Hoo­li­gan dur­ing the Khrush­chev Pe­riod 1. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5206, l. 29. 2. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4031, l. 88. 3. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5663, ll. 76–77.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

216



Notes to pages 17–22

4. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5206, l. 35. 5. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5663, l. 80. 6. Ibid., ll. 79–80. 7. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4031, l. 80. 8. Ibid., l. 88. 9. See, for ex­am­ple, the Jan­u­ary 1, 1954, let­ter from S. N. Kru­glov, the USSR Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Af­fairs, to the Chair­man of the USSR Su­preme So­viet, K. E. Vo­rosh­i­lov. GARF f. 9415, op. 3, d. 254, l. 38. 10. On “sur­vi­vals of the past,” see Wal­ter Con­nor, De­vi­ance in So­viet So­ci­ety: Crime, De­lin­quency, and Al­co­hol­ism (New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1972), 50–51, 168–169. 11. One crim­i­no­log­ical study of hoo­li­gan­ism ­listed these harm­ful bour­geois in­flu­ences as “ego­tism, un­com­radely re­la­tions to­ward mem­bers of the work col­lec­tive, lack of cul­ture, dis­re­spect for women, and a lack of dis­ci­pline and ­self-control.” N. F. Kuz­net­sova, Ugo­lov­naia ­otvetstvennost’ za nar­u­she­niia obsh­che­ st­ven­nogo por­i­adka (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia lit­er­a­ture, 1963), 6. 12. A col­lec­tive let­ter to the USSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs (MVD) from No­vos­i­birsk, for ex­am­ple, ac­cused ­foreign ­agents of fo­ment­ing ­crimes such as hoo­li­gan­ism to ­create dis­satis­fac­tion among the pub­lic and to erode ­citizens’ sup­port for the state. GARF, f. 9415, op. 3, d. 254, l. 123. 13. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5302, l. 142. 14. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 199. A Le­nin­grad res­i­dent de­clared to pro­cu­racy of­fic­ ials that: “All hoo­li­gan­ism as a rule is born out of ex­ces­sive drink­ing ( p’ianka).” For this let­ter, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4597, l. 49. The link ­between al­co­hol and de­vi­ance was one of the rare ­things on which both legal work­ers and hoo­li­gans ­agreed. Hoo­li­gans them­selves often ­blamed their ­crimes on drunk­en­ness. “When cases of hoo­li­gan­ism are tried in court,” a Mos­cow pros­ec­ u­tor re­ported, “the de­fen­dants ex­plain to the court that they com­mit­ted their ­crimes be­cause they were drunk.” For the ­prosecutor’s state­ ment, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 453, ll. 27, 67. 15. Al­though vodka pro­duc­tion did dip ­slightly in 1959 and 1960 dur­ing the ­anti-alcohol cam­paign, it ­quickly re­cov­ered fol­low­ing 1961 and grew through­ out the rest of the Khrush­chev pe­riod. For de­tailed break­downs of al­co­holic bev­er­age out­put, see Vlad­i­mir G. Treml, Al­co­hol in the USSR: A Sta­tis­ti­cal Study (Dur­ham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 1982), 5. 16. See, for in­stance, ­Kruglov’s May 14, 1955, let­ter to Vo­rosh­i­lov. GARF, f. 7523, op. 107, d. 124, ll. 77–78. 17. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 342, l. 105; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4597, l. 51. 18. For more in­for­ma­tion on sin­gle moth­ers, see Mie Nak­a­chi, “Re­plac­ing the Dead: The Pol­i­tics of Re­pro­duc­tion in the Post­war So­viet Union, 1944–1955” (PhD diss., Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago, 2008), chap­ter 4. 19. For more on the dy­namic urban ­growth of this pe­riod, see Moshe Lewin, The Gor­ba­chev Phe­nom­en ­ on: A His­tor­i­cal Inter­pre­ta­tion (Berke­ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1991), 30–42. 20. For more in­for­ma­tion, see Greg­ory D. An­drusz, Hous­ing and Urban De­vel­op­ment in the USSR (Al­bany: State Uni­ver­sity of New York Press, 1984).

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 22–24



217

21. Build­ing de­sign fea­tures such as multi­ple ­floors and multi­ple apart­ment units per entry have been cor­re­lated with in­creased crime and fear of crime. For the pi­o­neer­ing stud­ies on ­American urban neigh­bor­hoods, see Oscar New­man and Karen ­Franck, “The Ef­fects of Build­ing Size on Per­sonal Crime and Fear of Crime,” Pop­u­la­tion and En­vi­ron­ment, no. 5 (1982): 203–220; and D. D. Per­kins, J. W. Meeks, and Ralph Tay­lor, “The Phys­i­cal En­vi­ron­ment of ­Street ­Blocks and Res­i­dent Per­cep­tions of Crime and Dis­or­der,” Jour­nal of En­vi­ron­men­tal Psychol­ ogy, no. 12 (1992): 21–34. Build­ing lay­outs that fea­ture ­off-street con­struc­tion, poor light­ing, over­grown fol­i­age, and poor sight lines have been re­ported to in­crease fears of vic­tim­iza­tion. For more on this, see Bon­nie Fis­cher and Jack L. Nasar, “Fear of Crime in Re­la­tion to Three Ex­te­rior Site Fea­tures: Pros­pect, Ref­uge, and Es­cape,” En­vi­ron­ment and Be­hav­ior, no. 24 (1992): 35–65. 22. Har­ri­son E. Sa­lis­bury, The ­Shook-Up Gen­er­a­tion (New York: ­Harper, 1958). 23. Sa­lis­bury, To Mos­cow and Be­yond: A ­Reporter’s Nar­ra­tive (New York: Harp­ers Broth­ers Pub­lish­ers, 1959), 84–85. 24. For more on the sep­ar­ate apart­ment, see Ste­ven E. Har­ris, “Mov­ing to the Sep­ar­ate Apart­ment: Build­ing, Dis­trib­ut­ing, Fur­nish­ing, and Liv­ing in Urban Hous­ing in So­viet Rus­sia, 1950s–1960s” (PhD diss., Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago, 2003). 25. For a stim­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sion of the anx­iety, op­por­tu­nity, and ex­cite­ment that the Thaw gen­er­ated, see Ste­phen V. Bitt­ner, The Many Lives of ­Khrushchev’s Thaw: Ex­pe­ri­ence and Mem­ory in ­Moscow’s Arbat (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008). 26. Vla­dis­lav Zubok, ­Zhivago’s Chil­dren: The Last Rus­sian In­tel­li­gent­sia (Cam­ bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), 70–84. 27. This point is in­debted to Wal­ter ­Connor’s func­tional inter­pre­ta­tion of So­viet de­vi­ance, de­vel­oped in De­vi­ance in So­viet So­ci­ety, 246–247. 28. On the rel­a­tive suc­cess of the com­mand econ­omy in the ­post-Stalinist 1950s, see G. I. Kha­nin, “The 1950s—The Tri­umph of the So­viet Econ­omy,” ­Europe-Asia Stud­ies, no. 8 (2003): 1187–1212; and ­Philip Han­son, The Rise and Fall of the So­viet Econ­omy: An Eco­nomic His­tory of the USSR from 1945 (New York: Pear­son Long­man, 2003), 48–69. 29. For ex­am­ple, V. A. Koz­lov, ex­plain­ing the or­i­gins of the hoo­li­gan epi­demic in his study of mass pub­lic dis­or­der in the ­post-Stalinist So­viet Union, re­marks: “The ex­plo­sion of crim­i­nal­ity, in­clud­ing hoo­li­gan­ism, . . . co­in­cided with the mass am­nesty of con­demned crim­i­nals after the death of Sta­lin, which had been in­itiated by se­cret po­lice chief Lav­ren­tii Beria.” Al­though ma­li­cious hoo­li­gans were ex­cluded from the March 27, 1953, am­nesty, re­ports of se­ri­ous hoo­li­gan­ism were, al­most im­me­di­ately, ­linked to re­turn­ees and their re­cir­cu­la­ tion back into so­ci­ety. For more in­for­ma­tion, see V. A. Koz­lov, Mas­so­vye bespo­ r­i­adki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve (No­vos­i­birsk, Rus­sia: Si­birs­kii khron­o­ graf, 1999), 185–186. For more on the 1953 am­nesty, see Nanci Adler, Be­yond the Gulag: Be­yond the So­viet ­System (New Bruns­wick, NJ: Trans­ac­tion, 2002), 78–79, 81, 86, 89. For doc­um ­ ents re­lated to the March 1953 am­nesty, see Re­abil­i­tat­siia kak eto bylo: dok­u­menty Pre­zi­diuma TsK KPSS i dru­gie ma­te­ri­ally, mart 1953­-­fevral’ 1956 (Mos­cow: Mezh­du­na­rod­nyi fond de­mok­ra­tiia, 2000). For crime and the

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

218



Notes to page 25

March am­nesty, see Mir­iam ­Dobson’s works ­Khrushchev’s Cold Sum­mer: Gulag Re­turn­ees. Crime, and the Fate of Re­form after Sta­lin (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­ sity Press, 2009); and Mir­iam Dob­son, “Show the Ban­dits No Mercy! Am­nesty, Crim­in ­ al­ity and Pub­lic Re­sponses in 1953,” in The Di­lem­mas of ­De-Stalinization: Nego­tiat­ing Cul­tural and So­cial ­Change in the Khrush­chev Era, ed. Polly Jones (New York: Rout­ledge, 2005); as well as Ste­ven A. ­Barnes, Death and Re­demp­tion: The Gulag and the Shap­ing of So­viet So­ci­ety (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011), 206–207. 30. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 58. Of ­course, this does not mean that they were not com­mit­ting hoo­li­gan­ism. It just means that they were not being con­victed of it. 31. Koz­lov, Mas­so­vye bespor­i­adki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve, 190–191; and Dob­son, ­Khrushchev’s Cold Sum­mer, 39–40. 32. The fact that So­viet sta­tis­tics show that the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­ity of hoo­li­gans (87 per­cent in 1953 and 89 per­cent in 1954) were ­first-time of­fend­ers ­rather than ­ex-convicts sug­gests that am­nes­tied pris­on­ers did not fuel the ­growth of hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions in the 1950s. Koz­lov him­self is ­forced to admit that, in the post-1953 pe­riod: “All the blame for the crime wave was put on am­nes­tied pris­on­ers, al­though . . . a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the most se­ri­ous ­crimes were car­ried out by per­sons with­out a crim­i­nal ­record.” Koz­lov, Mas­ so­vye bespor­i­adki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve, 190–191. 33. Like its eco­nomic out­put data, the crime sta­tis­tics pro­duced by the So­viet state ­should not be seen as en­tirely ac­cu­rate and ob­jec­tive in­di­ca­tors of crim­i­ nal­ity. They are, like all sta­tis­ti­cal data sets on crime, im­per­fect and in­com­plete ­sources that pro­duce im­per­fect and in­com­plete pic­tures of ac­tual “on the ­ground” ac­tiv­ity. So­viet crime sta­tis­tics under­stated real crime rates by ex­clud­ing es­ti­ mates of un­re­ported ­crimes from ­year-end to­tals (a com­mon prob­lem for most na­tional crime sta­tis­tics). In this way, the wide­spread un­der­re­port­ing and non­ re­port­ing of crime at the local level dis­torted the ag­gre­gate data down­ward and de­flated un­ion­wide crime fig­ures. GARF, f. 8131, op. 28, d. 2536, l. 4; and GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 24, l. 2. Nor did the sta­tis­tics re­flect ­changes in the way de­vi­ance was de­fined or cat­e­go­rized. More trou­blingly, So­viet crim­i­nal sta­tis­ tics on hoo­li­gan­ism, be­cause they are based on court­room con­vic­tions, did not in­clude the many hoo­li­gans who were pro­cessed out­side for­mal crim­i­nal jus­tice ve­nues in such “off­shore” in­sti­tu­tions as ­comrades’ ­courts or ­workers’ col­lec­tives (see chap­ter 5). Nor did they count the many peo­ple, es­pe­cially juve­ niles, whose hoo­li­gan­ism was han­dled ad­min­is­tra­tively ­through fines, warn­ings, or com­mu­nity ser­vice as­sign­ments. By fail­ing to ac­count for “off the books pun­ish­ment prac­tices,” ­conviction-based sta­tis­tics draw from a lim­ited sam­ple of the full range of hoo­li­gans and under­state the real level of de­vi­ant ac­tiv­ity, es­pe­cially among youth under age 18. The sta­tis­tics also se­verely ­skewed con­vic­tion rates by count­ing only the worst types of hoo­li­gan­ism and ex­clud­ing ­lesser cat­e­go­ries, es­pe­cially sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism, from their sam­ples (GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 497, ll. 344–347). More­over, the sta­tis­tics se­verely under­stated the total level of hoo­li­gan­ism by ex­clud­ing ad­min­is­tra­tively ar­rested petty hoo­ li­gans from the sta­tis­ti­cal sam­ple.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 25–26



219

34. In the mid-1950s, a com­mis­sion ­headed by USSR Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor R. A. Ru­denko was ­charged with for­mu­lat­ing ideas to halt the rise in ­postStalinist crime and so­cial dis­or­der. The Ru­denko com­mis­sion was com­posed of R. A. Ru­denko (Chair), S. N. Kru­glov, V. V. Zol­o­tuk­hin, V. S. Ri­as­nyi, I. V. Ka­pit­o­nov, E. A. Furt­seva, K. P. Gor­shei­nin, K. F. Lunev, A. N. Shel­e­pin, L. N. ­Solov’ev, and N. V. Po­pova. For frag­men­tary in­for­ma­tion on the work of the com­mit­tee, see A. A. Fur­senko, ed., Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS 1954–1964, vol. 2 (Mos­ cow: Ross­pen, 2006), 114–122, 922; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4029, l. 7; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, l. 253. 35. On Oc­to­ber 25, 1956, the USSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters and the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee ­passed the se­cret de­cree “On Meas­ures for Im­prov­ing the Work of the MVD USSR.” This de­cree was ­chiefly di­rected at the struc­tu­ral de­cen­tral­iza­ tion of po­lice power in the USSR. But, it also ­sought to im­prove the re­cruit­ment and ed­u­ca­tion of the po­lice of­fi­cers, some­thing that was ­achieved, in part, by draft­ing Party mem­bers into the po­lice. See A. V. ­Afanas’ev and Iu. V. Gal­kin, Ros­siis­kaia mi­lit­siia: krat­kaia khro­nika, ­oktiabr’ 1917–2000 (Sar­a­tov, Rus­sia: Sar­a­ tovs­kii iu­rid­i­ches­kii in­sti­tut, 2001), 120–121; A. M. Beda, “Kurs ­pravitel’stva na det­sen­tral­i­zat­siiu ­pravookhranitel’noi sis­temy v 1953–1958 gg.,” in Po­lit­siia i mi­lit­siia Ros­sii: stra­nitsy is­to­rii (Mos­cow: Nauka, 1995), 260–261; Koz­lov, Mas­so­vye bespor­i­adki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve, 204; and ­Louise Shel­ley, Po­lic­ing So­viet So­ci­ety: The Ev­o­lu­tion of State Con­trol (New York: Rout­ledge, 1996), 42. 36. In ­spring of 1955, Khrush­chev or­dered the Mos­cow Party com­mit­tee and the USSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs to in­ten­sify po­lice ­patrols in se­lect areas of Mos­cow dur­ing the eve­ning and night hours. Dur­ing the rest of 1955, po­lice ­patrols were in­ten­sified in cit­ies ­across the So­viet Union. For the step­ping up of ­patrol ac­tiv­ity, see GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 464, ll. 94–97, 134–136; and Koz­lov, Mas­so­vye bespor­i­adki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve, 191–192, 204–205. In June 1954, the Kom­so­mol cen­tral com­mit­tee ­passed the de­cree “On the Strug­gle of Kom­so­mol Or­gan­iza­tions ­against Signs of Hoo­li­gan­ism among the Youth.” As a part of this de­cree, Kom­so­mol vol­un­teers ­patrolled city ­streets look­ing for hoo­li­gans and ­drunks. Raids (reidy) were car­ried out and posts were set up in clubs, parks, and pal­aces of cul­ture to help catch hoo­li­gans. For more on this de­cree, see R. S. Mu­lu­kaev and N. N. Kar­ta­shov, Mi­lit­siia Ros­sii: ­istoriko-pravovoi ­ocherk (Orel, Rus­sia: Gos­u­darst­ven­noe ­izdatel’sko-poligraficheskoe pred­priia­tie Oka, 1995), 172–173. 37. The 1956 RSFSR Petty Hoo­li­gan De­cree, which we shall ex­plore in depth in chap­ter 3, is the most ob­vi­ous ex­am­ple of how cam­paigns and the crea­tion of new hoo­li­gan cat­e­go­ries ­pushed con­vic­tion rates up­ward dur­ing the mid-1950s. By giv­ing the po­lice a new ­open-ended and ­ill-defined cat­e­gory of de­vi­ance that pun­ished even the most minor mis­be­hav­iors as hoo­li­gan, the 1956 petty hoo­li­gan de­cree (not the March 1953 am­nesty) ­created the ­biggest hoo­li­gan boom of the Khrush­chev era. In the first few years of its op­er­a­tion, it pro­duced 1.4 mil­lion new hoo­li­gans an­nu­ally. 38. ­Rather than Gulag down­siz­ing in­creas­ing the num­ber of de­vi­ants on pro­vin­cial city ­streets, it was, as the pros­e­cu­tor of the Khab­a­rovsk re­gion noted, “the strength­en­ing of the ­police’s work in re­la­tion to the strug­gle ­against

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

220



Notes to pages 26–31

hoo­li­gan­ism” that ­caused the con­vic­tion spike that made the hoo­li­gan prob­lem vis­ible in sta­tis­ti­cal terms. GARF,  f. 8131, op. 32, d. 1743, ll. 64, 281. The ­anti-hooligan cam­paign ­boosted the po­lic­ing and pun­ish­ment prac­tices that, as the Dep­uty Chair­man of the USSR Su­preme Court noted in a 1957 re­port, “will cause and has al­ready ­caused, es­pe­cially in re­la­tion to hoo­li­gan cases, an in­crease in the . . . crim­i­nal sta­tis­tics.” GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 24, ll. 10–11. 39. Ibid. 40. N. F. Kuz­net­sova, “Izu­che­nie i pre­du­prezh­de­nie khu­li­ganstva,” in Kri­min­o­lo­giia, ed. A. A. Gert­sen­zon (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1968), 441–442. At the time, Ninel Fed­o­rovna Kuz­net­sova was an in­struc­tor (dot­sent) at Mos­cow State Uni­ver­sity and a pi­o­neer in the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of So­viet crim­i­ nol­ogy in the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod. 41. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 618, ll. 62–63. 42. Kuz­net­sova, “Izu­che­nie i pre­du­prezh­de­nie khu­li­ganstva,” 442. 43. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, l. 84. Va­le­rii Cha­lidze also em­pha­sizes the am­bi­gu­ity of hoo­li­gan­ism in his Ugo­lov­naia Ros­siia (New York: Khro­nika Press, 1977). 44. Joan Neu­ber­ger, Hoo­li­gan­ism: Crime, Cul­ture, and Power in St. Pe­ters­burg, 1900–1914 (Berke­ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1993), 15–22. 45. V. I. Dal’, Tol­kovyi ­slovar’ zhi­vogo ve­lik­o­russ­kogo ia­zyka, vol. 4 (St. Pe­ters­ burg: M. O. Vol’f, 1909), 1243. The third edi­tion of the dic­tion­ary was ­greatly en­larged under the ed­i­tor­ship of the lin­guist Jan Nie­cisław Ig­nacy Bau­douin de Cour­te­nay. 46. Neu­ber­ger, Hoo­li­gan­ism, 130. 47. Many au­thor­ities con­nected hoo­li­gan­ism to the Na­tive ­American ­tribes of North Amer­ica. One So­viet ­writer be­lieved that the term “hoo­li­gan” orig­i­ nally re­ferred to “two North ­American In­dian ­tribes that were mer­ci­lessly ex­ter­mi­nated by the col­o­nists.” The la­bel­ing of En­glish de­vi­ants with this term was meant to under­line their out­sider ­status. “By this word ‘hooligan’ (or ‘apache’),” he ­argued, “they ­wanted to under­line the foreign­ness (chuzhdost’) of peo­ple who be­long to the crim­i­nal world to the rest of so­ci­ety: a so­ci­ety whose cul­ture is di­amet­ri­cally op­posed to the mo­rals and hab­its of the crim­i­nal world.” See M. Isaev, “Su­deb­naia prak­tika po delam o khu­li­ganstve,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 12 (1941): 5. 48. Ugo­lov­nyi ko­deks RSFSR: ­ofitsial’noe iz­da­nie (Mos­cow: Gos­ud ­ arst­ven­noe ­izdatel’stvo so­vets­koe ­zakonodatel’stvo, 1933), 34. 49. A. N. Trai­nin, ed., So­vets­koe ugo­lov­noe pravo: ­chast’ os­o­ben­naia (Mos­cow: ­Izdatel’stvo Mos­kovs­kogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1957), 425–433. 50. B. M. Volin and D. N. Usha­kov, eds., Tol­kovyi ­slovar’ russ­kogo ia­zyka, vol. 4 (Mos­cow: Gos­u­darst­ven­noe ­izdatel’stvo in­nos­tra­nykh i ­natsional’nykh slo­ va­rei, 1940), 1198. 51. M. D. Shar­go­rods­kii and N. A. Bel­i­aev, So­vets­koe ugo­lov­noe pravo: ­chast’ os­o­ben­naia (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1962), 364. 52. For the def­i­ni­tion of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism, see Trai­nin, So­vets­koe ugo­ lov­noe pravo, 432. For the crea­tion of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism as a legal cat­e­gory in the mid-1930s, see Peter H. Sol­o­mon, Jr., So­viet Crim­i­nal Jus­tice under Sta­lin (New York: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), 201–202. For ad­di­tional

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 31–37



221

in­for­ma­tion on the 1935 ­anti-hooligan cam­paign, see ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick, Every­ day Sta­lin­ism: Or­di­nary Life in Ex­traor­di­nary Times (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­ sity Press, 1999), 151–152. 53. I. G. Fil­a­novs­kii and I. I. So­lod­kin, ­Bor’ba s khu­li­ganst­vom (Mos­cow: Go­siu­riz­dat, 1957), 6. For the most ex­haus­tive and ­up-to-date in­for­ma­tion on the issue of pass­port re­stric­tions and re­gime cit­ies in the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod, see Marc Elie, “Les an­ciens dét­e­nus du Gou­lag: lib­ér­at­ ions mas­sives, réin­ser­ tion et ré­ha­bil­i­ta­tion dans ­l’URSS post­stal­i­nienne, 1953–1964” (PhD diss., ­L’École des ­hautes ­études en sci­ences so­ci­ales, 2007), 244–250. Elie has dis­ cov­ered that ­nearly 860,000 con­victed hoo­li­gans were sub­ject to res­i­dence re­stric­tions ­between 1953 and 1957 and for­bid­den to live in re­gime cit­ies. Ibid., 250. 54. A con­fused jur­ist, for ex­am­ple, cau­tioned his col­leagues that: “The term ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism is con­tro­ver­sial (sporen) . . . in re­la­tion to this term we must give an ex­pla­na­tion.” Like­wise, an­other jur­ist re­marked that: “It is nec­es­ sary to make the mean­ing of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism more pre­cise be­cause this def­i­ni­tion opens up a wide space for ar­bi­trary inter­pre­ta­tion.” For their re­marks, see GARF, f. 7523, op. 45a, d. 302, ll. 18, 26. 55. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 62. 56. Trai­nin, So­vets­koe ugo­lov­noe pravo, 426. 57. Com­pli­cat­ing ­hooliganism’s di­ver­sity of crim­i­nal mean­ings was the fact that each re­pub­li­can law code de­fined hoo­li­gan­ism in its own way, mak­ing the legal def­i­ni­tion of de­vi­ance dif­fer­ent ­across many of the re­pub­lics. 58. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45a, d. 302, ll. 18, 26; and GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 62. 59. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 673, ll. 2–4. 60. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 295, ll. 11–12. 61. P. I. Gri­shaev and B. V., eds., Zdrav­o­mys­lov, Vo­prosy os­o­ben­noi ­chasti So­vets­kogo ugo­lov­nogo prava v UK RSFSR 1960 goda: ucheb­noe pos­o­bie (Mos­cow: ­Izdatel’stvo Vse­soiuz­nogo iu­rid­ic­ hes­kogo zaoch­nogo in­sti­tuta, 1962), 173. 62. B. S. Ni­kif­o­rov, ­Nauchno-prakticheskii ko­men­ta­rii ugo­lov­nogo ko­deksa RSFSR (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1964), 438–439. 63. ­George ­Feifer, Jus­tice in Mos­cow (New York: Simon and ­Schuster, 1964), 58. 64. ­Wright ­Miller, Rus­sians as Peo­ple: A ­Unique Por­trait of Mod­ern Rus­sia, Its Land and Peo­ple (New York: E. P. Dut­ton, 1961), 153. 65. “Oberegat’ obsh­chest­ven­nyi po­ri­a­dok,” Iz­ves­tiia, Jan­u­ary 6, 1956, 1. 66. On a wall dis­play en­ti­tled “Shame to ­Drunks and Hoo­li­gans,” pub­lic ac­ti­vists (obsh­chest­ven­niki) in the Khab­a­rovsk re­gion ­placed pic­tures of ­drunks and hoo­li­gans be­neath which they wrote sa­tir­ical com­ments. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5199, l. 145. 67. Ts. ­Solodar’, “Forma i so­der­zha­nie,” ­Iunost’, no. 4 (1956): 110. 68. I. Kos­tiu­kov, “Rob­kie liudi,” Krok­od­ il, no. 21 (1961): 6. 69. I. Shat­u­novs­kii, “Na nashe ­ulitse,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, May 11, 1955, 3. 70. Le­onid Lench, “V raz­nykh iz­mer­e­niiakh,” Krok­o­dil, no. 29 (1961): 2. 71. Krok­o­dil, no. 29 (1961): 2. 72. D. Fede­rov, “V ­Moskve, na ­Bol’shoi Bron­noi,” ­Pravda, No­vem­ber 30, 1956, 6.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

222



Notes to pages 37–41

73. “Oberegat’ obsh­chest­ven­nyi po­ri­a­dok,” Iz­ves­tiia, Jan­u­ary 6, 1956, 1. 74. See, for in­stance, the car­toon in Krok­od­ il, no. 18 (1961): 8. 75. For vis­ual rep­re­sen­ta­tions of such hoo­li­gan fash­ions, see Krok­o­dil, no. 19 (1957): 5; Krok­o­dil, no. 25 (1956): 15; and Krok­od­ il, no. 24 (1956): 9. 76. For ex­am­ples, see ­Iunost’, no. 1 (1956): 64; and Krok­o­dil, no. 30 (1956): 8. 77. For ex­am­ples, see Krok­o­dil, no. 9 (1959): 2; Krok­o­dil, no. 20 (1964): 7; and Krok­o­dil, no. 32 (1961): 5. 78. ­Iunost’, no. 4 (1956): 110. 79. ­Iunost’, no. 2 (1957): 113. 80. D. ­Evgen’ev, “Tik­hii i skrom­nyi ­mal’chik,” Ve­cher­ni­aia ­Moskva, Oc­to­ber 15, 1957, 3. 81. For one ex­am­ple of the tat­tooed hoo­li­gan, see Krok­o­dil, no. 22 (1964): 6. 82. Com­ment­ing on the con­nec­tion ­between Mania and the rural pea­santry, D. S. Bal­daev ­claims in his dic­tion­ary of crim­i­nal slang that “Mania” is a stereo­ typ­i­cal name for a vil­lage girl. See D. S. Bal­daev, V. K. Belko, and I. M. Is­u­pov, ­Slovar’ ­tiuremno-lagerno-blatnogo zhar­gona (Mos­cow: Kraia ­Moskvy, 1992), 135. For sam­ples of rep­re­sen­ta­tions of hoo­li­gans with “Mania” tat­toos, see Krok­o­dil, no. 20 (1959): 8–9; and ­Iunost’, no. 1 (1957): 113. 83. The ar­ti­cle notes sar­cas­ti­cally: “It ap­pears that this ­timely and vi­tally im­por­tant ques­tion is ­driver ­Bulkin’s dear­est con­cern.” K. Yurev, “O tekh, kto me­shaet nam ­otdykhat’,” Trud, June 28, 1956, 4. 84. For sam­ples of typ­ic­ al hoo­li­gan tat­toos, see D. S. Bal­daev, Ta­tui­rovki zak­liu­chen­nykh (St. Pe­ters­burg: Lim­bus Press, 2001), 134; and Iu. P. Du­bi­a­gin and E. A. Te­plits­kii, Krat­kii ­anglo-russkii ­russkii-angliiskii ­slovar’ ugo­lov­nogo zhar­gona (Mos­cow: Terra terra, 1993), 247, 278. 85. Yurev, “O tekh, kto me­shaet nam ­otdykhat’,” 4. 86. Krok­o­dil, no. 34 (1961): 5–6. 87. For bak­lan as a slang for hoo­li­gan, see D. S. Bal­daev, ­Slovar’ blat­nogo vo­rovs­kogo zhar­gona v dvukh to­makh, vol. 1 (Mos­cow: Kom­pana, 1997), 25. The dic­tion­ary also lists the verbs de­rived from bak­lan, such as ­baklashit’/­baklanit’. 88. Krok­o­dil, no. 35 (1956): 11. 89. The po­lice also at­trib­uted de­vi­ant iden­tity based on dress and de­meanor. Not­ing the im­por­tance of ­highly vis­ual fash­ion in de­fin­ing de­vi­ance and at­tract­ ing the gaze of the law, a Brit­ish po­lice­man, vis­it­ing Mos­cow on an ex­change, re­mem­bered that: “Every per­son wear­ing long side­burns or pe­cu­liar cloth­ing is sus­pect. . . . ­String and cord ties and the oc­ca­sional col­ored shirt, win­kle ­picker shoes are com­ing into fash­ion, catch­ing the eye of the wary po­lice­man.” C. V. ­Hearns, Rus­sian As­sign­ment: A Po­lice­man Looks at Crime in the USSR (Lon­don: Rob­ert Hale Lim­ited, 1962), 66. 90. Dob­son, ­Khrushchev’s Cold Sum­mer, 125–128. 91. For the av­tors­kaia pes­nia, see Ra­chel Plat­on ­ ov, “Mar­gi­nal Notes: Av­tors­kaia Pes­nia on the Boun­dar­ies of Cul­ture and Genre” (PhD diss., Har­vard Uni­ver­ sity, 2004); and Inna Sok­o­lova, Av­tors­kaia pes­nia: ot ­fol’klora k poe­zii (Mos­cow: Gos­u­darst­ven­nyi ­kul’turnyi ­tsentr-muzei V. S. Vy­sots­kogo, 2002). For Vy­sots­kii, see Lev An­nins­kii, Tri barda (Mos­cow: ­Tret’ia voina, 1999); and Chris­to­pher La­zar­ski, “Vlad­i­mir Vy­sot­sky and His Cult,” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 1 (1992): 58–71. For more on the bard move­ment, see Ge­rald Stan­ton Smith, Songs to Seven

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 41–46



223

­ trings: Rus­sian Gui­tar ­Poetry and So­viet Mass Song (Bloom­ing­ton: In­di­ana Uni­ver­ S sity Press, 1984). I would like to thank Alan Ba­ren­berg for the Plat­o­nov ci­ta­tion. 92. Ros­s iis­k ii gos­u ­d arst­v en­n yi ark­h iv ­s otsial’no-politicheskoi is­t o­r ii (RGASPI), f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 118. 93. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 29. 94. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 401, l. 5. 95. Na­rod­noe khoz­i­aistvo SSSR v 1956 godu: sta­tis­ti­ches­kii ezh­e­god­nik (Mos­cow: Goss­ta­tiz­dat, 1957), 19. 96. For the 1954 break­down, see GARF, f. 7523, op. 107, d. 124, l. 73. 97. Na­rod­noe khoz­ia­ istvo SSSR v 1963 godu: sta­tis­ti­ches­kii ezh­e­god­nik (Mos­cow: Goss­ta­tiz­dat, 1964), 28. 98. For a case of fre­quent em­ployee petty hoo­li­gan­ism threat­en­ing pro­duc­ tion out­put in the coal in­dus­try, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 645, l. 34. 99. The hoo­li­gan­ism in some ­workers’ dor­mi­to­ries be­came so se­vere that, in one ex­treme case, a tem­po­rary po­lice post had to be es­tab­lished in the Red Cor­ner of a dor­mi­tory. (The Red Cor­ner was an area of a dorm spe­cif­i­cally set aside for ed­u­ca­tional and cul­tural en­rich­ment. It was ­ideally ­stocked with books, pe­ri­od­i­cals, mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, and other ac­cou­tre­ments of ­selfimprovement and cul­tured lei­sure.) For more in­for­ma­tion on this case, see ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 8, d. 674, l. 19. In an­other case, stu­dents who were ­alarmed over the crime in their dor­mi­tory ­formed a guard to ­patrol the dorm dur­ing the day­time hours. That the stu­dents had to miss ­classes to be on duty was wear­ily noted by Kom­so­mol or­gans. For more in­for­ma­tion, see ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 46, d. 168, l. 2. 100. In 1958, men ac­counted for 45 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. Na­rod­noe khoz­i­aistvo SSSR v 1958: sta­tis­ti­ches­kii ezh­e­god­nik (Mos­cow: Gos­u­darst­ven­noe sta­tis­ti­ches­koe ­izdatel’stvo, 1959), 8. In 1963, for ex­am­ple, 97.6 per­cent of the hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions in the USSR and 97.5 per­cent in the RSFSR were men. For the USSR data, see GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 149. For the RSFSR data, see GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 28. 101. ­Slovar’ sov­re­men­nogo russ­kogo li­ter­a­tur­nogo ia­zyka, vol.  17 (Mos­cow: Nauka, 1965), 525. 102. A 1963 RSFSR re­port typ­i­cally found that only 2.5 per­cent of the ­republic’s hoo­li­gan con­victs were women. The avail­able data shows a ­slight in­ crease in the ­amount of fe­male hoo­li­gan­ism in the ­post-Khrushchev pe­riod, in­ creas­ing from 2.1 per­cent in 1965 and 3.6 per­cent in 1967 to 4.2 per­cent in 1970 and 1973. Nev­er­the­less, de­spite these in­creases, hoo­li­gan­ism re­mained an over­ whelm­ingly male crime. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 149. 103. For the case of a fe­male hoo­li­gan who car­ried on a run­ning war with her neigh­bor, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 28, d. 4256, ll. 27–60. 104. For an il­lus­tra­tion of a fe­male hoo­li­gan spik­ing her ­neighbor’s soup, see Krok­o­dil, no. 14 (1955): 5. 105. Du­bi­a­gin and Te­plits­kii, Krat­kii ­anglo-russkii ­russkii-angliiskii ­slovar’ ugo­ lov­nogo zhar­gona, 158. 106. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 29. A 1963 USSR Su­preme Court age break­ down, for ex­am­ple, ­showed that the 30 to 39 age group (31 per­cent) had 10 per­ cent more hoo­li­gans than ei­ther the 20 to 24 age group (21.6 per­cent) or the 25 to

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

224



Notes to pages 48–51

29 age group (21.5 per­cent). The rest of the age dis­tri­bu­tion was 40 to 49 (8.4 per­cent); 18 to 19 (8.1 per­cent); 14 to 17 (5.8 per­cent); 50 to 59 (3.2 per­cent); and 60 and over (0.4 per­cent). A joint ­United Na­tions and Rus­sian study of the age dis­tri­bu­tion of Mos­cow hoo­li­gans ­between 1988 to 1993 like­wise found that the larg­est age co­hort in the sta­tis­ti­cal sam­ple was the 30 to 39 age group, with 45 per­cent of con­victed hoo­li­gans ­within this age range in 1993. Ma­rina Alex­ey­eva and An­gela Pa­trig­nani, eds., Crime and Crime Pre­ven­tion in Mos­cow (Rome: ­United Na­tions Pub­li­ca­tion, 1994), 64. 107. A 1962 RSFSR Su­preme Court re­port found that 61.7 per­cent of the hoo­li­gans con­victed in the RSFSR in 1961 were over 25 years of age. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 401, l. 5. In 1963, the RSFSR re­ported that most con­victed hoo­li­ gans fell into the fol­low­ing age cat­e­go­ries: 30 to 39 (32.7 per­cent); 25 to 29 (20.9 per­cent); 20 to 24 (20.3 per­cent); 40 to 49 (8.7 per­cent); 18 to 19 (7.3 per­cent); 17 and ­younger (6.4 per­cent); 50 to 59 (3.3 per­cent); and 60 and over (0.4 per­cent). GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 28. 108. See, for in­stance, the age break­down for So­viet men ­listed in Na­rod­noe khoz­i­aistvo SSSR v 1959 godu: sta­tis­ti­ches­kii ezh­e­god­nik (Mos­cow: Goss­ta­tiz­dat, 1960), 12. 109. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 58. Un­for­tu­nately, no data ex­ists on the prev­a­lence of learn­ing dis­abil­ities or cog­ni­tive hand­i­caps among the con­vict group. Men­tal ­health data is also anec­do­tal. Only one re­port that I have found noted a high level of men­tal ill­ness in the hoo­li­gan pop­u­la­tion and sug­gested it as a pos­sible rea­son for de­vi­ance. See GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, l. 111. Many court case ­records held in ­Moscow’s Cen­tral Mu­nic­i­pal ­Archive (TsMAM) in­di­ cate that those ar­rested for hoo­li­gan­ism under­went psychi­at­ric eval­u­a­tion. How­ever, most were found com­pe­tent to be put on trial and held re­spon­sible for their ac­tiv­i­ties. For such cases, see TsMAM, 1918, op. 2, d. 320, ll. 1–5; and ibid., f. 1078, op. 1, d. 75, ll. 1–2. 110. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 410, l. 6. A 1962 let­ter from the Kom­so­mol Cen­tral Com­mit­tee ­claimed that 25 per­cent of con­victed hoo­li­gans had only an ele­men­tary ed­u­ca­tion (nachal’noe ob­ra­zov­a­nie). For this let­ter, see ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 67, d. 9, l. 143. 111. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 155. 112. Kuz­net­sova, “Izu­che­nie i pre­du­prezh­de­nie khu­li­ganstva,” 442. Yet even ­though they were more ­likely to have com­pleted their sec­on­dary school­ing, the text as­serted that the poor ed­uc­ a­tional level of their par­ents often had a neg­a­tive im­pact on the mo­ral­ity of ­younger hoo­li­gans. 113. Na­rod­noe khoz­ia­ istvo RSFSR v 1959 godu: sta­tis­ti­ches­kii ezh­e­god­nik (Mos­ cow: Goss­ta­tiz­dat, 1960), 47–49. 114. Ibid. 115. The ed­u­ca­tional achieve­ment of the or­di­nary So­viet patrol­man was re­ported in a draft of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee de­cree “On Se­ri­ous Short­com­ings in the Work of the USSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs and Meas­ures to Elim­in ­ ate Them” in Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964, vol. 2, 233–234. 116. For the data from 1962 and 1964, see GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 163. For the 1966 data, see N. F. Kuz­net­sova, “Izu­che­nie i pre­du­prezh­de­nie khu­li­ ganstva,” in Kri­min­o­lo­giia, ed. A. A. Gert­sen­zon (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­ic­ hes­kaia li­ter­a­ tura, 1968), 441.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 51–54



225

117. Ibid. 118. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5681, l. 65. For pop­u­la­tion sta­tis­tics on the RSFSR rel­a­tive to the USSR, see the se­ries Na­rod­noe khoz­ia­ istvo SSSR: sta­tis­ti­ches­kii ezh­e­god­nik (Mos­cow: Goss­ta­tiz­dat, 1958–1965). 119. Neil B. Weiss­man, “Rural Crime in Tsar­ist Rus­sia: The Ques­tion of Hoo­li­gan­ism, 1905–1914,” ­Slavic Re­view, no. 2 (1978): 228–240. 120. A 1960 RSFSR Su­preme Court re­port, for ex­am­ple, ­showed that 90 per­cent of the hoo­li­gans con­victed in the RSFSR were drunk at the time of their ar­rest. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 363, l. 12. An­other re­port found that 82.7 per­cent of those con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism through­out the USSR were drunk when they com­mit­ted their crime. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 34. In 1962, the per­cent­age of hoo­li­gans in the USSR drunk at the time of their ar­rest ­dropped ­slightly to 79.7 per­cent. Ibid., l. 158. 121. Ibid., l. 111. When drunk­en­ness among hoo­li­gan con­victs is dis­ag­gre­ gated ac­cord­ing to re­pub­lic, how­ever, some vari­a­tion be­comes ap­par­ent in the link ­between al­co­hol and the com­mis­sion of de­vi­ant acts. One would ex­pect the ­Slavic, Bal­tic, and Cau­ca­sian re­pub­lics to show ­higher lev­els of hoo­li­gan drunk­en­ ness than the ­majority-Muslim re­pub­lics of Cen­tral Asia, re­flect­ing the dif­fer­ent cul­tural at­ti­tudes and/or re­li­gious re­stric­tions that re­volved ­around al­co­hol con­sump­tion in these dif­fer­ent So­viet sub­pop­u­la­tions. How­ever, the avail­able ev­i­dence does not sup­port this gen­er­al­iza­tion. Cer­tainly, the RSFSR ­showed a high per­cent­age of hoo­li­gans who were drunk dur­ing the com­mis­sion of their crime (86.6 per­cent), but some re­pub­lics, in­clud­ing some in Is­lamic Cen­tral Asia, ­showed sim­i­lar or ­higher ­amounts: Es­ton­ian SSR (95.3 per­cent), Mol­da­vian SSR (85.4 per­cent), Lith­u­a­nian SSR (84.4 per­cent), Kir­giz SSR (82 per­cent), Bel­o­ rus­sian SSR (78 per­cent), Ukrai­nian SSR (75.3 per­cent), and Ka­zakh SSR (75.5 per­cent). While other Cen­tral Asian and Cau­ca­sian re­pub­lics ­showed ­sharply lower cor­re­la­tions ­between drink­ing and de­vi­ance: Uzbek SSR (55.1 per­cent), Azer­bai­jani SSR (53.2 per­cent), Tad­zhik SSR (45.3 per­cent), and Ar­me­nian SSR (41.3 per­cent). Per­haps the drunk­en­ness var­ies ac­cord­ing to the size of East ­Slavic di­as­pora in the re­pub­li­can pop­u­la­tion with re­pub­lics with high ­amounts of Rus­sian ­in-migration show­ing both ­higher ­amounts of al­co­hol con­sump­tion and ­drunken hoo­li­gan­ism. Again, how­ever, the lack of data on the na­tional and eth­nic com­po­si­tion of hoo­li­gan of­fend­ers makes such a gen­er­al­iza­tion im­pos­ sible to prove. All this data is taken from the year 1964. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, 228, l. 115. Even ­higher per­cent­ages of drunk­en­ness were re­ported among hoo­li­ gan con­victs in other union re­pub­lics dur­ing other years. It was re­ported, for in­stance, that 92 per­cent and 97 per­cent of the hoo­li­gans con­victed in the ­Ukraine and Lat­via in 1958 were drunk when they com­mit­ted their crime. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 34, ll. 12–13. 122. GARF, f. 9415, op.1, d. 16, l. 61. 123. A ­people’s judge in Vel­i­kie Luki, for ex­am­ple, dis­missed a petty hoo­li­ gan case be­cause the of­fender “ac­knowl­edged his guilt, was a mem­ber of the Com­mu­nist Party and had ar­rived [in town] for his stud­ies.” V. Pi­liu­gin, “Pri­men­e­nie ukaza ob ot­vetst­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo su­dami Ve­lik­o­ luks­koi ­oblasti,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 6 (1957): 56. 124. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 410, l. 7. In 1963, 7.8 per­cent of those com­mit­ting hoo­li­gan­ism in the USSR were Kom­so­mol mem­bers (in the Bel­o­rus­sian SSR,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

226



Notes to pages 54–62

the per­cent­age was 15.5). For this in­for­ma­tion, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, l. 113. 125. On av­er­age ­between 1962 to 1973, Kom­so­mol mem­bers com­prised 16.6 per­cent of the hoo­li­gans con­victed in the 14 to 19 age range, with Kom­so­mol mem­bers com­mit­ting hoo­li­gan­ism more than any other crime. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 157. 126. Krok­o­dil, no. 31 (1956): 2. 127. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 401, l. 6. 128. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 28. For the 70/30 urban/rural split in the late 1960s and early 1970s, see GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 228, l. 160.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Chap­ter 2.  Pri­vate Mat­ters or Pub­lic ­Crimes? 1. Krok­o­dil, no. 24 (1956): 9. 2. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 72. 3. For the text of the cir­cu­lar, see So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 22 (1935): back page. See also ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick, Every­day Sta­lin­ism: Or­di­nary Life in Ex­traor­di­nary Times, So­viet Rus­sia in the 1930s (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1999), 48. 4. One jus­tice ­openly ques­tioned: “What is do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism? What does it mean? Where in our crim­i­nal leg­is­la­tion can you find the term ‘do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism’?” GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 122, l. 68. 5. Ibid., l. 54. 6. Ibid. 7. For the April 29, 1939, de­cree of the Ple­num of the USSR Su­preme Court en­ti­tled “On Ju­di­cial Prac­tice for Hoo­li­gan Cases,” see GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 618, l. 229. The ital­ics are mine. 8. For the Au­gust 22, 1940, de­cree of the Pre­sid­ium of the USSR Su­preme So­viet en­ti­tled “On Crim­i­nal Re­spon­sibil­ity for Petty Theft at Work­places and for Hoo­li­gan­ism,” see Ved­o­mosti Verk­hov­nogo So­veta SSSR, no. 28 (1940): 2. 9. In par­tic­u­lar, the de­cree was drawn up to close a loop­hole that some wily work­ers had used to evade the dra­co­nian June 26, 1940, USSR Su­preme So­viet de­cree that for­bade work­ers from leav­ing their work ­places with­out per­mis­ sion. To en­gi­neer their dis­mis­sal de­spite such re­stric­tions and free up their abil­ ity to enter new em­ploy­ment, these work­ers com­mit­ted minor dis­ci­pli­nary infrac­tions at work that were de­signed to get them fired from un­wanted jobs but were not se­ri­ous ­enough to get them con­victed of ­crimes or ­brought be­fore the court. ­Through its 1940 de­cree, the USSR Su­preme So­viet no­tice­ably in­creased the costs of this un­or­tho­dox strat­egy for switch­ing jobs. ­Rather than fur­nish­ing a round­about path to al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment, mis­be­hav­ior in work­places and on the fac­tory floor would be han­dled as crim­i­nal hoo­li­gan­ism and would earn the un­lucky of­fender one year in ­prison. Peter H. Sol­o­mon, Jr., So­viet Crim­i­nal Jus­tice under Sta­lin (New York: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), 301–334. 10. Paul Ha­gen­loh, ­Stalin’s Po­lice: Pub­lic Order and Mass Re­pres­sion in the USSR, 1926–1941 (Bal­ti­more: Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), 317. 11. For more on this point, see Jo­chen Hell­beck, “Fash­ion­ing the Sta­lin­ist Soul: The Diary of Ste­pan Pod­lub­nyi, 1931–9,” in Sta­lin­ism: New Di­rec­tions, ed. ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick (New York: Rout­ledge, 2000), 94.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 62–70



227

12. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 618, ll. 227–228. The ital­ics are mine. 13. GARF, f. 9474, op. 33, d. 2089, ll. 2–15. 14. On April 21, 1954, ­Ivan’s con­vic­tion was over­turned. GARF, f. 9474, op. 33, d. 875, ll. 1–14. The story of the ac­cused hoo­li­gan, Vlad­i­mir, is sim­i­lar. Vlad­i­mir drank “system­at­ic­ ally,” beat his wife, and threat­ened to kill her. While at his ­parents’ house in Feb­ru­ary 1962, Vlad­i­mir re­peat­edly ­punched and ­kicked his wife after she re­fused to give him some money for vodka. Dur­ing a drink­ing party with some ­friends in his apart­ment, he tried to stran­gle his wife and threat­ened to kill her after she ­pleaded with him to stop drink­ing. After this in­ci­dent, ­Vladimir’s wife went to the po­lice and filed a com­plaint. Less than a month later, Vlad­i­mir at­tacked his wife with a razor dur­ing a fam­ily ar­gu­ment and ­caused her “se­ri­ous” ­wounds. He was con­victed of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism and sen­tenced to five years im­pris­on­ment. How­ever, two weeks later, ­Vladimir’s con­vic­tion was over­turned and the case of ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism ­brought ­against him was ­dropped. The court jus­tified its ac­tion by stat­ing that ­Vladimir’s ac­tions ­lacked “the ele­ments of the given crime be­cause the scan­dals were based on fam­ily re­la­tion­ships. He com­ mit­ted no act that vi­ol­ ated pub­lic order or that ­touched on the inter­ests of the other res­i­dents of the house or any other peo­ple.” For ­Vladimir’s case, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 788, l. 123. 15. GARF, f. 9474, op. 33, d. 259, l. 1. 16. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 139, l. 252. 17. The case is cited in K. Cher­ni­avs­kii and V. ­Kleiner, “Usilit’ ­bor’bu s khu­li­ ganst­vom,” Sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’, no. 4 (1952): 36–37. 18. Al­though the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism oc­curred grad­u­ally dur­ing the Khrush­chev pe­riod, the first shots ­against the pub­lic par­a­digm of hoo­li­gan­ ism were ­launched in the pe­riod of High Sta­lin­ism. As in many other areas, the seeds of ­Khrushchev-era ­change were ­planted at the end of the Sta­lin era and strad­dled the 1953 rift ­between the end of Sta­lin­ism and the emer­gence of the ­post-Stalinist pe­riod. The forum for the first open as­saults ­against the pub­lic par­a­digm was in the spe­cial­ized legal pe­ri­od­i­cals, es­pe­cially in the jour­nal Sot­sia­ lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’. 19. Cher­ni­avs­kii and ­Kleiner, “Usilit’ ­bor’bu s khu­li­ganst­vom,” 37. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 38. A local pros­e­cu­tor sim­il­ arly ended his ar­ti­cle in Sot­sia­lis­ti­che­sk­ aia ­zakonnost’ by ex­press­ing the hope that “the Ple­num of the USSR Su­preme Court will in the near­est fu­ture give the ­courts a di­rec­tive on how to han­dle hoo­li­gan cases.” Ga­blin, “Usilit’ ­bor’bu s khu­li­ganst­vom,” Sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’, no. 8 (1952): 36–38. 22. At the Su­preme ­Court’s March 20, 1953, Ple­num, A. A. Volin made a re­port on ju­di­cial prac­tice and pro­posed an amend­ment to the 1939 di­rec­tives on hoo­li­gan­ism that the jus­tices ac­cepted unan­i­mously with­out com­ment or qual­ifi­ca­tion. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 180, ll. 6–7; and GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 176, l. 128. 23. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 618, ll. 227–228. The ital­ics are mine. 24. Ibid. 25. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 295, ll. 11–12.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

228



Notes to pages 71–75

26. I. M. Sa­dov­ni­kov, “Ne­kot­o­rye vo­prosy ot­vetst­ven­nosti za khu­li­ganstvo,” So­vets­koe gos­ud­ arstvo i pravo, no. 2 (1957): 119. 27. I. I. So­lod­kin and I. G. Fil­a­novs­kii, “Os­nov­nye vo­prosy ­bor’by s khu­li­ ganst­vom,” So­vets­koe gos­u­darstvo i prava, no. 3 (1956): 108; and Sa­dov­ni­kov, “Ne­kot­o­rye vo­prosy ot­vetst­ven­nosti za khu­li­ganstvo,” 119. 28. They ap­plauded the USSR Su­preme ­Court’s March 1953 de­cree as being “more cor­rect,” and also “more ­closely cor­re­spond[ing] to the ac­tual prac­tice of local ­courts,” which were try­ing cases of inter­per­sonal con­flict as hoo­li­gan­ism in in­creas­ing num­bers in the 1950s. V. V. Tru­fa­nov, “Ne­kot­o­rye vo­prosy ugo­lov­ noi ot­vetst­ven­nosti za khu­li­ganstvo,” Uche­nye za­pi­ski Vse­soiuz­nogo iu­rid­i­ches­kogo zaoch­nogo in­sti­tuta, no. 7 (1959): 135. 29. I. Kru­kovs­kii, “K chemu vedet ot­sutst­vie chet­kogo opred­e­le­niia pon­i­a­tiia khu­li­ganstva,” Sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’, no. 5 (1955): 50. 30. The pub­lic par­a­digm en­shrined in the ­now-emasculated 1939 USSR Su­preme Court de­cree, a lec­turer at the Sar­a­tov Legal In­sti­tute com­plained, “no ­longer cor­re­sponds to the ideas of the ma­jor­ity of So­viet legal theo­rists and to the ideas put for­ward in the legal text­books.” I. S. Noi, “O pon­ia­ ­tii sos­tava khu­li­ganstva,” Uche­nye za­pi­ski Sar­a­tovs­kogo iu­rid­i­ches­kogo in­sti­tuta imeni D. I. Kurs­kogo, no. 5 (1957): 185. 31. P. I. Gri­shaev, Pre­stu­ple­niia pro­tiv por­i­adka up­rav­le­niia, obsh­chest­ven­noi bez­o­pas­nosti i obsh­chest­ven­nogo por­i­adka (Mos­cow: Mini­sterstvo Vyss­hego obraz­o­ va­niia SSSR, 1957), 71. 32. GARF, f. 9474, op. 33, d. 897, ll. 5–6, 9. 33. Gri­shaev, Pre­stu­ple­niia pro­tiv por­i­adka up­rav­le­niia, obsh­chest­ven­noi bez­o­ pas­nosti i obsh­chest­ven­nogo por­i­adka, 64. 34. Ekat­e­rina Ge­ras­i­mova, “Pub­lic Pri­vacy in the So­viet Com­mu­nal Apart­ ment,” in So­cial­ist ­Spaces: Sites of Every­day Life in the East­ern Bloc, ed. David Crow­ley and Susan E. Reid (Ox­ford, UK: Berg, 2002), 207–230. For stim­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sions of the pub­lic/pri­vate di­chot­omy in the ­post-WWII pe­riod, see Ste­phen Lo­vell, The ­Shadow of War: Rus­sia and the USSR, 1941 to the ­Present (Mal­den, MA: ­Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 138–175; and Lewis H. Sie­gel­baum, “Map­ping Pri­vate ­Spheres in the So­viet Con­text,” in Bor­ders of So­cial­ism, 1–21. 35. P. Skom­o­rok­hov, “Dela chast­nogo ob­vi­ne­niia,” Li­ter­a­tur­naia ga­zeta, Au­gust 11, 1955, 2. 36. Sem. ­Narin’iani, “Za zak­ry­tymi ­dver’mi,” Krok­o­dil, no. 14 (1955): 5. 37. M. Isaev, “Su­deb­naia prak­tika po delam o khu­li­ganstve,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 13 (1941): 6. 38. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 897, l. 3. 39. For more on the move to the sep­ar­ate apart­ment, see Ste­ven E. Har­ris, “Mov­ing to the Sep­ar­ate Apart­ment: Build­ing, Dis­trib­ut­ing, Fur­nish­ing, and Liv­ing in Urban Hous­ing in So­viet Rus­sia, 1950s–1960s” (PhD diss., Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago, 2003) and Mark B. Smith, Prop­erty of Com­mu­nists: The Urban Hous­ing Cam­paign from Sta­lin to Khrush­chev (De­Kalb: North­ern Il­li­nois Uni­ver­sity Press, 2010). 40. For the pri­vacy prob­lems of the sep­ar­ate apart­ment, see Ste­ven E. Har­ris, “I Know All the Se­crets of My Neigh­bors: The Quest for Pri­vacy in the Era of the Sep­ar­ate Apart­ment,” in Bor­ders of So­cial­ism, 171–190. For the stan­dard­ized

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 75–81



229

na­ture of sep­ar­ate apart­ment life, see Susan E. Reid, “The Mean­ing of Home: ‘The Only Bit of the World You Can Have to ­Yourself’” in Bor­ders of So­cial­ism, 145–170. 41. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 122, l. 58. The ital­ics are mine. 42. I. G. Fil­a­novs­kii and I. I. So­lod­kin, ­Bor’ba s khu­li­ganst­vom (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1957), 6–7. 43. Gri­shaev, Pre­stu­ple­niia pro­tiv por­i­adka up­rav­le­niia, obsh­chest­ven­noi bez­o­ pas­nosti i obsh­chest­ven­nogo por­i­adka, 64. 44. N. F. Kuz­net­sova, Ugo­lov­naia ­otvetstvennost’ za nar­u­she­niia obsh­chest­ven­ nogo por­i­adka (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1963), 3. 45. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4032, l. 20. 46. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4031, ll. 85–86. 47. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 347, l. 61. 48. ­Narin’iani, “Za zak­ry­tymi ­dver’mi,” 5. 49. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 345, l. 124. 50. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 348, l. 61. 51. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 347, l. 59. Lack of sleep was a com­mon theme in let­ters to au­thor­ity and was one of the most hated dis­rup­tions that the do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan ­caused his vic­tims. Equat­ing the dis­rup­tion of his sleep cycle with the hoo­li­gan dis­rup­tion of so­cial life, a ­worker from the Sverd­lovsk re­gion com­ plained to the Su­preme So­viet about his ­neighbor’s dis­rup­tive late night drink­ing bouts: “They [the po­lice] say it is not hoo­li­gan­ism, but I think that it is hoo­li­gan­ism not to let a per­son sleep at night.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 350, l. 121. 52. GARF, f. 9492, op. 1, d. 1951, l. 77. 53. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 340, l. 60. 54. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 343, l. 148. 55. Al­ex­an­der Prok­ho­rov, “So­viet Fam­ily Melo­dra­mas of the 1940s and 1950s: From Wait for Me to The ­Cranes Are Fly­ing,” in Im­i­ta­tions of Life: Two Cen­tu­ries of Melo­drama in Rus­sia, ed. ­Louise McRey­nolds and Joan Neu­ber­ger (Dur­ham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 2002), 208–231. 56. For more on melo­drama in the Rus­sian con­text, see McRey­nolds and Neu­ber­ger, Im­i­ta­tions of Life, 4–5. 57. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 395, l. 38. 58. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, l. 6. 59. The 1955 draft de­cree of the Pre­sid­ium of the USSR Su­preme So­viet ­stated: “We must in­clude in pub­lic ­places, for which crim­i­nal re­spon­sibil­ity for hoo­li­gan­ism is es­tab­lished, ­multi-family apart­ments and dor­mi­to­ries.” GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4029, l. 7. 60. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 295, ll. 11–12. 61. P. I. Gri­shaev and B. V., eds., Zdrav­o­mys­lov, Vo­prosy os­o­ben­noi ­chasti So­vets­kogo ugo­lov­nogo prava v UK RSFSR 1960 goda: ucheb­noe pos­o­bie (Mos­cow: ­Izdatel’stvo Vse­soiuz­nogo iu­rid­i­ches­kogo zaoch­nogo in­sti­tuta, 1962), 173. 62. E. A. An­dru­senko, “Po­ni­a­tie khu­li­ganstva i mery ­bor’by s nim” (Can­di­ date diss., Tad­zhi­ki­stan State Uni­ver­sity, 1963), 9. 63. Kom­men­ta­rii k Ugo­lov­nomu Ko­deksu RSFSR 1960 g. (Le­nin­grad: ­Izdatel’stvo Le­nin­grads­kogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1962), 350. The sec­tion on hoo­li­gan­ism was

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

230



Notes to pages 81–89

writ­ten by N. P. Gra­bovs­kaia, a mem­ber of the Crim­i­nal Law De­part­ment of Le­nin­grad State Uni­ver­sity. 64. “Otvetstvennost’ za khu­li­ganstvo: kom­men­ta­rii k novym ko­dek­sam,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 3 (1961): 18. 65. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, ll. 84–85, 176–177. For later su­deb­nye prak­tiki see Sbor­nik post­anov­le­nii Plen­uma Verk­hov­nogo Suda SSSR, 1924–1986 (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1987), 709; and Sbor­nik post­anov­le­nii Plen­uma Verk­hov­ nogo Suda RSFSR, 1961–1983 (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1984), 338. 66. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 462, ll. 21, 34. 67. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, l. 491. 68. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 72. 69. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5659, l. 30. 70. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, l. 491. 71. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 981, l. 48. 72. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 977, l. 153. 73. GARF, A-358, op. 26, d. 297, l. 2; and GARF, A-577, op. 1, d. 118, l. 123. 74. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, ll. 85–86. 75. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 788, l. 3. 76. “Is­kor­e­nim khu­li­gany!” Ag­i­ta­tor, no. 14 (1961): 22. 77. GARF, A-358, op. 26, d. 297, l. 2; and GARF, A-577, op. 1, d. 118, l. 123. 78. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 514, l. 28. 79. A. A. Gert­sen­zon, Ugo­lov­noe pravo i sot­sio­lo­giia: pro­blemy sot­sio­lo­gii ugo­lov­ nogo prava i ugo­lov­noi pol­i­tiki (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1970), 92. 80. GARF, f. 9474, op. 32, d. 21, l. 22. 81. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, l. 85. 82. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 348, l. 53. 83. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4031, l. 84. 84. Krok­o­dil, no. 20 (1956): 13. 85. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 340, l. 40. 86. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 34. 87. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, l. 235. 88. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 340, l. 60. 89. ­Ugolovno-Protsessual’nyi ko­deks RSFSR (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­ tura, 1962), 16–17. 90. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, l. 21. 91. In clos­ing, he de­manded of the au­thor­ities that “you must study this [issue of pun­ish­ing do­mes­tic hoo­li­gans ap­pro­pri­ately].” Ibid. 92. Bunia, “O ­bor’be s khu­li­ganst­vom,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 6 (1957): 54. 93. E. ­Koval’chuk, “Ugo­lov­naia ­otvetstvennost’ za khu­li­ganstvo,” Ot­vety na vo­prosy tru­di­ash­chikh­sia, no. 66 (1956): 46. ­Koval’chuk was a sen­ior con­sul­tant for the man­age­ment of ju­di­cial or­gans at the RSFSR Min­is­try of Jus­tice. 94. Bunia, “O ­bor’be s khu­li­ganst­vom,” 54. 95. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, ll. 67–68. 96. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 564, l. 219. 97. See for ex­am­ple, Iu. Kor­ni­lov, “Eto i vashe delo, Tov­a­rishch Pro­kuror!” Trud, No­vem­ber 13, 1955, 1; “Eto ne lich­noe delo,” Iz­ves­tiia, Au­gust 12, 1955, 2; and N. Mon­chads­kaia and N. Syrt­sov, “Eto ne lich­noe delo,” Iz­ves­tiia, July 23,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 89–92



231

1955, 2. On com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity dur­ing this pe­riod, see Deb­o­rah ­Field’s works, “Ir­rec­on­cil­able Dif­fer­ences: Di­vorce and Con­cep­tions of Pri­vate Life in the Khrush­chev Era,” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 4 (1998): 600–603; and Deb­o­rah Field, Pri­vate Life and Com­mu­nist Mo­ral­ity in ­Khrushchev’s Rus­sia (New York: Peter Lang, 2007). 98. In the Kal­i­nin­grad and Sverd­lovsk re­gions, 33 per­cent of con­victed hoo­li­gans per­formed their hoo­li­gan acts ­against their fam­i­lies; in the Kos­troma re­gion, 35 per­cent; in the Iv­an ­ ovo re­gion, 38 per­cent; in the Mur­mansk re­gion, 35 per­cent; in the No­vos­i­birsk re­gion, over 40 per­cent; and in the ­Gor’kii re­gion, 40 per­cent. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 410, l. 7. 99. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 498, l. 34. 100. GARF, f. 9474, op. 32, d. 21, l. 22. 101. Gert­sen­zon, Ugo­lov­noe pravo i sot­sio­lo­giia, 92. 102. An­drei Amal­rik, In­vol­un­tary Jour­ney to Si­be­ria, trans. Manya Ha­rari and Max Hay­ward (New York: Har­court Brace Jo­van­o­vich, 1970), 74. 103. Iurii Dom­brovs­kii, “Za­pi­ski mel­kogo khu­li­gana,” in Iurii Dom­brovs­kii: roman, ­pis’ma, esse (Yekat­er­ in­burg, Rus­sia: U fac­to­riia, 2000), 636. 104. For more on the pri­vat­iza­tion of So­viet life, see Vlad­i­mir Shla­pen­tokh, Pub­lic and Pri­vate Life of the So­viet Peo­ple: Chang­ing Val­ues in ­Post-Stalin Rus­sia (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989). 105. RGANI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 635, l. 81. 106. RGANI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 637, l. 27. 107. For more on the in­tru­sive­ness of the Khrush­chev era, see Oleg Khark­hor­ din, The Col­lec­tive and the In­di­vid­ual in Rus­sia: A Study of Prac­tices (Berke­ley, CA: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1999), 279–313. 108. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 344, l. 192. 109. For in­for­ma­tion on the ­comrades’ ­courts and dru­zhina, see chap­ter 4. 110. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 343, l. 104. 111. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 350, l. 124. A court in the Sak­halin re­gion, for ex­am­ple, wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet ad­vo­cat­ing “the ac­tive inter­fer­ ence of so­ci­ety in the per­sonal life of each of its mem­bers.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 347, l. 124. In ad­di­tion, an Ar­me­nian ped­a­gogue urged the USSR Su­preme So­viet to pro­ject state power into per­sonal re­la­tions, pro­claim­ing that: “It is nec­es­sary in every pos­sible way to en­cour­age the ­courts to in­volve them­selves in ­fights ­between rel­a­tives, ­friends, neigh­bors, and even ­spouses.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 345, l. 28. 112. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 350, l. 124. A sin­gle ­mother in the Kras­no­dar re­gion, for ex­am­ple, en­cour­aged the Su­preme So­viet in a let­ter to “go into the per­sonal is­sues of every­day life (lich­nyi byt) more ­thoroughly.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 343, l. 213. 113. K. ­Bel’skii, “Stran­nye ­l’goty,” Iz­ves­tiia, No­vem­ber 12, 1965, 3. Dur­ing this pe­riod, there were four lev­els of labor col­o­nies: gen­eral, en­forced, ­strict, and spe­cial re­gime. Gen­eral re­gime col­o­nies were the most len­ient and were com­posed of ­first-time petty of­fend­ers and all women not clas­sified as “es­pe­ cially dan­ger­ous re­cid­i­vists.” ­George ­Feifer, Jus­tice in Mos­cow (New York: Simon and ­Schuster, 1964), 351. 114. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 346, l. 33.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

232



Notes to pages 92–99

115. GARF, f. 9492, op. 1, d. 1895, l. 146. 116. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 345, l. 17. 117. GARF, f. 9492, op. 1, d. 1895, l. 146. 118. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 142, l. 123. 119. Ibid., l. 32. 120. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 347, l. 126. 121. GARF, A-577, op. 1, d. 116, l. 138. 122. On “sur­vi­vals of cap­i­tal­ism,” see Wal­ter D. Con­nor, De­vi­ance in So­viet So­ci­ety: Crime, De­lin­quency and Al­co­hol­ism (New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1972), 50–51, 168–169. 123. For a dis­cus­sion of this de­cree, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 382, ll. 31–32, 327. Radio hoo­li­gan­ism is also ­touched on in GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6976, l. 54. For more on radio hoo­li­gan­ism, see Va­le­rii Cha­lidze, Ugo­lov­naia Ros­siia (New York: Khro­nika Press, 1977), 149–156.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Chap­ter 3.  Mak­ing Hoo­li­gan­ism on a Mass Scale 1. Ste­phen Bitt­ner, The Many Lives of ­Khrushchev’s Thaw: Ex­pe­ri­ence and Mem­ ory in ­Moscow’s Arbat (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008). 2. Vla­dis­lav Zubok, ­Zhivago’s Chil­dren: The Last Rus­sian In­tel­li­gent­sia (Cam­ bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), 88–192; and Peter J. ­Schmelz, Such Free­dom, If Only Mu­si­cal: Un­of­fi­cial So­viet Music dur­ing the Thaw (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009). 3. Bitt­ner, The Many Lives of ­Khrushchev’s Thaw. 4. For the im­por­tance of com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity dur­ing the Khrush­chev era, see Deb­o­rah A. ­Fields, Pri­vate Life and Com­mu­nist Mo­ral­ity in ­Khrushchev’s Rus­sia (New York: Peter Lang, 2007). 5. Pia Koi­vu­nen, “The 1957 Mos­cow Youth Fes­ti­val: Prop­a­gat­ing a New, Peace­ful Image of the So­viet Union,” in So­viet State and So­ci­ety under Ni­kita Khrush­chev, ed. Mel­a­nie Ilic and Jer­emy Smith (New York: Rout­ledge, 2009), 45–65. For the anx­ie­ties gen­er­ated by the fes­ti­val, see Kris­tin ­Roth-Ey, “‘Loose ­Girls’ on the Loose? Sex, Prop­a­ganda and the 1957 Youth Fes­ti­val,” in Women in the Khrush­chev Era, ed. Mel­a­nie Ilic, Susan Reid, and Lynne Att­wood (New York: Pal­grave Mac­mil­lan, 2004), 75–95. 6. See the Oc­to­ber 10, 1956, draft de­cree of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and the USSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters in Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964, ed. A. A. Fur­senko, vol. 2 (Mos­cow: Ross­pen, 2006), 459. 7. “Ob ot­vetst­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” ­Pravda, De­cem­ber 21, 1956, 5. 8. Peter H. Sol­o­mon, Jr., So­viet Crim­in ­ al Jus­tice under Sta­lin (New York: Cam­ bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), 224–225; and David R. ­Shearer, Po­lic­ing ­Stalin’s So­cial­ism: Re­pres­sion and So­cial Order in the So­viet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), 227–237. 9. All of the Union Re­pub­lics, save one, ­passed their own petty hoo­li­gan leg­is­la­tion ­between De­cem­ber 1956 and Jan­u­ary 1957. The last re­pub­lic, the Turk­men SSR, ­passed petty hoo­li­gan leg­is­la­tion in May 1957.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 100–101



233

10. The res­i­dents of ­Leningrad’s ­Frunze dis­trict com­plained that: “The po­lice often do not press ­charges ­against such tri­fles or if they do then the Pro­cu­racy drops them be­cause of the in­sig­nif­i­cance of the crime. But we think such triv­ial ac­tions as strik­ing a ­stranger or curs­ing are hoo­li­gan­ism.” GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4597, l. 30. A No­vem­ber 1955 re­port of the USSR Pro­cu­racy noted that hoo­li­gan cases “only go to court when the hoo­li­gan­ism takes an ex­treme (krup­nye) and cyn­i­cal form. Until this [point], a per­son com­mit­ting hoo­li­gan­ism is fre­quently not pun­ished.” GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 3338, ll. 92–93. 11. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, ll. 8, 20. 12. The USSR Pro­cu­racy ­argued, for in­stance, that: “The main rea­son for the ­growth of crime is that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple go un­pun­ished. An at­mos­phere has been ­created in which crim­i­nals . . . [be­lieve that] they will be able to avoid pun­ish­ment.” Creat­ing petty hoo­li­gan­ism would re­store con­sis­t­ ency to the prac­tice of pun­ish­ment. It would en­cour­age ­judges not to dis­miss minor of­fend­ers or give them “off the books” pun­ish­ments that had lit­tle power to deter wrong­doers. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 3338, ll. 92–93. 13. N. F. Kuz­net­sova, Os­vo­bozh­de­nie ot ugo­lov­noi ot­vetst­ven­nosti s per­eda­chei dela v tov­a­rish­ches­kikh su­dakh (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1964), 10. 14. For the RSFSR Su­preme ­Court’s re­mark, see GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 522, l. 1. For ­Kruglov’s state­ment, see GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 186, l. 139. 15. Hoo­l i­g an­i sm, ac­c ord­i ng to legal ex­p erts, was a “pri­m ary ­s chool (nachal’naia ­shkola) for the com­mis­sion of more se­ri­ous ­crimes.” Every ­fourth crim­i­nal re­cid­i­vist con­victed of mur­der, rape, or rob­bery was ear­lier con­victed of hoo­li­gan­ism. For hoo­li­gan­ism as a gate­way crime, see N. F. Kuz­net­sova, “Izu­che­nie i pre­du­prezh­de­nie khu­li­ganstva,” in Kri­min­o­lo­giia, ed. A. A. Gert­sen­ zon (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1968), 439. 16. On the rel­a­tive suc­cess of the com­mand econ­omy and ris­ing liv­ing stan­dards in the ­post-Stalinist 1950s, see G. I. Kha­nin, “The 1950s—The Tri­umph of the So­viet Econ­omy,” ­Europe-Asia Stud­ies, no. 8 (2003): 1187–1212; and ­Philip Han­son, The Rise and Fall of the So­viet Econ­omy: An Eco­nomic His­tory of the USSR from 1945 (New York: ­Pearson-Longman, 2003), 48–69. 17. For more on ­b roken win­d ows po­l ic­ing, see ­George L. Kell­ing and Cathe­rine M. Coles, Fix­ing ­Broken Win­dows: Re­stor­ing Order and Re­duc­ing Crime in Our Com­mu­nities (New York: Free Press, 1998); and Ralph E. Tay­lor, Break­ing Away from ­Broken Win­dows: Bal­ti­more and the Na­tion­wide Fight ­against Crime, Grime, Fear, and De­cline (Boul­der, CO: West­view Press, 2000), 3–26. 18. At a June 1957 meet­ing, the head of the USSR Pro­cu­racy, R. A. Ru­denko, ­called the de­cree “hu­mane” be­cause it “serves as a warn­ing, does not have se­ri­ous con­se­quences, al­lows the per­son to keep his job, and gives him the pos­sibil­ity to re­form him­self.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 32, l. 7. 19. The Jan­u­ary 1955 de­cree of the USSR Su­preme So­viet “On Crim­i­nal Re­spon­sibil­ity for Petty Theft of State and Pub­lic Prop­erty” re­duced pun­ish­ments to six to ­twelve ­months of cor­rec­tive labor or dep­ri­va­tion of free­dom for three ­months. Re­peat of­fend­ers would be ­jailed for one to two years. For inter­pre­ta­ tions of the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree as a form of lib­er­al­iza­tion, see Har­old Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR: An Inter­pre­ta­tion of So­viet Law (Cam­bridge, MA: Har­vard

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

234



Notes to pages 101–103

Uni­ver­sity Press, 1963), 73; and Peter H. Sol­om ­ on, Jr., So­viet Crim­i­nol­o­gists and Crim­i­nal Pol­icy: Spe­cial­ists in ­Policy-Making (New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1978), 81. 20. In Au­gust 1940, the USSR Su­preme So­viet, seek­ing to re­duce hoo­li­gan­ ism in the work­place, im­posed a ­one-year sen­tence on sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism. This meas­ure ­kicked off a cam­paign that en­snared a broad range of So­viet cit­iz­ ens both in­side and out­side the work­place and ­marked a major es­ca­la­tion in the fight ­against hoo­li­gan­ism. It also ­marked a small rev­o­lu­tion in how hoo­li­gan cases were pro­c essed. An­t ic­ip ­ at­i ng ­campaign-related case in­c reases, the ­People’s Com­mis­sar­iat of Jus­tice of the USSR (Nar­ko­miust SSSR), the ­People’s Com­mis­sar­iat of Inter­nal Af­fairs of the USSR (NKVD SSSR), and the USSR Pro­cu­racy is­sued a joint order that sim­plified and ­speeded up the pro­cess­ing of cases of sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism. The Nar­ko­miust, NKVD, and Pro­cu­racy order ended the ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion and trial of sim­ple hoo­li­gan cases. In lieu of for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the po­lice would cut pro­cess­ing times by draw­ing up a short re­port on the in­ci­dent. The trial, based on this ­pared-down proto­col, would be dras­ti­cally tele­scoped ­through tight dead­lin­ing. To speed up turn­ over times, hoo­li­gan cases would be re­quired to be heard by ­judges ­within 48 hours. Spe­cial fa­cil­ities were set aside for tele­scoped ­trials in spe­cial court cham­bers (de­zhur­nye su­deb­nye kam­ery pri na­rod­nykh su­dakh). Out of the 1940 de­cree, a ­fast-track ­system of hoo­li­gan pro­cess­ing was born aimed at ­cutting ­hooligan-associated work­loads and pun­ish­ing hoo­li­gans “on the fly.” For more on the 1940 cam­paign, see Sol­o­mon, So­viet Crim­i­nal Jus­tice under Sta­lin, 311, 328. For a de­scrip­tion, see Paul Ha­gen­loh, ­Stalin’s Po­lice: Pub­lic Order and Mass Re­pres­sion in the USSR, 1926–1941 (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Woo­drow Wil­son Cen­ter Press, 2009), 318–319. 21. For the grow­ing inter­est in re­viv­ing the 1940 ­system among mid-1950s legal work­ers, see RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 36, ll. 31–32; GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4013, l. 184; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4032, ll. 6, 47. 22. E. ­Koval’chuk, “Ugo­lov­naia ­otvetstvennost’ za khu­li­ganstvo,” Ot­vety na vo­prosy tru­di­ash­chikh­sia, no. 66 (1956): 44. 23. On De­cem­ber 7, 1956 (less than two weeks be­fore the RSFSR petty hoo­li­ gan de­cree was re­leased), an of­fic­ ial at the USSR Min­is­try of ­Foreign Af­fairs (MID) sent Cen­tral Com­mit­tee Sec­re­tary P. N. Pospe­lov a note on a Sep­tem­ber 1956 ar­ti­cle about the So­viet Union pub­lished in the Ob­server en­ti­tled “Spec­u­la­ tors and Hoo­li­gans.” By con­cen­trat­ing on such neg­at­ ive phe­nom­ena as sti­li­agi and “cases of pub­lic, un­pun­ished hoo­li­gan­ism,” the ar­ti­cle, the MID of­fi­cial ­argued, gave a bad im­pres­sion of the USSR. He de­manded that some­thing be done about de­vi­ancy in the ­run-up to the ar­ri­val of the ­foreign del­e­ga­tions for the 1957 World Youth Fes­ti­val. The of­fi­cial ­closed his note by sug­gest­ing that the govern­ment “turn its at­ten­tion . . . to pos­sible meas­ures that would stop sim­i­lar phe­nom­ena in the fu­ture.” RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 179, l. 87. 24. “Ob ot­vetst­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” 5. 25. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, l. 68. 26. To in­form the pub­lic of the new de­cree, a num­ber of dif­fer­ent media were used. A day after its prom­ul­ga­tion, local and re­pub­li­can news­papers ­printed the de­cree with ac­com­pa­ny­ing ex­plan­a­tory ma­te­rial and local radio

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 103–106



235

aired in­for­ma­tional pro­grams on it. The ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tees of local So­viets ­printed the de­cree on pos­ters that they hung in en­ter­prises, in­sti­tu­tions, and other pub­lic ­places. At fac­to­ries, clubs, and other or­gan­iza­tions, po­lice, court, and Pro­cu­racy work­ers held lec­tures, dis­cus­sions, and con­ver­sa­tions to ac­quaint the pub­lic with the de­cree and ex­plain its sig­nif­i­cance. In the first 11 days after the pas­sage of the de­cree, law en­force­ment per­sonal in Mol­o­tov ­oblast’ held 3,908 lec­tures and con­ver­sa­tions with the pub­lic en­com­pass­ing more than 86,000 peo­ple. GARF, f. 9415, op. 1, d. 16, l. 21. 27. Krok­o­dil, no. 4 (1957): 15; ­Iunost’, no. 1 (1957): 113; and ­Iunost’, no. 2 (1957): 113. 28. Krok­o­dil, no. 30 (1956): 8. The ­cartoon’s cap­tion reads: “The last hoo­li­gan will be shown today in the zoo. No ad­mis­sion for chil­dren under six­teen.” 29. In­itial re­ports ­showed that only 30 per­cent of ar­res­tees were age 25 or less (only 5–6 per­cent were ­between the ages of 14–18). For this age break­down, see RGANI, f. 13, op. 1, d. 558, l. 23. ­Around 70 per­cent of the petty hoo­li­gans ar­rested in 1957 were re­ported to be work­ers. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 645, l. 57. Of the petty hoo­li­gans tried in the first half of 1966, 70 per­cent were work­ers, 75 per­cent were over the age of 25, and 75 per­cent had an ed­u­ca­tion up to the 7th class level. The over­whelm­ing ma­jor­ity of petty hoo­li­gans were drunk when they com­mit­ted hoo­li­gan­ism. For ex­am­ple, 95 per­cent of those ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism in the RSFSR dur­ing 1966 were drunk when they en­gaged in de­vi­ant be­hav­ior. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 498, l. 4. 30. In Sta­lino, the ma­jor­ity of petty hoo­li­gans (659 out of 806) who were ar­rested in the be­gin­ning of 1957 were de­tained for curs­ing. Of the 1,403 petty hoo­li­gans ar­rested in Lat­via dur­ing the first few ­months of the ­decree’s op­er­a­ tion, more than 30 per­cent (552) were de­tained for “using foul lan­guage in a pub­lic place.” GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 645, l. 53. 31. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 7. 32. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 96. 33. The bad neigh­b or got fif­t een days and the col­l ec­t ive ­f armer five. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, ll. 38, 106. For the case of the of­fice ­worker, see E. ­Koval’chuk, “Iz prak­tiki prim­e­ne­niia ukaza ob ot­vets­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 3 (1957): 63. 34. Ex­pres­sions and ­phrases ­foreign to the ideo­log­i­cal lex­i­con of of­fi­cial So­viet ­speech were re­read as forms of ­anti-social de­vi­ancy pun­ish­able under the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree. For ex­am­ple, a woman was ­turned into a petty hoo­li­ gan not for curs­ing in pub­lic, but for using a ­vaguely re­li­gious ex­pres­sion while on the phone with the dep­uty chair of the local ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 462, ll. 62–63. In an­other ex­am­ple of inter­pret­ing an alien ex­pres­sion as hoo­li­gan ­speech, a man was ar­rested under the petty hoo­li­gan de­cree for ad­dress­ing one of the work­ers at the local hous­ing ­agency as “Mrs. (mis­sis).” GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 645, l. 30. 35. A 43­-­year-old Mus­co­vite was given fif­teen days for ex­pos­ing him­self in a store. For this case, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 99. 36. For the snow­ball and drink­ing buddy cases, see ibid., ll. 98, 323. 37. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 126. 38. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5199, l. 18.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

236



Notes to pages 106–110

39. ­Koval’chuk, “Iz prak­tiki prim­en ­ e­niia ukaza ob ot­vets­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” 63. 40. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, l. 93. The inter­pre­tive ­agency and au­thor­ity that the de­cree in­stilled in po­lice per­son­nel gave them the abil­ity to trans­form any in­sult­ing ex­pres­sion or ges­ture, even an im­a­gined one, into an of­fense pun­ish­able under the re­laxed stan­dards of petty hoo­li­gan­ism. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 337. Be­hav­iors that did not vi­o­late pub­lic order but were ­frowned on or were un­or­tho­dox were re­inter­preted ­through the lens of petty hoo­li­gan­ism into im­pris­on­ing of­fenses. A man, who lay on a couch in the lobby and de­clared he was an ­American spy after he was re­fused a room at the Don­bass Hotel re­ceived a ­ten-day sen­tence. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 59. 41. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, l. 94; and GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 469, l. 105. 42. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 59. 43. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 469, ll. 106–107. 44. For the April 19, 1961, de­cree “O do­pol­ne­nii ukaza Pre­zi­diuma Verk­hov­ nogo So­veta RSFSR ot 19 de­ka­bria 1956 ‘ob ot­vetst­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ ganstvo,’” see Ved­o­mosti Verk­hov­nogo So­veta RSFSR, no. 16 (1961): 248. 45. A. Ra­dont­sev, “Pravil’no ­primeniat’ ukaz ob ot­vetst­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 20 (1964): 29. 46. ­Koval’cuk, “Iz prak­tiki prim­e­ne­niia ukaza ob ot­vets­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” 63. 47. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 107. 48. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5290, ll. 80–82. 49. Ibid., l. 246. 50. Ibid., l. 70. 51. See, for in­stance, TsMAM, f. 901, op. 1, d. 637, l. 74; GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5290, ll. 80–82; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, ll. 45, 113, 335. 52. Iurii Dom­brovs­kii, “Za­pi­ski mel­kogo khu­li­gana,” in Iurii Dom­brovs­kii: roman, ­pis’ma, esse (Yekat­e­rin­burg, Rus­sia: U fac­to­riia, 2000), 636. 53. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 617, l. 137. 54. Re­cid­i­vism was a press­ing prob­lem in the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram. Tech­ ni­cally, de­vi­ants could only be ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism three times in one year. Of­fenses past the ­three-strike-per-year limit would be tried as sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism and merit crim­i­nal ­rather than ad­min­is­tra­tive pun­ish­ment. How­ ever, the three ­strikes rule was often dif­fi­cult to en­force and many petty hoo­li­ gans be­came ­chronic re­peat of­fend­ers who were con­stantly cir­cu­lated ­through the petty hoo­li­gan ­system. 55. GARF, A-385, op. 26, d. 111, ll. 20–21; and RGANI, f. 13, op. 1, d. 677, l. 58. 56. GARF, A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 58. 57. V. Titov and Z. ­Iur’ev, “100 ­interv’iu s khu­lig­a­nami,” Krok­o­dil, no. 34 (1961): 5. 58. For in­for­ma­tion on the pro­por­tion of for­mer petty hoo­li­gans in the sam­ple of con­victs for crim­i­nal hoo­li­gan­ism, see Kuz­net­sova, “Izu­che­nie i pre­du­prezh­de­nie khu­li­ganstva,” 441. 59. A key lob­by­ist for dif­fer­en­tiat­ing de­vi­ancy, USSR Min­is­ter of Jus­tice K. P. Gor­she­nin, noted at a July 1954 meet­ing: “There are var­i­ous types of hoo­li­ gan­ism. There are cases when they bring to re­spon­sibil­ity a ­law-abiding per­son

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 111–112



237

who while in a ­drunken state ­causes a ­ruckus. But there is an­other type of hoo­li­ gan­ism: When a per­son in­spires fear in the res­i­dents of some set­tle­ment. We must dis­tin­guish ­between such ­things. [These less se­ri­ous of­fend­ers] must an­swer for the ac­tions they have com­mit­ted, but not to the same de­gree as ma­li­cious hoo­li­gans.” At an Oc­to­ber 1954 meet­ing, Gor­she­nin con­tin­ued his cam­paign to dif­fer­en­tiate de­vi­ancy: “Hoo­li­gan­ism is a dis­gust­ing form of crime that is alarm­ing our cit­i­zenry. But there are var­i­ous types of hoo­li­gan­ism. In one case, a hoo­li­gan with a knife ter­rorizes his whole neigh­bor­hood. We must ­really pun­ish this per­son and force him to feel re­spon­sibil­ity be­fore so­ci­ety. There are also cases in which a per­son, even a fam­ily man, ­drinks too much and com­mits hoo­li­gan ac­tions in a ­drunken state. It is im­pos­sible to for­give him, but it is also im­pos­sible to place him on the same ­docket with the hoo­li­gan who ter­rorizes the pop­u­la­tion.” For the July 1954 re­marks, see GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 18, l. 17. For the Oc­to­ber 1954 re­marks, see GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 19, l. 32. 60. GARF A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 6. 61. See Proto­col #46b for the Pre­sid­ium ses­sion of Oc­to­ber 20, 1956, in Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964, ed. A. A. Fur­senko, vol. 1 (Mos­cow: Ross­pen, 2004), 172. 62. ­Judges had con­stant dif­fi­cul­ties under­stand­ing the prac­ti­cal dif­fer­ence ­between petty and sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism. One of the jus­tices de­clared at the July 1958 Ple­num of the RSFSR Su­preme Court: “The USSR Su­preme Court does not give us any con­crete sug­ges­tions on how to dif­fer­en­tiate petty hoo­li­gan­ism from hoo­li­gan­ism . . . and it’s very hard to do this.” The Ukrai­nian Su­preme Court re­quested that a rul­ing be is­sued that would make “a ­clear-cut dis­tinc­tion ­between petty and sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism,” ar­guing that “in prac­tice it is dif­fi­cult to es­tab­lish this bor­der.” See GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 295, l. 2; and GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 618, l. 97. 63. G. ­Mendel’son and Iv. Tka­chevs­kii, “Otvetstvennost’ za mel­koe khu­li­ ganstvo,” Sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’, no. 11 (1957): 57. Con­vic­tions for sim­ple hoo­li­gan­ism in the USSR fell from 30,160 in 1956 to 19,965 in 1957. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, ll. 1, 5; and GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 61, l. 7. 64. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 469, ll. 106–107; and ­Mendel’son and Tka­chevs­kii, “Otvetstvennost’ za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” 56. 65. G. Er­e­menko, “Iz prak­tiki rass­mo­tre­niia mat­e­ri­a­lov o mel­kom khu­li­ ganstve,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 1 (1957): 57. 66. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 498, l. 38. 67. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 410, l. 22. 68. For in­stance, phys­i­cal as­sault (iz­bie­nie) ac­counted for 374 of the 1,403 cases of petty hoo­li­gan­ism in Riga in 1957. In Sta­lino, the in­flic­tion of knife ­wounds ac­counted for 102 of the 806 petty hoo­li­gan cases stud­ied in the same year. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 645, l. 53. How­ever, the de­cree also ­served as the basis for crim­i­nal­iz­ing triv­ial forms of as­sault and child­hood rough­hous­ing. In the ­Tiumen’ re­gion, it ­served as the basis for sen­tenc­ing a 16­-­year-old boy to fif­teen days for throw­ing snow­balls. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 323. 69. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 645, l. 54. The case of an un­em­ployed man who com­mit­ted “system­atic hoo­li­gan­ism” in his apart­ment il­lus­trates the se­rial mis­use of the petty hoo­li­gan cat­e­gory to cover up ­crimes and the mount­ing

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

238



Notes to pages 112–115

es­ca­la­tion this ­prompted in the ­criminal’s be­hav­ior. On his first en­coun­ter with the po­lice, the man was ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism after he “started an ar­gu­ment, burnt his ­wife’s pos­ses­sions, and de­stroyed her pass­port.” Less than three ­months later, the same man was de­tained for fif­teen days for petty hoo­li­ gan­ism be­cause “he broke the ­dishes, ­chased his fam­ily from the apart­ment and threat­ened a po­lice of­fi­cer with an axe.” Less than a month later, the same man was ar­rested again for petty hoo­li­gan­ism for eight days. Then, again less than a month later, the po­lice sent the man to a ­comrades’ court after he ­showed up at his ­wife’s work­place, began to beat her, and “broke her head open with a lump of as­phalt.” The ­comrades’ court did not dis­cuss the man’s be­hav­ior. Two ­months later, the po­lice ar­rested him again for beat­ing his wife. How­ever, this time the judge fi­nally de­cided to throw out the petty hoo­li­gan case and bring the man to crim­i­nal re­spon­sibil­ity and he was given two years for ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 410, ll. 22–23. 70. GARF, f. 7523, op. 107, d. 27, ll. 18–19. 71. “Prak­tika prim­e­ne­niia uka­zov ob ot­vetst­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ ganstvo,” So­vets­koe gos­u­darstvo i pravo, no. 10 (1958): 39. 72. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, l. 58. 73. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 38; and GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 457, l. 35. 74. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5290, ll. 80–82. 75. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 59. 76. Ibid., l. 58. 77. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 341. 78. For the ar­rest of the men­tally ill as petty hoo­li­gans, see Er­e­menko, “Iz prak­tiki rass­mo­tre­niia mat­e­ri­a­lov o mel­kom khu­li­ganstve,” 58. An­other ar­ti­cle con­firmed that po­lice, in some cases, de­livered to the judge vi­o­la­tors “whose men­tal stabil­ity was doubt­ful.” S. Bor­od ­ in, “K vo­prosu o me­rakh ad­min­is­tra­tiv­nogo voz­deist­viia, nal­a­gae­mykh na­rod­nymi su­dami,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 11 (1958): 28. A RSFSR Pro­cu­racy re­port noted many cases of sec­on­dary ­school stu­dents, age 14 to 16, being ar­rested for petty hoo­li­ gan­ism de­spite the fact that those under age 16 le­gally could not be sub­jected to com­pul­sory phys­i­cal labor and de­spite the fact that these young­sters were in­car­cer­ated with adult of­fend­ers who fre­quently ex­er­cised a bad in­flu­ence on them. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 41. For the case of a man in the Altai re­gion who was ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism after steal­ing two cars from the kol­khoz gar­age, see GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 498, l. 36. 79. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5095, l. 158. The fre­quency of friv­o­lous and ground­less con­vic­tions re­sulted in ­around 10 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases being ­thrown out by the ­courts. See GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5093, l. 197; and GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, l. 88. The USSR Su­preme Court re­ported in 1957 that the lower ­courts threw out 61,237 ground­less cases un­ion­wide. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 644, l. 59. 80. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, l. 83. 81. A. Ru­bi­chev, “Za vse­mer­noe uk­rep­le­nie sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­koi za­kon­nosti v ra­bote sudov i or­ga­nov ius­tit­sii,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 1 (1957): 10. 82. Er­e­menko, “Iz prak­tiki rass­mo­tre­niia mat­e­ri­a­lov o mel­kom khu­li­ganstve,” 57. For the ­Procuracy’s at­tempt to as­sert con­trol over the petty hoo­li­gan pro­gram,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 115–117



239

see GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, ll. 27, 30, 32, 37–38. See also the dif­fer­ing opin­ions on pros­e­cu­to­rial over­sight in I. Sa­pozh­ni­kov and L. Kozak, “Prak­tika prim­e­ne­niia ukaza ob ot­vets­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” Sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’, no. 3 (1957): 23; and ­Koval’chuk, “Iz prak­tiki prim­e­ne­niia ukaza ob ot­vets­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” 64. 83. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, l. 58. 84. In the Mos­cow re­gion city of Push­kino, less than 10 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases were tried ­within the re­quired ­one-day pe­riod. In areas of the Kal­i­nin­grad re­gion, only 25 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gans were ­turned over ­within the ­t wenty-four hour tar­g et. In parts of the Stav­r o­p ol re­g ion, more than 50 per­cent of all petty hoo­li­gan cases were sent to the ­courts after a ­three-day delay. RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 292, l. 58; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 161. Per­son­nel short­ages and infra­struc­ture con­straints fre­quently at­ten­u­ated case pro­cess­ing. Ill­ness, busi­ness trips (ko­man­di­rovki), and prior trial ob­li­ga­tions ­robbed the ­system of ­judges who were on hand to try petty hoo­li­gan cases ­within the ­twenty-four hour pe­riod and de­layed case turn­overs. Lim­ited floor space in de­ten­tion cen­ters often ­forced lo­cal­ities to delay and even post­pone cases to re­lieve over­crowd­ing and ­create room for fu­ture de­tai­nees. The iso­la­tion of some de­ten­tion cen­ters from the near­est court, the lack of trans­por­ta­tion, and the need to wait for po­lice es­corts to be­come avail­able kept some petty hoo­li­ gans from get­ting to ­courts ­within the ­twenty-four hour pe­riod and ­boosted the num­ber of late cases. In the Le­nin­grad re­gion, these fac­tors alone ­rolled 35 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases over the ­twenty-four hour dead­line. Ibid., l. 122. 85. Com­pos­ing com­pre­hen­sible case ma­te­ri­als at times over­whelmed the lin­guis­tic com­pe­tence of ­ill-educated po­lice­men. Local pros­e­cu­tors com­plained that “fre­quently the po­lice care­lessly and in­cor­rectly com­pose in­ci­dent re­ports and case ma­te­ri­als on petty hoo­li­gan­ism that are in­com­pre­hen­sible, un­gram­ mat­i­cal, and do not al­ways con­firm to re­al­ity.” Like am­bi­gu­ity, un­in­tel­li­gible writ­ing made it dif­fi­cult for ­judges and pros­e­cu­tors to use case ma­te­ri­als, pass sen­tence, and over­rule er­rors. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 112. 86. One es­sen­tial piece of case in­for­ma­tion some­times miss­ing from case re­ports was names. For ex­am­ple, the names of wit­nesses were often omit­ted or only the first names of the wit­nesses were ­listed. Ibid. Some­times, the names were given in full, but the case re­port ­lacked the ­proper ac­com­pa­ny­ing sig­na­ tures. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, ll. 126–127. For ex­am­ple, a beat cop wrote up a petty hoo­li­gan case re­port that no­body, not even the ar­rest­ing of­fi­cer him­ self, ­signed and in which only the ­witnesses’ first names were given. Yet that re­port be­came the basis on which the ac­cused was con­victed. Ra­dont­sev, “Pravil’no ­primeniat’ ukaz ob ot­vetst­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” 30. 87. GARF, f. 9474, op. 32, d. 645, l. 34. 88. Sa­pozh­ni­kov and Kozak, “Prak­tika prim­e­ne­niia ukaza ob ot­vets­ven­ nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ganstvo,” 20. 89. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 110. 90. In Ka­luga, three peo­ple were ar­rested on the basis of an anon­y­mous proto­col that was sent to the po­lice. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 897, l. 12. 91. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6670, l. 62. 92. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 149, l. 56.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

240



Notes to pages 117–120

93. Dom­brovs­kii, “Za­pi­ski mel­kogo khu­li­gana,” 624. 94. Ibid., 625. 95. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5290, l. 80. A Pro­cu­racy of­fi­cial noted: “Even when the ac­cused de­nies his guilt there has not been a sin­gle case in which the judge has ­checked the cor­rect­ness of what is writ­ten in that case re­port.” Ra­dont­sev, “Pravil’no ­primeniat’ ukaz ob ot­vetst­ven­nosti za mel­koe khu­li­ ganstvo,” 30. 96. When it be­came ap­par­ent that the name of the per­son who was de­livered to the ­prison did not match with the ar­rest de­cree, the judge sim­ply ­crossed out the old name and re­placed it with the new (and pre­sum­ably) right name. Ibid. 97. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 110. 98. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 13. In ­Moscow’s So­viet, Lenin, and Le­nin­ grad dis­tricts, the local ­prison would not ac­cept those con­victed of petty hoo­li­ gan­ism for less than ten days. Pris­ons cited high turn­over and lim­ited area as only some of the rea­sons for turn­ing away petty hoo­li­gans. ­Prison ad­min­is­tra­tors ­argued that the ex­tremely short ­prison stays to which most hoo­li­gans were sen­tenced, when cou­pled with the ­time-consuming ­prison entry and reg­is­tra­tion pro­cess, made micro­stays im­prac­ti­cal. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 112. 99. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 26. 100. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 112. 101. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5290, l. 80. Dou­bling up on bunks may also have been due to a lack of bed­ding ma­te­ri­als, a short­age that re­quired many petty hoo­li­gans ­across the coun­try to sleep on plank beds or to bring their own bed­ding with them. For more on this, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 26. 102. Dom­brovs­kii, “Za­pi­ski mel­kogo khu­li­gana,” 628. 103. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 26. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid., l. 43. 106. RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 232, l. 59. 107. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 15. 108. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 3. 109. Ibid., ll. 32, 40, 112. In ­Prison no. 1 in Vor­on ­ ezh, adult and juve­nile ar­res­tees were held to­gether. In the Sar­a­tov re­gion, ar­res­tees were held to­gether with the gen­eral con­vict pop­u­la­tion. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 15. 110. RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 232, l. 59; GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 13; and GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 514, l. 4. Petty ­hooligans’ ac­cess to out­side ­stores and food­stuffs (through their ­travel to ­off-prison work­sites as well as ­through the pack­ages they were al­lowed to re­ceive from rel­a­tives) made them val­ua­ ble ­prison trad­ing part­ners and ­back-door sup­pli­ers of cov­eted il­licit com­mod­ities such as al­co­hol. Their mo­bil­ity also made petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees vital com­mu­ ni­ca­tion links for fer­ry­ing in­for­ma­tion ­between crim­i­nals in the pris­ons and their rel­a­tives and crim­i­nal col­leagues in the out­side world. 111. Far from model pris­on­ers, de­tai­nees ­served as ve­hi­cles for the pen­e­tra­ tion of ­prison space and as in­stru­ments of con­ta­gion. Their re­fu­sal to work and the lim­ited rules of en­gage­ment gov­ern­ing their treat­ment made them mod­els of re­sis­tance to au­thor­ity whom ­guards and war­dens had lit­tle means to dis­ci­ pline. In ad­di­tion, their pro­pen­sity to re­turn from under­super­vised work de­tails

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 120–124



241

drunk made them con­stant ­sources of inter­nal dis­or­der. Dep­uty Chair­man of the USSR Su­preme Court V. V. Ku­li­kov noted, for ex­am­ple, that petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees “ex­er­cise a cor­rupt­ing in­flu­ence on the other pris­on­ers.” GARF, f. 9474, op. 32, d. 21, l. 89. 112. ­Drafts show that early ver­sions of the de­cree fea­tured a ­slightly ­higher ­thirty-day sen­tence. See GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, ll. 8, 20. 113. On the re­forg­ing rhet­o­ric of the 1930s, see Kat­e­rina Clark, “Lit­tle He­roes and Big Deeds: Lit­er­a­ture Re­sponds to the First ­Five-Year Plan,” in Cul­tural Rev­o­lu­tion in Rus­sia, 1928–1931, ed. ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick (Bloom­ing­ton: In­di­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1978). 114. Such a sen­ti­ment is il­lus­trated by a Krok­o­dil car­toon in which two women com­ment as the po­lice lead a petty hoo­li­gan det­ainee away: “Maybe five or ten days for petty hoo­li­gan­ism will teach that ­do-nothing (bezdel’nika) Zhora how to work.” Krok­o­dil, no. 3 (1957): cover. 115. A local po­lice chief, for in­stance, re­quested the right to shave the heads of ar­rested petty hoo­li­gans not just for san­i­tary rea­sons, but also be­cause “cutting the hair has a great moral in­flu­ence and im­pact, es­pe­cially on the young.” GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 67. 116. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5095, ll. 154–155; GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 28; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 40. 117. Ibid. 118. A. Gal­kin, “Eto ne kom­pa­niia,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, No­vem­ber 2, 1958, 3. 119. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 31. 120. Ibid., l. 113. 121. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 45. 122. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 47. 123. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5290, l. 80; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5302, ll. 194–195. 124. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 30. In 1965, Iz­ves­tiia re­ported that only one third of petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees were ac­tu­ally used in the labor pro­jects the de­cree re­quired. V. Bas­kov, “Porok ­istseliat’ tru­dom,” Iz­ves­tiia, April 1, 1965, 3. 125. Gal­kin, “Eto ne kom­pa­niia,” 3. 126. Ibid. 127. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 350, l. 17. 128. GARF, f. A-577, op. 1, d. 882, l. 46. 129. V. Mo­skin, “Pos­a­dite menia na ­desiat’ sutok!” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, Feb­ru­ary 18, 1960, 4. 130. Krok­o­dil, no. 19 (1957): 5. 131. GARF, f. 9415, op. 1, d. 16, ll. 60–61. 132. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 149, l. 51. 133. Ibid., l. 41. 134. GARF, f. 7523, op. 107, d. 27, ll. 18–19; and GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 81. 135. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 68. 136. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 117.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

242



Notes to pages 124–127

137. The ­Gor’kii Sci­en­tific In­sti­tute of Epi­dem­i­ol­ogy and Hy­giene, for ex­am­ple, paid 3,000 ru­bles in es­cort ex­penses for det­ainee labor val­ued at only 1,206 ru­bles. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, ll. 61–62. 138. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 514, l. 4. 139. TsMAM, f. 2842, op. 1, d. 65, l. 18. 140. Ibid., l. 113. 141. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 323. 142. Ibid., l. 112. 143. Ibid., l. 8. 144. GARF, f. A-428, op.3, d. 514, l. 5. 145. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 31. 146. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 514, l. 4. 147. TsMAM, f. 2842, op. 1, d. 65, l. 18. 148. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 79. 149. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 32. 150. GARF, f. 7523, op. 107, d. 27, ll. 18–19. 151. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 8. 152. Bas­kov, “Porok ­istseliat’ tru­dom,” 3. 153. GARF, f. A-577, op. 1, d. 63, ll. 5–6. 154. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 13. 155. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 45. 156. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 149, l. 31. 157. M. ­Grigor’ev, “Khu­li­gan pod mik­ros­ko­pom,” Krok­o­dil, no. 5 (1965): 5. 158. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 505, l. 400. 159. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4676, l. 124. 160. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 6. 161. GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 111, l. 16. 162. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 281, ll. 1–2. 163. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5318, l. 26. 164. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 62. 165. GARF, f. 9415, op. 3, d. 370, ll. 47–48, 179. 166. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 505, l. 399. 167. For ex­am­ple, 21 en­ter­prises in the Ka­luga re­gion paid 477 ru­bles to the local govern­ment for al­most a year of det­ainee labor. But this did lit­tle to cover the 5,175 ru­bles the local govern­ment spent to feed the same det­ainee pop­u­la­ tion. In one po­lice sta­tion in the Mari Auton­o­mous Re­pub­lic, ­sixty-two petty hoo­li­gans were held at var­i­ous times dur­ing a ­five-month pe­riod in 1957. Col­ lec­tively, these de­tai­nees ­worked for 44 days (they ­should have ­worked a total of 640 days) and 155 ru­bles and 70 ko­pecks were paid into the state bud­get for this labor. The po­lice spent 2,144 ru­bles on food for these de­tai­nees over the same pe­riod. Ibid., l. 400. 168. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 79. 169. For ex­am­ple, 700 hun­dred qual­ified work­ers of the ­Budennovugol’ mine were im­pris­oned for petty hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing the first half of 1957 alone, re­sult­ing in 7,000 lost work­days and a drop in coal out­put of 75,600 tons. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 645, l. 34. 170. These petty hoo­li­gan de­tai­nees were ­charged one ruble per day to cover food costs. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6612, l. 70.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 127–130



243

171. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 506, ll. 34–35. 172. GARF, f. 9415, op. 1, d. 16, ll. 61–62. 173. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5682, l. 61. 174. Gal­kin, “Eto ne kom­pa­niia,” 3. For the USSR MVD and USSR Min­Fin order, see Ros­siis­kii gos­ud ­ arst­ven­nyi ark­hiv ekon­o­miki (RGAE), f. 7733, op. 46, d. 13, l. 123. 175. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 505, l. 399. 176. GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 506, ll. 34–35. 177. In 1961, the ­Iaroslav’ re­gion sent only 2 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases to the ­comrades’ ­courts and in 1962 only 4 per­cent (see GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 788, l. 121). The Altai krai ­people’s ­courts in 1961 only sent 4 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases to the ­comrades’ ­courts and ­workers’ col­lec­tives. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 977, l. 12. 178. For the April 19, 1961, de­cree, see Ved­o­mosti Verk­hov­nogo So­veta RSFSR, no. 16 (1961): 248. 179. For in­for­ma­tion on the ­amount of petty hoo­li­gan cases trans­ferred to the ­comrades’ ­courts, see chap­ter 4 and GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 21. 180. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 428, ll. 20–21. 181. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 788, ll. 10, 41 The fact that many ­comrades’ ­courts were Po­tem­kin in­sti­tu­tions that, by 1961, were ei­ther non­ex­is­tent or non­ func­tional con­strained the abil­ity of some ­courts to off­load petty hoo­li­gan cases to these al­ter­na­tive dis­ci­pli­nary sites. In a 1964 re­port, the ­Arkhangel’sk re­gional court, for ex­am­ple, ex­plained that local ­courts could not send a “sig­nif­i­cant ­amount of ma­te­ri­als” to the ­comrades’ ­courts be­cause many of them were not func­tion­ing. Ibid., l. 25. 182. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 514, l. 9. 183. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 428, ll. 13–14. 184. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 788, l. 8. One po­lice chief in the Kal­i­nin re­gion lev­ied fines on 197 peo­ple. Sixty of them did not pay. For this case, see GARF, f. A-385, op. 26, d. 297, l. 6. 185. On the Se­cret ­Speech, see ­William Taub­man, Khrush­chev: The Man and his Era (New York: W. W. Nor­ton, 2003), 270–277; and ­William Tomp­son, Khrush­chev: A Po­lit­i­cal Life (New York: St. ­Martin’s Press, 1995), 153–161. 186. In Oc­to­ber 1956, the USSR Su­preme So­viet ­passed a de­cree man­dat­ing that gyp­sies cease their va­grant life­style (brod­ia­ zh­ni­chestvo) and adopt a new life of set­tled wage labor. Those gyp­sies who re­fused would be sen­tenced to five years exile and cor­rec­tive labor. For the Oc­to­ber 5, 1956, De­cree of the Pre­sid­ium of the USSR Su­preme So­viet “O Pri­obsh­che­nii k trudu tsy­gan, zan­i­maiu­ sh­chikh­sia brod­i­azh­ni­chest­vom,” see Sbor­nik dok­um ­ en­tov po is­to­rii ugo­lov­nogo ­zakonodatel’stva SSSR i RSFSR (Kazan: ­Izdatel’stvo Ka­zans­kogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1992), 31. For more on the 1956 gypsy de­cree, see ­Alaina Lemon, ­Between Two Fires: Gypsy Per­for­mance and Ro­mani Mem­ory from Push­kin to Post­so­cial­ism (Dur­ ham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000), 103, 135. For the stu­dent crack­downs, see Zubok, ­Zhivago’s Chil­dren, 79–84. 187. For more on the func­tion­al­ist inter­pre­ta­tion of de­vi­ance, see Emile Durk­heim, The Rules of the So­ci­olog­i­cal ­Method, trans. W. D. Hall (New York: Free Press, 1982); and Kai Erik­son, Way­ward Pu­ri­tans: A Study in the So­ci­ol­ogy of De­vi­ance (New York: Wiley, 1966).

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line long

244



Notes to pages 130–134

188. See also Wal­ter D. Con­nor, De­vi­ance in So­viet So­ci­ety: Crime, De­lin­quency, and Al­co­hol­ism (New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1969), 246–247.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Chap­ter 4.  Em­pow­er­ing Pub­lic Ac­ti­vism 1. ­George ­Feifer, Jus­tice in Mos­cow (New York: Simon and ­Schuster, 1964), 112. 2. “Obshchestvennost’” in ­Bol’shaia so­vets­kaia ent­sik­lo­pe­diia, ed. S. I. Vav­il­ ov, vol. 30 (Mos­cow: ­Izdatel’stvo ­bol’shaia so­vets­kaia ent­sik­lo­pe­diia, 1954), 418; B. M. Volin and D. N. Usha­kov, eds., Tol­kovyi ­slovar’ russ­kogo ia­zyka, vol. 2 (Mos­ cow: Gos­u­darst­ven­noe ­izdatel’stvo in­nos­tra­nykh i ­natsional’nykh slo­va­rei, 1940), 728–729; Cat­r i­o na Kelly and Vadim Vol­k ov, “Obshchestvennost’, ­Sobornost’: Col­lec­tive Iden­tities,” in Con­struct­ing Rus­sian Cul­ture in the Age of Rev­o­lu­tion: 1881–1940, ed. Cat­ri­ona Kelly and David Shep­herd (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1998), 26–27. For more on ­obshchestvennost’ in the ­pre-Revolutionary pe­riod, see Jo­seph Brad­ley, “Vol­un­tary As­so­ci­a­tions, Civic Cul­ture, and ­obshchestvennost’ in Mos­cow,” in ­Between Tsar and Peo­ple: Ed­u­cated So­ci­ety and the Quest for Pub­lic Iden­tity in Late Im­pe­rial So­ci­ety, ed. Edith W. ­Clowes, Sam­uel D. Kas­sow, and James L. West (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ ver­sity Press, 1991), 131–148. 3. For the fe­male move­ment of ­obshchestvennost’ in the Sta­lin era, see Mary Buck­ley, “The Un­told Story of Obsh­chest­ven­nitsa in the 1930s,” Eu­rope Asia Stud­ies, no. 4 (1996): 569–586. 4. For ­changes in the mean­ing of ­obshchestvennost’ in the Khrush­chev era, see ­George Bres­lauer, “Khrush­chev Re­con­sid­ered,” in The So­viet Union Since Sta­lin, ed. Ste­phen F. Cohen, Al­ex­an­der Rab­i­now­itch, and Rob­ert Shar­let (Bloom­ing­ton: In­di­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980), 52–58. 5. For such a rep­re­sen­ta­tion, see Krok­o­dil, no. 20 (1959): 8–9. 6. ­Quoted in L. Smir­nov, “Usilit’ ­bor’bu s pre­stu­ple­niiami i s khu­li­gan­ st­vom,” Sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’, no. 1 (1959): 29. 7. For the grow­ing ­anti-police sen­ti­ment among the pop­u­la­tion in the mid1950s, see V. A. Koz­lov, Mas­so­vye bespor­ia­ dki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve, ­ irsk, Rus­sia: Si­bers­kii khron­o­graf, 1999), 1953­-­nachalo 1980-kh gg. (No­vos­ib 199–200. 8. See, for in­stance, G. Ryk­lin, “Khu­daia trava,” Iz­ves­tiia, De­cem­ber 8, 1955, 3; and “Obuzdat’ khu­lig­a­nov,” Trud, Jan­u­ary 13, 1956, 2. 9. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4031, l. 121. 10. Krok­o­dil, no. 24 (1956): 9. 11. Krok­o­dil, no. 32 (1961): 5. 12. A. A. Fur­senko, ed., Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964, vol. 2 (Mos­cow: Ross­pen, 2006), 233–234, 260. 13. See the Oc­to­ber 10, 1956, draft de­cree of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and the USSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters “On Short­com­ings in the Work of the USSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs and Meas­ures to Elim­i­nate Them,” in Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964, vol. 2, 456–462. 14. ­Kruglov’s suc­ces­sor as Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Af­fairs was N. P. Du­do­rov, till then head of the Con­struc­tion De­part­ment of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee. For

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 134–137



245

the ac­cu­sa­tions ­against Kru­glov, see the Gen­eral Pros­e­cu­tor R. A. ­Rudenko’s April 18, 1955, let­ter to N. A. Bul­ga­nin, chair of the USSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters in GARF, f. 7523, op. 107, d. 124, ll. 53–57. 15. GARF, f. 9415, op. 3, d. 636, l. 136. 16. A miner rec­om­mended to the USSR Pro­cu­racy that the state ­should “send us a bat­ta­lion of good sol­diers and they will re­store order in a month. All dis­or­der (bez­o­bra­ziia) will be ­stopped. I no ­longer have any hope in our local po­lice.” GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5663, ll. 76–77. 17. S. Go­lov­a­nivs­kii, “Eto ka­saet­sia vsekh,” Iz­ves­tiia, Jan­u­ary 22, 1956, 3. 18. M. Fo­mush­kin, “Khu­li­gany po­lu­chili otpor,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, May 29, 1955, 4. 19. For such a car­toon, see ­Iunost’, no. 1 (1956): 64. 20. In ad­di­tion, since the mid-1950s the state began to ex­peri­ment with using vol­un­teer Kom­so­mol bri­gades to po­lice un­safe city ­streets and set up pilot pub­lic po­lic­ing pro­jects along those lines in many cit­ies. For more on this, see R. S. Mu­lu­kaev and N. N. Kar­ta­shov, Mi­lit­siia Ros­sii: ­istoriko-pravovoi ­ocherk (Orel, Rus­sia: Gos­u­darst­ven­noe ­izdatel’sko-poligraficheskoe pred­priia­tie Oka, 1995), 172–173. 21. For more on the ­comrades’ ­courts, see Har­old Ber­man and James W. Spin­dler, “So­viet ­Comrades’ ­Courts,” Wash­ing­ton Law Re­view, no. 4 (1963): 842– 910; Al­bert ­Boiter, “So­cial ­Courts in the USSR” (PhD diss., Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­ sity, 1965); Al­bert ­Boiter, “The ­Comrades’ ­Courts: How Dur­able?” Prob­lems of Com­mu­nism, no. 2 (1965): 82–92; ­Feifer, Jus­tice in Mos­cow, 103–129; Leon Lip­son, “The Func­tion of Ex­tra­ju­di­cial Mech­an ­ isms,” in So­viet and Chi­nese Com­mu­nism: Sim­i­lar­ities and Dif­fer­ences, ed. D. W. Tread­gold (Seat­tle: Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ ton Press, 1967), 144–167; and Sam­uel Kuche­rov, The Or­gans of So­viet Ad­min­is­ tra­tion of Jus­tice: Their His­tory and Op­er­a­tion (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 154–197. For an early his­tory of the So­viet ­comrades’ ­courts, see Lewis Sie­gel­baum, “De­fin­ing and Ig­nor­ing Labor Dis­ci­pline in the Early So­viet Pe­riod: The ­Comrades-Disciplinary ­Courts, 1918–1922,” ­Slavic Re­view, no. 4 (1992): 705–730. 22. Har­old Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR: An Inter­pre­ta­tion of So­viet Law (New York: Vin­tage Books, 1963), 82, 286; Jerry Hough and Merle Fain­sod, How the So­viet Union Is Gov­erned (Cam­bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1979), 297, 301–302; and ­George W. Bres­lauer, Khrush­chev and Brezh­nev as Lead­ers: Build­ing Au­thor­ity in So­viet Pol­it­ ics (Bos­ton: Allen and Unwin, 1982), 13, 75, 271. 23. Bres­lauer, “Khrush­chev Re­con­sid­ered,” 50–57. 24. Oleg Khark­hor­din, The Col­lec­tive and the In­di­vid­ual in Rus­sia: A Study of Prac­tices (Berke­ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1999), 279–283. 25. Yoram Gor­lizki, “Del­e­gal­iza­tion in Rus­sia: So­viet ­Comrades’ ­Courts in ­Retrospect,” The ­American Jour­nal of Com­par­at­ ive Law, no. 3 (1998): 403–425. 26. Ber­man noted that the ­druzhina’s “rough” and “dis­cour­teous” na­ture was due to their “lack­ing the train­ing of the reg­u­lar po­lice.” Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR, 288. 27. Sem. ­Narin’iani, “Vmesto blag­o­dar­nosti,” ­Pravda, Sep­tem­ber 30, 1956, 3. Semen Da­vy­do­vich ­Narin’iani (1908–1974) was ­Pravda’s main feuille­ton ­writer, a mem­ber of the ed­i­to­rial board of Krok­o­dil, and a mem­ber of the Union of So­viet Writ­ers.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

246



Notes to pages 137–142

28. Ibid. 29. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5206, l. 27. 30. ­Narin’iani, “Vmesto blag­o­dar­nosti,” 3. 31. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5206, l. 30. 32. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 136, l. 248. 33. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5206, l. 30. 34. Ibid. By equat­ing vi­o­lent vig­i­lantes with the crim­i­nals they were fight­ing ­against, a man from Sta­lin­grad like­wise wrote that: “They have ­created an at­mos­phere in which cit­i­zens are ­afraid even to ob­ject to the hoo­li­gan.” Ibid., l. 31. 35. GARF, f. 9492, op. 1, d. 1951, l. 11. 36. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5206, l. 22. 37. For the Oc­to­ber 4, 1956, Pre­sid­ium de­cree “On the Ar­ti­cle of S. ­Narin’iani ‘In­stead of ­Thanks,’ which was Pub­lished in ­Pravda on Sep­tem­ber 30, 1956,” see Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964, vol. 1, 169–170, 963, and vol. 2, 446–447. 38. Ru­d enko added: “We under­s tand very well that we can­n ot allow lynch­ing (sam­o­sud ), but we also can­not allow these per­ver­sions (izv­ra­she­nii ) of jus­tice.” GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, ll. 477–478. 39. See, for ex­am­ple, the inter­view with USSR Su­preme Court chair­man A. A. Volin, “K vo­prosu ob uk­re­ple­nii sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­koi za­kon­nosti,” Li­ter­a­tur­ naia ga­zeta, No­vem­ber 10, 1956, 2. 40. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 205, l. 236. 41. V. A. Bol­dy­rev, “Na ­strazhe zak­o­nov,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, De­cem­ber 8, 1956, 2. 42. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5096, l. 79. 43. “Mol­o­dye ­stroiteli kom­mu­nizma, vy­soko nes­ite zna­mia Le­nina! Rech’ tov­a­rish­cha N. S. Khrush­cheva na XIV ­s’ezda Kom­so­mola 19 apre­lia 1962 goda,” ­Pravda, April 21, 1962, 2. 44. P. ­Tat’ianicheva, “Verit’ liu­diam—eto ­znachit . . . ,” ­Oktiabr’, no. 12 (1959): 118. In one case she de­scribed, hoo­li­gans gave a Kom­so­mol mem­ber seven knife ­wounds. 45. See, for ex­am­ple, N. Alex­an­drov, “Ubiitsa dru­zhin­nika prig­o­voren k ras­strelu,” Iz­ves­tiia, Sep­tem­ber 17, 1960, 4; and B. Gusev, “Voz­mez­die,” Iz­ves­tiia, Au­gust 6, 1961, 6. For an ear­lier case, see K. ­Yureev, “On umer na postu,” So­ vet­s­kaia Ros­siia, June 9, 1957, 4. 46. For an ex­am­ple of this, see GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, l. 112. 47. Mau­rice Hin­dus, ­Houses with­out a Roof: Rus­sia after 43 Years of Rev­o­lu­tion (New York: Dou­ble Day, 1961), 376. 48. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6456, l. 195. 49. The de­cree also pun­ished those who dis­obeyed a law­ful order or de­mand of the dru­zhina or po­lice with in­car­cer­a­tion for up to fif­teen days, cor­rec­tive labor for a pe­riod of up to one month, or a fine of up to ­twenty ru­bles. Those who in­sulted a mem­ber of the dru­zhina or the po­lice were li­able to in­car­cer­a­tion for up to six ­months, cor­rec­tive labor for up to a year, or a fine of up to one hun­dred ru­bles. “Ob usi­le­nii ot­vetst­ven­nosti za ­posiagatel’stvo na ­zhizn’, ­zdorov’e i dos­toinstvo ra­bot­ni­kov mi­lit­sii i na­rod­nykh dru­zhin­ni­kov,” Ved­o­mosti Verk­hov­nogo So­veta SSSR, no. 8 (1962): 220.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 142–147



247

50. Ber­man spe­cif­i­cally men­tions the “rough” be­hav­ior of the dru­zhina. Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR, 288. For crit­i­cal ar­ti­cles in the So­viet press, see O. Bitov, “Sem ovets i do­brye pas­tyri,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, No­vem­ber 19, 1959, 2; “Pod mas­koi dru­zhin­nika,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, May 5, 1961, 4; “Pok­ro­viteli pre­stup­ni­kov,” Iz­ves­tiia, June 23, 1961, 6; and V. Vol­nov, “Udar bez proto­kola,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, Oc­to­ber 5, 1965, 2. 51. For such an ar­ti­cle, see R. Zu­ba­reva and V. Bez­bor­o­dova, “Razve tak ­nuzhno ­borot’sia so sti­li­a­gami?” Iz­ves­tiia, July 19, 1957, 2. 52. See, for ex­am­ple, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Krok­o­dil, no. 20 (1959): 10; and Krok­o­dil, no. 26 (1961): 15. 53. In ad­di­tion, they also re­flected the fact that in some areas a third of dru­zhina mem­bers were re­ported to be women. ­Tat’ianicheva, “Verit’ liu­diam— eto ­znachit . . . ,” 117. 54. Khark­hor­din, The Col­lec­tive and the In­di­vid­ual in Rus­sia, 286. 55. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, l. 112. 56. For an ar­ti­cle on the award­ing of the medal “For Brav­ery” to a dru­zhin­nik, see “Pod­vig dru­zhin­nika,” Iz­ves­tiia, No­vem­ber 20, 1959, 6. 57. In one Le­nin­grad re­gion fac­tory, there were 762 work­ers, in­clud­ing 151 Kom­so­mol mem­bers, but the fac­tory dru­zhina num­bered only 22 peo­ple. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6199, l. 211. 58. B. Gusev and Iu. Fe­of­a­nov, “Ver­et­ ek­hins­kaia pi­a­terka,” Iz­ves­tiia, April 3, 1963, 4. 59. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 405, l. 21. 60. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 53. 61. Gusev and Fe­of­a­nov, “Ver­et­ ek­hins­kaia pi­a­terka,” 4. 62. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 405, l. 21; and GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6456, l. 131. 63. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 170; and GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 301, ll. 19–20. 64. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 405, l. 21. 65. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 412, l. 131. 66. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 411, l. 106. 67. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 412, l. 132. 68. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 53. 69. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 493, l. 14. 70. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 979, l. 74. 71. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 979, l. 74. 72. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, l. 171. 73. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 412, l. 132. 74. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6456, l. 199. 75. GARF, f. A-577, op. 1, d. 118, ll. 45–46. 76. TsMAM, f. 493, op. 1, d. 452, l. 6. 77. For an over­view of the ­comrades’ ­courts’ func­tions, see Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR, 288–291. 78. Gor­lizki, “Del­eg ­ al­iza­tion in Rus­sia,” 403–425. 79. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 474, l. 2. In 1961, the ­Iaroslav’ re­gion sent only 2 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases to the ­comrades’ ­courts and in 1962 only

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

248



Notes to pages 148–150

4 per­cent. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 788, l. 121. The Altai ­region’s ­courts sent only 4 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases to the ­comrades’ ­courts in 1961. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 977, l. 12. In the Kem­e­rovo re­gion, only 6 per­cent of petty hoo­li­gan cases were sent to ­comrades’ ­courts, the over­whelm­ing ma­jor­ity being pro­cessed ­through the ­people’s ­courts. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 788, l. 51. 80. Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR, 93–94. 81. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, ll. 289–299. 82. Ibid., l. 322. 83. Ibid. A ­comrades’ court chair­man from Mos­cow wrote eigh­teen ­months after the pub­li­ca­tion of the draft stat­ute to be­rate the govern­ment for not con­firm­ing the stat­ute com­plain­ing that “there is still noth­ing to guide us in mak­ing our de­ci­sions.” For the ­lawyer’s re­mark, see TsMAM, f. 493, op. 1, d. 452, l. 18. 84. Many ­courts, lack­ing any in­for­ma­tion on how to hold a trial, cop­ied their legal pro­ce­dures from the ­people’s ­courts, blur­ring the lines ­between in­sti­tu­ tions with con­fus­ing ju­ris­dic­tional over­lays and giv­ing a false im­pres­sion of their re­la­tion­ship to state power. Many ­comrades’ ­courts aped es­tab­lished ­people’s court rit­u­als, be­gin­ning their ses­sions with the com­mand to rise (Vstat! Sud idet!). ­Comrades’ ­courts often gave their de­ci­sions in the name of the re­pub­ lic. A ­comrades’ court in Mos­cow, for ex­am­ple, is­sued its de­ci­sions in the name of the RSFSR. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6456, l. 136. 85. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 426, ll. 161–162. 86. TsMAM, f. 493, op. 1, d. 452, ll. 10, 12. Not­ing that the vol­un­teer ­court’s ques­tion­able legal ­status ­robbed it of the sup­port of local state and ju­di­cial bod­ies, a ­comrades’ court ­staffer com­plained that due to the ab­sence of an ap­proved law: “The ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tees and ­people’s ­courts con­sider the ­comrades’ ­courts with some res­er­va­tions.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, ll. 289– 299. A ­comrades’ court chair­man from Mos­cow like­wise asked the USSR Su­preme So­viet “to ­quickly con­firm the Law on the ­Comrades’ ­Courts be­cause the ab­sence of a law re­sults in the ­people’s ­courts and po­lice ig­nor­ing the ­comrades’ court.” Ibid., l. 222. 87. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, l. 342. The lack of a ­comrades’ court stat­ute hin­dered the op­er­a­tion of the new ­courts. For ex­am­ple, the ­courts had no legal right to force de­fen­dants to show up at their trial. So, many hoo­li­gans ­evaded dis­ci­pline by sim­ply not com­ing. This ­placed many ­comrades’ ­courts in a del­i­cate po­si­tion. They did not want to hold a trial in which the de­fen­dant was not ­present be­cause this would limit the vos­pit­a­nie or ed­u­ca­tional ef­fect of the pro­ceed­ings on de­fen­dant and pub­lic. In ad­di­tion, the trial of de­fen­dants in ab­sen­tia ap­peared to be a vi­o­la­tion of so­cial­ist le­gal­ity and too much akin to the dis­cred­ited tac­tics of the Sta­lin­ist past. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 345, l. 57. 88. GARF, f. 9474, op. 32, d. 67, l. 239. 89. TsMAM, f. 493, op. 1, d. 557, l. 9. 90. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6669, l. 195. 91. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 426, l. 7. The ­comrades’ ­courts some­times made il­le­gal de­ci­sions be­cause their mem­bers did not study or know the law. At a meet­ing of the Pre­sid­ium of the Mos­cow Col­lege of Law­yers, a ­speaker com­ mented that “in the ma­jor­ity of ­comrades’ ­courts, the chair­men and mem­bers

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 150–154



249

are not fa­mil­iar with the basic laws and do not know the stat­ute on ­comrades’ ­courts well.” TsMAM, f. 493, op. 1, d. 557, l. 9. The USSR Su­preme Court even re­ported that in many re­pub­lics and re­gions, mem­bers of the ­comrades’ ­courts could not even get or find a copy of the stat­ute that had ­created them. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 426, l. 139. 92. GARF, f. 9474, op. 32, d. 67, l. 230. 93. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, l. 342. The ­state’s in­abil­ity and un­will­ing­ ness to ed­u­cate ­comrades’ court ­judges in the legal di­men­sion of their du­ties often ag­gra­vated vol­un­teer mal­prac­tice and the cul­ture of in­com­pe­tence. Vol­un­teer ed­u­ca­tion, when any such train­ing was at­tempted, em­pha­sized theo­ ret­ic­ al knowl­edge, ca­non­i­cal Party texts, and con­tem­po­rary pol­icy state­ments over the study of prac­ti­cal legal and ad­min­is­tra­tive ques­tions. A 1960 study plan spent twice as much time on lec­tures con­cern­ing theo­ret­ic­ al top­ics such as “Marxist-Leninist The­ory of State and Law” than on ex­plain­ing such ba­sics as “crim­i­nal re­spon­sibil­ity for dif­fer­ent types of crime.” In fact, top­ics such as fire ­safety and “on the pro­tec­tion of shrub­bery” were given as much ­weight in the cur­ric­u­lum as out­lin­ing what was and was not a crime. More­over, the re­quired read­ings for the class did not in­clude a sin­gle hand­book on the crim­i­nal code. In­stead, it in­cluded such semi­nal vol­umes on po­lice work and crim­i­nal law as ­Lenin’s State and Rev­o­lu­tion and ­Khrushchev’s On Con­trol Fig­ures for the De­vel­op­ ment of the ­People’s Econ­omy of the USSR, 1959–1965. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, ll. 184–185, 189–190. 94. For a brief over­view of the dru­zhina, see Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR, 286–288. 95. K. Yurev, “O tekh, kto me­shaet nam ­otdykhat’,” Trud, June 28, 1956, 4. 96. For “guests of the dru­zhina,” see RGANI, f. 13, op. 1, d. 768, l. 67. For “zor’kii,” see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, l. 461. For “he­roes not of our time,” see GARF, f. 5451, op. 28, d. 1892, ll. 12–13. For the ­quotes, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6199, ll. 209–210. For the case of the at­tack­ing man, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 17, d. 4759, ll. 5–7. 97. T. Gol­u­bev, “Vospitatel’naia bu­tylka,” Iz­ves­tiia, April 12, 1964, 3. 98. GARF, f. 5451, op. 28, d. 1892, ll. 12–13. 99. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6199, l. 209. 100. Stu­art Hall et al., Po­lic­ing the Cri­sis: Mug­ging, the State, and Law and Order (New York: ­Holmes and Meier, 1978). 101. For the use of the hoo­li­gan label in these cases, see Va­le­rii Cha­lidze, Ugo­lov­naia Ros­siia (New York: Khro­nika Press, 1977), 73–93. 102. “Vy­zy­vaiush­chie zan­a­ve­ski,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, June 29, 1962, 2. 103. “Pes­tryi plat­o­chek,” Iz­ves­tiia, March 31, 1961, 3. 104. N. Ko­les­ni­kova, “Patrul’ v ko­rot­kikh shta­nish­kakh,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, De­cem­ber 13, 1960, 2. 105. Ibid. 106. V. ­Prival’skii, “Strogo za­presh­chenno,” Og­o­nek, no. 41 (1959): 55. 107. D. ­Novopl’ianskii, “Pod mas­koi dru­zhin­nika,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, Oc­to­ber 6, 1960, 2. 108. “So­vets­kii dzhaz zhdet ­svoikh kom­po­zit­o­rov,” Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda, De­cem­ber 25, 1960, 4.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

250



Notes to pages 155–159

109. P. Ko­ri­a­gin, “Shtany v pi­a­tom as­pekte,” Iz­ves­tiia, Oc­to­ber 12, 1960, 6. 110. A. I. Mar­kov, “Obshchestvennost’ Kui­by­shevs­kogo ­raiona g. ­Moskvy v ­bor’be s na­ru­she­niiami so­vets­koi za­kon­nosti i pra­vil sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kogo obsh­che­ zhi­tiia,” So­vets­koe gos­u­dartsvo i pravo, no. 10 (1960): 56. 111. ­Tat’ianicheva, “Verit’ liu­diam—eto ­znachit . . . ,” 118. 112. Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR, 287. 113. GARF, f. A-259, op. 42, d. 6518, l. 24. 114. ­Novopl’ianskii, “Pod mas­koi dru­zhin­nika,” 2. 115. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 342, l. 36. 116. V. ­Prival’skii and A. Spek­to­rov, “Spra­ved­livyi, tov­a­rish­ches­kii,” Iz­ ves­tiia, June 1, 1963, 4. 117. N. F. Kuz­net­sova, “Izu­che­nie i pre­du­prezh­de­nie khu­li­ganstva,” in Kri­ min­o­lo­giia, ed. A. A. Gert­sen­zon (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1968), 441. 118. A Le­nin­grad en­gi­neer re­flected this view when he rec­om­mended that the au­thor­ities in­crease the print run of “en­ter­tain­ing lit­er­a­ture,” such as Wil­kie ­Collins’s The Moon­stone (Lun­nyi ­kamen’), claim­ing: “I can guar­an­tee that the youth who oc­cu­pies him­self with read­ing this book will not loi­ter on the ­streets aim­lessly.” GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4597, l. 46. 119. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 67, d. 9, l. 143. 120. GARF, f. 5451, op. 24, d. 1543, ll. 104–105, 246. 121. GARF, f. A-577, op. 1, d. 117, l. 56. 122. RGANI, f. 2, op. 1, d. 626, l. 44. 123. Ibid. 124. Ed­ward Crank­shaw, Rus­sia with­out Sta­lin: The Emerg­ing Pat­tern (New York: Vi­king Press, 1956), 100, 104. Har­ri­son Sa­lis­bury, the New York Times re­porter in Mos­cow, noted the cen­tral­ity of bore­dom to life in the So­viet Union, de­clar­ing that it was the young ­people’s “cen­tral con­cern.” Har­ri­son Sa­lis­bury, A New Rus­sia? (New York: ­Harper and Row, 1962), 13. 125. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 3, d. 906, l. 26. 126. “In the last ­couple of years our peo­ple have more free time,” a jus­tice noted at a 1964 Su­preme Court Ple­num, “but not every­body knows how to spend this free time ­wisely. Free time . . . is fre­quently spent play­ing games of ­chance and drink­ing ­rather than plant­ing trees in the court­yards (dvory), build­ing sport­ing ­grounds, or play­ing ­sports.” GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 418, ll. 112–113. 127. For a ­thorough ex­am­ina­tion of lei­sure cul­ture in the Khrush­chev era, see Gleb Tsi­pur­sky, “Pleas­ure, Power, and the Pur­suit of Com­mu­nism: ­StateSponsored Youth Pop­u­lar Cul­ture in the So­viet Union, 1945–1968” (PhD diss., Uni­ver­sity of North Car­o­lina, ­Chapel Hill, 2011). 128. See the de­scrip­tion of the ac­tiv­i­ties of the Le­nin­grad Pal­ace of Pi­o­neers in ­Alexei Yur­chak, Every­thing Was For­ever, until It Was No More: The Last So­viet Gen­er­a­tion (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006), 135. 129. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 8, d. 674, l. 15. 130. GARF, f. 5451, op. 24, d. 1543, ll. 104–105, 246. 131. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 118. 132. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 3, d. 906, l. 26. 133. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, l. 455. In ad­di­tion, ­for-profit pric­ing pol­i­cies ­called into ques­tion the ­status of the ­workers’ club as a site of cul­tured lei­sure

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 159–162



251

for the ­masses. A man from Kui­by­shev wrote to the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee that the clubs and ­houses of cul­ture were con­cerned fore­most with “com­mer­cial goals” ­rather than with the moral ed­u­ca­tion or vos­pit­a­nie of the work­ers. Ros­siis­kii gos­u­darst­ven­nyi ark­hiv no­vei­shei is­to­rii (RGANI), f. 5, op. 30, d. 409, l. 115. 134. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 400, l. 180. 135. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4011, l. 455. Many clubs, such as the club of the Red Aksai fac­tory in the city of Ros­tov on the Don, found them­selves under at­tack for being “ref­uges for hoo­li­gans.” For more on this club, see ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 3, d. 906, l. 26. 136. For ex­am­ple, the av­er­age con­struc­tion ­worker in 1955 spent 71 ru­bles on vodka, wine, and to­bacco and 29 ru­bles on the­a­ter and movie tick­ets, books, mag­a­zines, news­papers, sport­ing equip­ment, mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, cam­e­ras, and ­radios. RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 128, l. 108. 137. Il­lus­trat­ing the cen­tral­ity of al­co­hol to every­day life, a ­worker from Ufa in­sisted: “With­out wine the peo­ple can­not live. Peo­ple have their joys and their pains. Peo­ple are born. They die. They get mar­ried. They cel­e­brate hol­i­days and all of this is ac­com­pa­nied by al­co­hol.” For this let­ter, see RGANI, f. 5, op. 32, d. 26, l. 46. 138. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4032, l. 154. 139. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 343, l. 139. 140. Ibid., l. 162. 141. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 348, l. 70. 142. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 343, l. 162. 143. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 348, l. 64. 144. On De­cem­ber 15, 1958, the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and the USSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters re­leased the de­cree “On Strength­en­ing the Strug­gle ­against Drunk­en­ ness and Bring­ing Order to the Sale of ­Strong Al­co­holic Bev­er­ages.” For more on the Khrush­chev ­anti-alcohol cam­paign, see V. V. Na­gaev, Chel­o­vek i ­alkogol’: sot­sio­log­i­ches­kie as­pekty (Syk­tyvkar, Rus­sia: Syk­tyv­kars­kii gos­u­darst­ven­nyi uni­ ver­si­tet, 1994), 43–44; Ste­phen White, Rus­sia Goes Dry: Al­co­hol, State, and So­ci­ety (New York: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996), 59; and Boris Segal, The ­Drunken So­ci­ety: Al­co­hol Abuse and Al­co­hol­ism in the So­viet Union (New York: Hip­po­crene Books, 1990), 78–79. For in­for­ma­tion on al­co­hol out­put and the liq­uor in­dus­try, see Vlad­i­mir Treml, Al­co­hol in the USSR: A Sta­tis­ti­cal Study (Dur­ham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 1982). 145. GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 645, l. 85. 146. Ibid. 147. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4032, l. 86. 148. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 405, l. 10. 149. Ibid., l. 2. 150. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 68. 151. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 405, l. 2. 152. This re­mark was made about the ­Primor’e re­gion. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 410, l. 4. 153. “If, for ex­am­ple, in the ­Ukraine . . . the mak­ing of any type of home­ made al­co­hol is dealt with in the crim­i­nal ­system,” the ­Ukraine SSR com­plained to the USSR Su­preme So­viet, “then in some other re­pub­lics these ques­tions are

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

252



Notes to pages 163–166

de­cided in some way that, it seems to us, does not cor­re­spond with the law.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 120, ll. 322, 338–339. 154. Ibid. 155. Deb­o­rah Field, Pri­vate Life and Com­mu­nist Mo­ral­ity in ­Khrushchev’s Rus­sia (New York: Peter Lang, 2007); and Mir­iam Dob­son, ­Khrushchev’s Cold Sum­mer: Gulag Re­turn­ees, Crime, and the Fate of Re­form after Sta­lin (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), 208–212. 156. Cat­ri­ona Kelly, Re­fin­ing Rus­sia: Ad­vice Lit­er­a­ture, Po­lite Cul­ture, and Gen­der from Cathe­rine to Yelt­sin (New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001), 321–340. 157. Field, Pri­vate Life and Com­mu­nist Mo­ral­ity in ­Khrushchev’s Rus­sia. For the ­Party’s in­tru­sive con­cern with fam­ily life in the High Sta­lin­ist and Khrush­chev eras, see Ed­ward Cohn, “Sex and the Mar­ried Com­mu­nist: Fam­ily Trou­bles, Mar­i­tal In­fi­del­ity, and Party Dis­ci­pline in the Post­war USSR, 1945–64,” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 3 (2009): 429–450. 158. GARF, f. 9415, op. 3, d. 318, l. 21. The Tula re­gion pros­e­cu­tor re­ported: “One of the main ­causes of hoo­li­gan­ism is the low level of ed­uc­ a­tional and cul­tural (vos­pit­a­nie) work among the work­ers. No lei­sure ac­tiv­i­ties are or­ga­nized for the work­ers and this leads to drink­ing and to the com­mis­sion of hoo­li­gan­ ism.” GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 979, ll. 159–160. 159. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 453, l. 27. 160. For more on the short­com­ings of the vos­pi­taleli, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5665, l. 135; and ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 8, d. 674, ll. 17, 67. 161. GARF, f. A-577, op. 1, d. 117, l. 43. 162. A let­ter ­writer from the ­Primor’e re­gion wrote to the USSR Su­preme So­viet that in “every case of a crime [by a juve­nile under 16 years of age] . . . both the child and his par­ents or guar­dians ­should be held le­gally re­spon­sible.” For this let­ter, see GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 347, l. 209. A pen­sioner from Groz­nyi wrote to the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee that hold­ing dead­beat par­ents le­gally re­spon­ sible for the out­come of their chil­drear­ing would make them “care about the up­bring­ing (vos­pit­a­nie) of their chil­dren.” For this let­ter, see RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 470, l. 204. Crit­ics ­argued that poor pa­rent­ing and pa­ren­tal ne­glect ­forced the state to rely on in­ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment tech­niques to de­feat a de­vi­ance that began at home. An anon­y­mous let­ter to the USSR Su­preme So­viet pro­claimed: “We would not need such a stu­pid law if chil­dren had par­ents who were more re­spon­sible to the state for the up­bring­ing (vos­pit­a­nie) of their chil­dren.” For this let­ter, see GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 342, l. 105. 163. The po­lice and pros­e­cu­tor of ­Khar’kov ad­vo­cated fin­ing the par­ents of juve­nile crim­i­nals from 100 to over 500 ru­bles for poor pa­rent­ing and bad up­bring­ing (vos­pit­a­nie). For more in­for­ma­tion, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4061, l. 10. Work­ers in ­Leningrad’s Fru­zens­kii dis­trict sug­gested to the Pro­cu­racy that par­ents of hoo­li­gans be fined 1,000 ru­bles. For their let­ter, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4597, l. 51. 164. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 347, l. 129. 165. GARF, f. A-358, op. 26, d. 297, l. 25. 166. RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 312, l. 13. 167. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45a, d. 304, l. 166.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Notes to pages 166–171



253

168. For in­for­ma­tion about the pro­nat­al­ist 1944 Fam­ily Law, see Mie Nak­a­chi, “N. S. Khrush­chev and the 1944 So­viet Fam­ily Law: Pol­i­tics, Re­pro­duc­tion, and Lan­guage,” East Eu­ro­pean Pol­i­tics and So­ci­ety, no. 1 (2006): 40–68. 169. GARF, f. 9415, op. 3, d. 338, ll. 332–333; and GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 346, l. 241. 170. Ibid. 171. For the draft Cen­tral Com­mit­tee let­ter to Party or­gan­iza­tions “On Se­ri­ous Short­com­ings in the Vos­pit­a­nie of Chil­dren,” see Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS, 1954–1958, vol. 2, 114–122.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Chap­ter 5.  The Rise and Fall of the Soft Line on Petty Crime 1. The use of the term soft line was in­spired by ­Sheila ­Fitzpatrick’s essay on cul­tural pol­icy in the 1920s, “The Soft Line on Cul­ture and its En­e­mies,” in ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick, The Cul­tural Front: Power and Cul­ture in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Rus­sia (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992), 91–114. De­spite my use of the same term, how­ever, I am using it to de­scribe a dif­fer­ent pol­icy area dur­ing a dif­fer­ent pe­riod in So­viet his­tory. 2. Peter H. Sol­o­mon, Jr., “Crim­i­nal­iza­tion and De­crim­i­nal­iza­tion in So­viet Crim­i­nal Pol­icy, 1917–1941,” Law and So­ci­ety Re­view, no. 1 (1981–1982): 9–44. 3. Mir­iam Dob­son, ­Khrushchev’s Cold Sum­mer: Gulag Re­turn­ees, Crime, and the Fate of Re­form after Sta­lin (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009), 143. For more in­for­ma­tion on po­ruka, see H. W. Dewey and A. M. Klei­mola, “Rus­sian Col­lec­tive Con­scious­ness: The Kie­van Roots,” The Sla­vonic and East Eu­ro­pean Re­view, no. 2 (1984): 180–191. 4. For more in­for­ma­tion on the thief and his ­post-Congress life, see Dob­son, ­Khrushchev’s Cold Sum­mer, 146–151. 5. Tre­tii s’ezd pis­at­ e­lei SSSR: sten­og­ raf­ic­ hes­kii ­otchet (Mos­cow: So­vets­kii ­pisatel’, 1959), 25. 6. For more on Mak­ar­ enko, see Oleg Khark­hor­din, The Col­lec­tive and the In­di­vid­ual in Rus­sia: A Study of Prac­tices (Berke­ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1999), 90–97, 102–119, 200–212; and James Bowen, So­viet Ed­u­ca­tion: Mak­a­renko and the Years of Ex­peri­ment (Mad­i­son: Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Press, 1962). 7. The con­vic­tion that every crim­i­nal was re­form­able and ca­pable of being saved for so­cial­ism be­came or­tho­doxy. One un­lucky Mos­cow law­yer was sub­ject to a for­mal cen­sure for tell­ing a col­league that “There are path­o­log­i­cal peo­ple who are com­pletely un­re­form­able. . . . Such peo­ple ­should be given the most se­vere pun­ish­ments.” In its cen­sure, the Mos­cow Col­lege of Law­yers wrote that the state­ment was “com­pletely at odds with the pol­icy [li­niia] and prac­tice of pun­ish­ment and contra­dicts Marx­ist teach­ings.” TsMAM, f. 493, op. 1, d. 420, l. 22. 8. Seem­ingly every in­stance in which the So­viet ­system was de­scribed as hu­mane was re­corded and re­ported to cen­tral ­elites. The USSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs re­ported to ­high-level Cen­tral Com­mit­tee mem­bers that, on an Au­gust 1959 visit to Bu­tyrka ­prison, ­American ac­ti­vists from the Na­tional Coun­cil on ­American-Soviet Re­la­tions “were ­amazed above all by the hu­mane ( gu­man­nyi ) re­la­tion­ship of the ­guards to the pris­on­ers.” RGANI, f. 5, op. 30,

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

254



Notes to pages 171–174

d. 312, l. 96. The MVD also made cer­tain to re­port ­then-governor of New York Ave­rell ­Harriman’s ap­prov­ing re­marks dur­ing a visit to a cor­rec­tive labor camp in the Mos­cow re­gion in May 1959. When ­showed the rooms where in­mates could visit with their wives and chil­dren, the re­port re­corded that Har­ri­man “judged it as hu­mane.” Ibid., l. 38. The MVD also kept note of sim­i­lar re­ac­tions from So­viet cit­i­zens. The USSR Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Af­fairs re­ported re­ac­tions of pris­on­ers to ­Khrushchev’s ­Writers’ Con­gress ­speech. They were care­ful to quote the ­prisoners’ use of the word “hu­mane” in their re­sponse to the pol­icy state­ment. One pris­oner was re­ported to have de­clared about ­Khrushchev’s ­speech: “It is a great re­ward to us, the high­est form of hu­mane­ness (gumannost’).” GARF, f. 9401, op. 2, d. 506, l. 236. An­other pris­oner was re­ported as thank­ing the So­viet govern­ment for its “mag­na­nim­ity and hu­man­ism ( gu­ma­nizm).” Ibid. A pris­oner in the Mos­cow re­gion was heard say­ing that “the meet­ing of Khrush­chev with the for­mer thief was an act of jus­tice and hu­man­ism (gumanost’) on the part of our govern­ment.” RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 312, l. 63. 9. For the im­por­tance of both hu­man­ism and Bec­caria to an­other prom­in ­ ent Rus­sian re­former, Cathe­rine II, see Is­ab ­ el de Ma­dar­i­aga, Cathe­rine the Great: A Short His­tory (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2002), 28, 30. 10. In­com­plete in­for­ma­tion sug­gests that hoo­li­gan­ism con­vic­tions de­ creased in all union re­pub­lics of the USSR dur­ing the 1959 to 1960 pe­riod. For more in­for­ma­tion, see GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 95, l. 5. 11. Ibid., l. 2. The drop in hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions was not ­matched by in­creases in con­vic­tions for ban­ditry and sim­ple as­sault, two ­crimes that often acted as sur­ro­gates for hoo­li­gan­ism. In 1960, only 179 peo­ple through­out the USSR were con­victed of ban­ditry, rep­re­sent­ing a 59 per­cent de­crease from 1959 fig­ures. The per­cent­age of those con­victed of sim­ple as­sault (menee tiazh­kie tele­snye pov­rezh­de­niia) fell 24 per­cent from 1959 to 1960. 12. V. Sha­posh­ni­kov, “Mno­goo­brazny puti ­bor’by s per­ezhit­kami,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 12 (1959): 54. 13. Ibid. 14. A typ­i­cal claim of vir­tual vic­tory can be seen in the Perm’ ­region’s re­port of a 69 per­cent drop in reg­is­tered cases of hoo­li­gan­ism dur­ing 1959. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 457, l. 35. 15. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 44, l. 5. 16. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, ll. 25–26. 17. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 38. Yet ­rather than stop­ping this prac­tice, the Sar­a­tov re­gional Party com­mit­tee re­ported in 1960 that 3,000 peo­ple were trans­ferred to ­comrades’ ­courts with­out hav­ing for­mal ­charges filed ­against them and, hence, with­out ever ap­pear­ing on crime reg­is­tries. RGANI, f. 13, op. 1, d. 770, l. 11. 18. RGANI, f. 13, op. 1, d. 769, ll. 20, 140. 19. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 27. 20. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6670, ll. 61–62. 21. V. Titov and Z. ­Iur’ev, “100 ­interv’iu s khu­lig­a­nami,” Krok­o­dil, no. 34 (1961): 6. 22. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6670, ll. 30–31, 35. 23. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 347, ll. 227–228.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 175–178



255

24. For the La­ri­o­nov scan­dal, see ­William Tomp­son, Khrush­chev: A Po­lit­i­cal Life (New York: St. ­Martin’s Press, 1995), 214–215; and Roy Med­ve­dev and ­Zhores Med­ve­dev, Khrush­chev: The Years in Power (New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ ver­sity Press, 1976), 96, 99–100. 25. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 322, l. 4. V. V. Kriu­kov, a mem­ber of the RSFSR Su­preme Court, re­marked be­fore a June 1960 Ple­num of the USSR Su­preme Court that many col­lec­tives were ­wrongly pe­ti­tion­ing ­courts on be­half of peo­ple who had com­mit­ted se­ri­ous ­crimes. The pros­e­cu­tor of the Omsk re­gion like­wise noted that when the prac­tice of re­mand­ing crim­in ­ als to their col­lec­ tives for re­form was first ­broached, many di­rec­tors and labor col­lec­tives ­wrongly sent pe­ti­tions for peer re­form on be­half of dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and that local pros­e­cu­tors did noth­ing to stop this. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 492, l. 3. The pros­e­cu­tor of the Tula re­gion also com­plained that local ­judges were il­le­gally drop­ping the cases of re­cid­i­vists and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals and send­ing these peo­ple to the col­lec­tives for re­form. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 1278, l. 14. 26. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 977, l. 183. 27. Ibid., l. 13. 28. The pe­ti­tion ­argued that “he ad­mit­ted a mis­take in his intern­ship ( prak­ti­ ches­kaia ra­bota), but it would be un­rea­son­able to de­prive him of free­dom.” GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6669, l. 143. 29. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6456, l. 121. 30. The Altai re­gional court, for ex­am­ple, es­ti­mated that 40 per­cent of the pe­ti­tions for peer re­form that col­lec­tives sent the ­courts were “ground­less.” GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 977, ll. 12–13. 31. Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from 50 RSFSR re­gional govern­ments, the USSR Pro­cu­racy re­ported that ­courts ac­cepted 91 per­cent of the ­soft-line pe­ti­tions that ­obshchestvennost’ sub­mit­ted in 1959. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 74. 32. In es­pe­cially egre­gious cases of over­sight, local ­courts ­granted a ­soft-line sen­tence to a ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan who had shot a woman in the back dur­ing a ­street cor­ner ram­page and a man who had com­mit­ted mur­der “from base mo­tives.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, ll. 28–29; and GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 47. 33. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 20. 34. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 322, l. 3. 35. Ibid. 36. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 213. 37. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 322, l. 7. 38. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, ll. 9–10. 39. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, l. 193. 40. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 49. 41. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 346, l. 37. 42. The rate of re­cid­i­vism for crim­i­nals who re­ceived con­di­tional sen­tences and were trans­ferred to work­places in 1959 was given as only 1.1 per­cent, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion re­leased by 15 re­gional govern­ments of the RSFSR. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 75. 43. Ibid., l. 82. 44. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 322, l. 2.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

256



Notes to pages 178–181

45. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 172. 46. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 977, l. 166. 47. ­Rather than being a mat­ter for col­lec­tive dis­cus­sion, the ­Arkhangel’sk po­lice sent local fac­tory di­rec­tors pre­printed peer re­form pe­ti­tions and form let­ters in­di­cat­ing the ­collective’s de­sire to carry out re­form and re­ed­uc­ a­tion ef­forts and in­structed them only to sign them and send them back. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 74. 48. “Fre­quently there are cases,” the Vo­logda Re­gional Col­lege of Law­yers noted, “in which the ­friends and drink­ing bud­dies (sobutyl’niki) of the ac­cused try to sway the col­lec­tive and add any false­hood they can in order to save their ­friend.” GARF, f. A-577, op. 1, d. 118, l. 182. In­flu­ence ped­dling and ma­nip­u­la­ tion were so wide­spread that the Sec­re­tary of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Kom­so­mol, at a 1960 Ple­num, or­dered local Kom­so­mol or­gan­iza­tions “to put an end to at­tempts by bud­dies (druzhki ), rel­a­tives, and ac­quain­tances to save crim­i­nals from re­spon­sibil­ity by sub­vert­ing the opin­ion of the labor col­lec­tive.” ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 101. 49. To se­cure the ­soft-lining of one of his work­ers, the di­rec­tor of a col­lec­tive farm in the Kirov re­gion ­forged a peer re­form pe­ti­tion, com­plete with the sig­na­ tures of 1,055 col­lec­tive farm­ers, ask­ing the court to ­soft-line a man con­victed of pre­med­i­tated mur­der (GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6669, l. 143). In an­other ex­am­ple, the sec­re­tary of a local dis­trict ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee ­talked the col­lec­tive of the “Thirty-Six Years of Oc­to­ber” coop­er­a­tive (artel’) into tak­ing his ­driver into its care even ­though this man had sto­len 32,000 ru­bles from them. The ­cooperative’s pe­ti­tion asked the court “to give our com­rade to the joint care ( po­ruka) of our col­lec­tive, but if that is im­pos­sible, be­cause of the se­ver­ity of the crime that he has com­mit­ted, then ­lighten his sen­tence.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, l. 137. 50. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 978, l. 97. 51. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6199, ll. 219–220. 52. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, l. 135. One ­worker, even ­though he had never re­turned to the fac­tory col­lec­tive to which he was orig­i­nally trans­ferred, com­mit­ted an­other crime and the fac­tory again pe­ti­tioned for his ­soft-lining. Pon­der­ing the ques­tion of why a col­lec­tive had pe­ti­tioned the ­courts for the peer re­form of a re­peat of­fender the Pro­cu­racy re­sponded: “The col­lec­tive did not know him ­really well and they did it sim­ply out of pity.” GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 48. 53. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 160. The Vo­logda Re­gional Col­lege of Law­yers wrote to the RSFSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters: “Sev­eral col­lec­tives mis­ ta­kenly con­sider that their work­ers are al­ways in­no­cent, what­ever crime they may have com­mit­ted. They think that it is nec­es­sary to res­cue [their com­rade] by any means.” GARF, f. A-577, op. 1, d. 118, l. 182. 54. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 11. 55. For more on the crit­i­cism/­self-criticism rit­ual in So­viet life, see J. Arch Getty, “Sa­mok­ri­tika Rit­u­als in the Sta­lin­ist Cen­tral Com­mit­tee, 1933–1938,” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 1 (1999): 49–70; and ­Alexei Ko­jev­ni­kov, “Rit­u­als of Sta­lin­ist Cul­ture at Work: Sci­ence and the Games of ­Intra-Party De­moc­racy circa 1948,” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 1 (1998): 25–52. 56. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 51.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 181–186



257

57. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 978, l. 57; and GARF, f. A-577, op.1, d. 118, l. 182. 58. Ibid. 59. In other in­stances, the ­offender’s crime it­self “was never dis­cussed” in the as­sem­bly, a move that de­stroyed the ­assembly’s ­anti-crime mes­sage and ­blunted the con­dem­na­tory and con­ver­sion­ary power of the meet­ing. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 977, l. 183. 60. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, l. 135. 61. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 21. 62. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 977, l. 183. 63. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 465, l. 51. 64. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 493, l. 41. 65. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 171. 66. For ex­am­ple, a local pros­e­cu­tor de­layed trans­fer­ring an un­em­ployed man for a month and a half until he had found a job to whose col­lec­tive his re­form could then be en­trusted. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, l. 104. 67. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 493, l. 41. 68. GARF, f. A-353, op. 13, d. 978, l. 97. 69. GARF, f. A-577, op. 1, d. 116, l. 212. 70. Ibid. 71. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 333, l. 104. In some cases, the labor col­lec­tive re­fused to ac­cept vi­o­lent of­fend­ers back into their col­lec­tive de­spite court or­ders that man­dated them to their care. For ex­am­ple, a hoo­li­gan who had se­verely ­beaten a fel­low col­lec­tive ­farmer and was re­leased by the court for re­form and re­ed­u­ca­tion ( per­evos­pit­a­nie) was re­fused re­entry to the farm by his fel­low farm­ers. It ­turned out that the di­rec­tors of the col­lec­tive farm had never dis­cussed the pe­ti­tion with the other col­lec­tive farm­ers, but had just ­signed it them­selves under pres­sure from the ­hooligan’s rel­a­tives. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6199, ll. 219–220. 72. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 351, l. 16. 73. GARF, f. 9547, op. 1, d. 1311, ll. 332–333. 74. The USSR Pro­cu­racy com­plained that “not all col­lec­tives” treat the pro­cess of pe­ti­tion­ing for peer re­form “with the nec­es­sary se­ri­ous­ness.” GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6456, l. 121. 75. In the city of ­Komsomol’sk, a work col­lec­tive dis­cussed eight hoo­li­gans dur­ing a smok­ing break. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5199, l. 132. 76. GARF, f. A-461, op. 11, d. 493, ll. 17, 41. 77. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 47. 78. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6670, ll. 19, 30–31. 79. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, l. 30. 80. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 351, l. 247. 81. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, ll. 32–33. 82. GARF, f. 7523, op. 78, d. 1372, l. 10. 83. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, l. 43. 84. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 347, l. 204. 85. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 344, l. 144. 86. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, l. 36.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

258



Notes to pages 186–192

87. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 147, ll. 182–183. 88. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, ll. 43–44. 89. GARF, f. 7523, op. 75, d. 1582, l. 211. 90. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 197a, ll. 32–33. 91. GARF, f. 9474, op. 10, d. 147, l. 198. 92. Ibid., l. 147. 93. Ibid., ll. 182–183. 94. RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 470, l. 216. 95. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 322, l. 7. 96. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 44, l. 28. 97. Ibid., l. 29. 98. ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, ll. 214–215. 99. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 322, l. 8. 100. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45, d. 335, l. 45. 101. A ­leader in the Le­nin­grad ­branch of Zna­nie de­clared be­fore a con­fer­ence on com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity: “At one time there ap­peared a fash­ion among us to trans­fer crim­i­nals to their col­lec­tives for re­form. Here is a hoo­li­gan on the trol­ley. The po­lice ar­rest him and the court con­victs him, but the en­ter­prise inter­venes and takes him under its re­for­ma­tive in­flu­ence. This ­brought us great harm.” ­RGASPI, f. M-1, op. 2, d. 391, l. 171. 102. RGANI, f. 13, op. 1, d. 768, ll. 1–5. 103. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 44, l. 22. 104. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 6670, l. 53. 105. GARF, f. 9474, op. 1, d. 322, l. 5. 106. M. P. Ru­kod­a­nova, “Ne ­davat’ posh­chadu khu­lig­a­nam!” Smena, no. 16 (1961): 16. 107. V. Gusev, “Etogo tre­buet narod,” Smena, no. 17 (1961): 30. 108. Ibid. 109. “Zhizn’ i ­smert’ ­Grigor’eva,” Smena, no. 18 (1961): 22. 110. I. Grish­a­nin, “Vdum­chivo ­podkhodit’ k naz­na­che­niiu nak­a­za­niia,” So­vet­s­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 23 (1961): 3. 111. Ibid. 112. G. Anash­kin, “Gu­ma­nizm so­vets­kogo za­kona,” So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia, no. 24 (1961): 2. 113. Ibid. 114. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 5206, l. 25. 115. GARF, f. 7523, op. 45a, d. 30, ll. 123–124. 116. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 4031, ll. 92–93. 117. Yoram Gor­lizki, “Po­lic­ing ­Post-Stalin So­ci­ety: The Mi­lit­siia and Pub­lic Order under Khrush­chev,” Ca­hiers du monde russe, no. 2–3 (2003): 477–478. For more on the Nov­o­cher­kassk Riot, see Sam­uel H. Baron, ­Bloody Sat­ur­day in the So­viet Union, Nov­o­cher­kassk, 1962 (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001). 118. “Mol­o­dye ­stroiteli kom­mu­nizma, vy­soko nes­ite zna­mia Le­nina! Rech’ tov­a­rish­cha N. S. Khrush­cheva na XIV s”ezda Kom­so­mola 19 apre­lia 1962 goda,” ­Pravda, April 21, 1962, 2.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line short

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 192–197



259

119. ­Quoted in Anash­kin, “Gu­ma­nizm so­vets­kogo za­kona,” 3. 120. For in­for­ma­tion on the de­cree al­low­ing the dis­tri­bu­tion of rub­ber trun­ cheons, tear gas, and hand­cuffs, see RGANI, f. 13, op. 2, d. 435, ll. 55–56. For the RSFSR MVD order on arm­ing units with rub­ber trun­cheons, see ibid., ll. 57–59. For the RSFSR MVD in­struc­tions spec­ify­ing how the rub­ber trun­cheons are to be used, see ibid., ll. 63–64. 121. Ibid., ll. 57–59. 122. Ibid., ll. 63–64. 123. Ibid., ll. 68–69. 124. Ibid., l. 73. 125. An en­gi­neer, at a sim­i­lar meet­ing, ­closed his re­marks by stat­ing: “It would be good to carry out some pub­lic shoot­ings of the more in­vet­e­rate hoo­li­ gans.” Ibid. 126. Ibid., l. 70. 127. Ibid., l. 74. 128. Ibid., l. 74. 129. The sec­re­tary of a fac­tory Party cell in Vlad­i­vos­tok ex­claimed: “We are build­ing com­mu­nism and we speak out ­strongly ­against the use of rub­ber trun­ cheons and hand­cuffs.” After being ­strongly crit­i­cized at the meet­ing, the Party sec­re­tary with­drew his ear­lier ob­jec­tions and sup­ported the ar­ma­ment pol­icy. Ibid., l. 71. 130. At a meet­ing at a river­boat sta­tion, four work­ers ex­pressed their dis­ sent: “It is im­pos­sible to intro­duce trun­cheons be­cause not every po­lice­man can be ­trusted to use them prop­erly.” Ibid. 131. Ibid., ll. 82–84. 132. Ibid., l. 80. 133. Ibid., ll. 80–82. The 1965 MOOP RSFSR re­port ­stated that po­lice used their trun­cheons in­cor­rectly in only 47 cases (less than 1 per­cent of cases). The re­port did not elab­orate on the pun­ish­ment ­handed out to the er­rant po­lice­men. 134. For more on ­Khrushchev’s ­anti-parasite cam­paign, see ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick, “So­cial Par­a­sites: How ­Tramps, Idle Youth, and Busy En­tre­pren­eurs Im­peded the So­viet March to Com­mu­nism,” Ca­hiers du monde russe, no. 1–2 (2006): 377– 408; Har­old Ber­man, Jus­tice in the USSR: An Inter­pre­ta­tion of So­viet Law (Cam­ bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1963), 291–298; Leon Lip­son, “The Fu­ture Be­longs to . . . Par­a­sites?” Prob­lems of Com­mu­nism, no. 3 (1963): 1–9; Leon Lip­son, “Hosts and Pests: The Fight ­against Par­a­sites,” in The So­viet Po­lit­ic­ al ­System, ed. R. Cor­nell (Engle­wood ­Cliffs, NJ: Pren­tice Hall, 1970), 323–332; R. Beer­man, “The Par­a­sites Law,” So­viet Stud­ies, no. 2 (1961): 191–205; and Rus­sell E. Bur­ford, “Get­ting the Bugs Out of So­cial­ist Le­gal­ity: The Case of Jo­seph Brod­sky and a ­Decade of So­viet ­Anti-Parasite Leg­is­la­tion,” The ­American Jour­nal of Com­par­a­tive Law, no. 3 (1974): 465–508. 135. For this and many other strik­ing in­sights, see Ste­phen Bitt­ner, The Many Lives of ­Khrushchev’s Thaw: Ex­pe­ri­ence and Mem­ory in ­Moscow’s Arbat (Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008), 1–18. 136. For more on the up­roar over the 1962 Ma­nezh ex­hibit, see Pris­cilla John­son and Le­o­pold La­bedz, eds., Khrush­chev and the Arts: The Pol­it­ ics of So­viet

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

one line short

260



Notes to pages 198–201

Cul­ture, 1962–1964 (Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965); Nina Mo­leva, Ma­nezh god 1962 (Mos­cow: So­vets­kii ­pisatel’, 1989); and Ernst Neiz­vest­nyi, Go­vorit Neiz­vest­nyi (Mos­cow: Ros­siis­koe fil­o­sofs­koe obsh­chestvo, 1992). 137. For more in­for­ma­tion on the ex­pan­sion of the death pen­alty, see Leon Lip­son, “Ex­e­cu­tion: Hall­mark of So­cial­ist Le­gal­ity,” Prob­lems of Com­mu­nism, no. 5 (1962): 21–25; Ger Van Den Berg, “The So­viet Union and the Death Pen­alty,” So­viet Stud­ies, no. 2 (1983): 54–74; and R. Beer­man, “Cap­i­tal Pun­ish­ment,” in En­cy­clo­pe­dia of So­viet Law, ed. F. J. M. Feld­brugge, vol. 1 (Dobbs Ferry, NY: ­Oceana Pub­li­ca­tions, 1973), 93–94.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Con­clu­sion 1. A. F. ­Afanas’ev and Iu. V. Gal­kin, Ros­siiss­kaia mi­lit­siia: krat­kaia khro­nika, ­oktiabr’ 1917–2000 (Sar­a­tov, Rus­sia: Sar­a­tovs­kii iu­rid­i­ches­kii in­sti­tut, 2001), 131. 2. “Ob usi­le­nii ot­vetst­ven­nosti za khu­li­ganstvo,” Ved­o­mosti Verk­hov­nogo So­veta SSSR, no. 30 (1966): 582–586. For in­for­ma­tion on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this de­cree in the RSFSR, see GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 522, ll. 1–18. 3. For the gen­e­sis of the 1966 ­anti-hooligan de­cree, see Peter H. Sol­o­mon, Jr., Crim­i­nol­o­gists and Crim­i­nal Pol­icy: Spe­cial­ists in ­Policy-Making (New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1978), 81–90. 4. See Peter H. Ju­viler, Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Law and Order: Pol­it­ ics and So­cial ­Change in the USSR (New York: Free Press, 1976), 84. 5. For the use of trun­cheons, see An­drei Amal­rik, In­vol­un­tary Jour­ney to Si­b e­ria, trans. Mania Ha­rari and Max Hay­ward (New York: Har­court Brace Jo­van­o­vich, 1970). 6. “Ob usi­le­nii ot­vetst­ven­nosti za khu­li­ganstvo,” 584. 7. In the RSFSR, the num­ber of con­vic­tions for hoo­li­gan­ism in­creased 128 per­cent, in­creas­ing from 77,359 con­vic­tions in 1965 to 176,734 in 1966. GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 522, l. 2. 8. For in­for­ma­tion on the post-1966 petty hoo­li­gan cam­paign in the RSFSR, see GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 498, ll. 1–29; and GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 514, ll. 1–33. 9. See V. M. Sus­lov, “Deiatel’nost’ or­ga­nov vnu­tren­nikh del s ser­e­diny 50-kh do na­chala 80-kh godov,” in Po­lit­siia i mi­lit­siia Ros­sii: stra­nitsy is­to­rii, ed. A. V. ­ ich, A. N. Dugin, and A. Ia. Mal­y­gin (Mos­cow: Nauka, 1995), 282. Vlad­i­mir­ov 10. See the de­cree “O por­i­adke prim­e­ne­niia ukaza Verk­hov­nogo So­veta SSSR ot 26 iiu­lia 1966 goda ‘Ob usi­le­nii ot­vetst­ven­nosti za ­khuliganstvo’” Ved­o­mosti Verk­hov­nogo So­veta SSSR, no. 30 (1966): 587. 11. G. S. Sar­k i­s ov, Pre­d u­p rezh­d e­n ie nar­u ­s he­n ii obsh­c hest­v en­n ogo por­i ­a dka (Ere­van, Ar­me­nia: Aia­stan, 1972), 24. 12. “O por­i­adke prim­e­ne­niia Ukaza Verk­hov­nogo So­veta SSSR ot 26 iiu­lia 1966 goda ‘Ob usi­le­nii ot­vetst­ven­nosti za khu­li­ganstvo,’” 587. 13. For more on the role of ­obshchestvennost’, see R. S. Mu­lu­kaev and N. N. Kar­ta­shov, Mi­lit­siia Ros­sii: ­istoriko-pravovoi ­ocherk, 1917–1993 (Orel, Rus­sia: Oka, 1995), 173–175. 14. For the prac­ti­cal­ity of Brezh­nev in com­par­i­son with Khrush­chev, see Ju­viler, Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Law and Order, 86.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 202–204



261

15. See Sbor­nik dok­u­men­tov po is­to­rii ugo­lov­nogo ­zakonodatel’stva SSSR i RSFSR, 1953–1991 (Kazan, Rus­sia: ­Izdatel’stvo ka­zans­kogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1992), 91. 16. See GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 498, l. 34; GARF, f. 9474, op. 32, d. 21, l. 22; GARF, f. A-428, op. 3, d. 514, l. 28; and A. A. Gert­sen­zon, Ugo­lov­noe pravo i sot­sio­ lo­giia (Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1970), 92. 17. Out of these ob­ser­va­tions, a new sub­field of fam­ily crim­i­nol­ogy was born that ex­plored the con­nec­tion ­between do­mes­tic dis­or­der and de­vi­ant be­hav­ior. For in­for­ma­tion on “fam­ily crim­i­nol­ogy,” see D. A. Shes­ta­kov, Se­mei­ naia kri­min­o­lo­giia: ­sem’ia, kon­flikt, pre­stu­ple­nie (St. Pe­ters­burg: ­Izdatel’stvo ­S-Peterburgskogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1996). 18. Peter H. Sol­o ­m on, Jr., “Crim­i ­n al­i za­t ion, De­c rim­i ­n al­i za­t ion, and ­Post-Communist Tran­si­tion: The Case of the Rus­sian Fed­er­a­tion” (Paper pre­ pared for the sym­po­sium “Build­ing Jus­tice in Eu­ro­pean Tran­si­tions: Pro­cesses of Crim­i­nal­iza­tion ­within Newly Emerg­ing Dem­o­cratic So­ci­eties” Uni­ver­sity of Stir­ling, Scot­land, De­cem­ber 10–11, 2009), 10–11. In 1997, ­Russia’s ­anti-hooligan leg­is­la­tion was ­changed so that only acts in­volv­ing “light body blows” and “minor” in­ju­ries to the vic­tim would be con­sid­ered as hoo­li­gan­ism. These ­changes were meant to ex­clude mere drunk and dis­or­derly con­duct from being clas­sified as hoo­li­gan­ism. Later, start­ing from 2003, ­Russia’s crim­i­nal code def­i­ ni­tion of hoo­li­gan­ism was ­changed so that only “crude vi­o­la­tions of pub­lic order” using “a ­weapon or an ob­ject used as a ­weapon” could be tried as hoo­li­ gan­ism. This last ­change pro­duced a drop in ­Russia’s hoo­li­gan con­vic­tions from 114,052 in 2003 to 24,810 in 2004, a 459.7 per­cent re­duc­tion. I would like to thank Peter Sol­o­mon for shar­ing his in­sights with me about the shift­ing def­i­ni­ tion of ­post-communist hoo­li­gan­ism and for al­low­ing me to read and cite his un­pub­lished paper on this topic. 19. N. Po­pova and A. Ri­skin, “Cra­ni­o­cer­e­bral Res­o­lu­tion,” Ne­zav­i­si­maia ga­zeta, April 1, 2004, in Cur­rent Di­gest of the ­Post-Soviet Press, no. 13 (2004): 14. 20. K. Fil­a­tov, “Just Or­di­nary ­Close-Cropped Young Peo­ple,” Vre­mia no­vos­tei, Sep­tem­ber 20, 2004, in Cur­rent Di­gest of the ­Post-Soviet Press, no. 38 (2004): 15. 21. V. Mat­veev, “Mur­der of Young Tajik Girl ­Serves as ­Wake-Up Call to Au­thor­ities,” Vre­mia no­vos­tei, Feb­ru­ary 11, 2004, in Cur­rent Di­gest of the ­PostSoviet Press, no. 6 (2004): 6. 22. Sa­lim­jon Aiou­bov and Bruce Pan­nier, “Ver­dict in Trial of Tajik ­Girl’s Mur­der ­Shocks Pub­lic,” Radio Free Lib­erty/Radio Eu­rope, March 23, 2006, http://www.rferl.org/fea­tu­re­sar­ti­cle/2006/03/1b581aac-d61d-40f5-859996e220df54e1.html/ (ac­cessed March 24, 2006). 23. T. Lok­shina, ed., Na­tion­al­ism, Xeno­pho­bia and In­tol­er­ance in Con­tem­po­rary Rus­sia (Mos­cow: Mos­cow Hel­sinki Group, 2002), 16, 176. 24. Po­pova and Ri­skin, “Cra­ni­o­cer­eb ­ ral Res­o­lu­tion,” 14. 25. For the case of a man who was ­charged with hoo­li­gan­ism for tell­ing a Mon­go­lian train con­duc­tor that “the Chi­nese have be­come worse than the ­Americans,” see RGANI, f. 5, op. 30, d. 429, l. 2. 26. “Rus­sian au­thor­ities still do not re­gard eth­ni­cally based ­crimes as a prob­lem of na­tional scope,” an ar­ti­cle on ex­tre­mist vi­ol­ ence ob­served. “They pre­fer to down­play them as or­di­nary, ­run-of-the-mill hoo­li­gan­ism.” Fil­a­tov, “Just Or­di­nary ­Close-Cropped Young Peo­ple,” 15.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

262



Notes to pages 204–206

27. For an ex­am­ple, see Liud­mila Alek­seeva, Is­to­riia in­ak­o­mys­liia v SSSR (New York: Khro­nika Press, 1984), 339. 28. For in­for­ma­tion on the man who was ar­rested for petty hoo­li­gan­ism for rip­ping up a pic­ture of Lu­ka­shenko at an an­ni­ver­sary of the Cher­no­byl dis­as­ter, see ­United ­States De­part­ment of State, “Coun­try Re­port on Human ­Rights Prac­t ices 2000: Bel­a rus,” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2000/ eur/682.htm (ac­cessed Oc­to­ber 2, 2011). For in­for­ma­tion on the use of petty hoo­li­gan­ism to de­tain dem­on­stra­tors pro­test­ing the 2006 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, see Vince Craw­ley, “US, Eu­rope Call for Re­lease of ­Jailed Bel­arus Pro­tes­tors,” Bel­a rus News and Anal­y ­s is, http://www.data.minsk.by/bel­a ­r us­n ews/­ 032006/441.html (ac­cessed March 22, 2012). 29. ­Sherry Ric­chi­ardi, “Under Siege,” ­American Jour­nal­ism Re­view, http:// www.ajr.org/ar­ti­cle.asp?id=806 (ac­cessed March 22, 2012). 30. For in­for­ma­tion on the Ba­bitk­sii in­ci­dent, see V. Mak­si­mov, “Ban on a Pro­fes­sion?” Novye Iz­ves­tiia, Sep­tem­ber 3, 2004, in Cur­rent Di­gest of the ­Post-Soviet Press, no. 35 (2004): 8. 31. Al­ex­an­der Bra­ter­sky, “Irate Cops Jail Rap­per for Hoo­li­gan­ism,” The Mos­cow Times, Au­gust 4, 2010. http://www.the­mos­cow­times.com/news/ ar­ti­cle/­irate-cops-jail-rapper-for-hooliganism/411638.html (ac­cessed Au­gust 6, 2010). 32. ­Sof’ia Dor­o­nina, “Ser­gei So­bi­a­nin na­mek­nul zhe­laiush­chim ­protestovat’ na khu­li­ganstvo,” First­news.ru, March 1, 2012. http://www.first­news.ru/news/­ so­ci­ety/­palatka-nomer-nol/ (ac­cessed March 18, 2012). The word “Mai­dan” de­rives from the Ukrai­nian for In­de­pen­dence ­Square (Mai­dan nez­a­lezh­nosti) and is used in Rus­sian dis­course to refer to the mass pro­tests of the ­Orange Rev­o­lu­ tion, es­pe­cially the oc­cu­pa­tion of pub­lic space ­through tent cit­ies. 33. Timur Rak­hi­mov, “Pussy Riot za­der­zhali za khu­li­ganstvo,” Utro.ru, March 4, 2012. http://www.utro.ru/ar­ti­cles/2012/03/04/1032429.shtml (ac­ cessed March 16, 2012). Pussy Riot has held un­au­thor­ized per­for­mances on Red ­Square, out­side of a ­prison, and in a sub­way sta­tion; has ­openly ­called for an Arab ­Spring–style move­ment in Rus­sia; and has ­mocked Putin for being ­scared of the peo­ple. 34. Alek­sandr Boiko, “Ob­na­zhiv­shie­sia na vy­bo­rakh fem­i­nistki nak­a­zany za khu­li­ganstvo,” ­Komsomol’skaia ­pravda, March 4, 2012. http://kp.ru/on­line/ news/1097881 (ac­cessed March 20, 2012). FEMEN has ­achieved glo­bal no­to­ri­ety for tak­ing off their ­clothes and pro­test­ing seem­ingly any and all is­sues, from sex tour­ism and the lack of pub­lic toi­lets in Kiev to Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Ber­lus­coni and the use of an­o­rexic mod­els in fash­ion shows. 35. The ar­rested “petty hoo­li­gan,” Alek­sei Vor­sin, is a blog­ger and out­ spoken local ad­vo­cate for “hon­est elec­tions.” For in­for­ma­tion on this case, see “Or­ga­niz­a­tora flesh­moba v Khab­a­rovske za­der­zhali za to, chto mu­so­ril tsve­tami,” ­Komsomol’skaia ­Pravda, March 11, 2012. http://hab.kp.ru/daily/­ 25848.5/2818342/ (ac­cessed March 25, 2012). 36. Julie A. Cor­win, “Are Soc­cer Hoo­li­gans Being Used by the Krem­lin?” Radio Free Eu­rope/Radio Lib­erty, Sep­tem­ber 19, 2005. http://www.rferl.org/ fea­tu­re­sar­ti­cle/2005/9/E107C9F7-58E0-48E9-9112-31A1B90C0DAB.html/ (ac­ cessed Sep­tem­ber 20, 2005).

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Notes to pages 206–207



263

37. The Na­tional Bolshe­viks are a rad­i­cal youth move­ment ­created in 1994 by counter­cul­ture icon and under­ground au­thor Ed­u­ard Lim­o­nov, Eu­ra­sia­nist po­lit­ic­ al ideo­logue Alek­sandr Dugin, and rock musi­cians Egor Lev­tov and Ser­gei Ku­rik­hin. The move­ment has a ­self-proclaimed mem­ber­ship of ­around 30,000 to 50,000 and has a sub­stan­tial pres­ence in the prov­inces as well as in the two cap­i­tals. For more in­for­ma­tion on the Na­tional Bolshe­vik Party and Ed­u­ard Lim­o­nov, see ­Markus Ma­thyl, “The Na­tional Bolshe­vik Party and Arc­to­gaia: Two ­Neo-Fascist Grou­pus­cules in the ­Post-Soviet Space,” Pat­terns of Prej­u­dice, no. 3 (2002): 62–76; Vlad­i­mir Sapon, “Apos­tles of the Other Rus­sia: Mi­khail Bak­u­nin and Ed­u­ard Lim­o­nov on Paths of Rad­i­cal So­cial Trans­for­ma­tion,” Rus­sian Pol­i­tics and Law, no. 6 (2005): 43–61; and Al­ex­an­der Verk­hov­sky, “UltraNationalists at the Onset of ­Putin’s Rule,” Na­tion­al­ities ­Papers, no. 4 (2000): 707–722. 38. For ­Khrushchev’s in­fa­mous ­United Na­tions ­shoe-banging in­ci­dent, see ­William Taub­man, Khrush­chev: The Man and his Era (New York: W. W. Nor­ton, 2003), 475–476, 657–658. For ­Yeltsin’s ­drunken con­duct­ing and other in­ci­dents, see Leon Aron, Yelt­sin: A Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Life (New York: St. ­Martin’s Press, 2000), 344–348, 575. On Zhir­i­nov­sky, see Ser­gei Ki­bal­nik, Zhir­i­nov­sky as a Na­tion­al­ist ­Kitsch Art­ist (Wash­ing­ton, DC: Ken­nan In­sti­tute for Ad­vanced Rus­sian Stud­ies, 1996); and Gra­ham ­Frazer and ­George Lan­celle, Ab­so­lute Zhir­in ­ ov­sky: A Trans­ par­ent View of the Dis­tin­guished Rus­sian States­man (New York: Pen­guin Books, 1994). 39. For Zhir­i­nov­sky being in­ves­ti­gated for hoo­li­gan­ism, see “Zhir­i­nov­sky Faces Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion for Hoo­li­gan­ism,” BBC News On­line, March 18, 1998. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/eu­rope/66655.stm (ac­cessed Oc­to­ber 2, 2011). 40. For his stunt, seven mem­bers of the Na­tional Bolshe­viks were ­charged with ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism. For more in­for­ma­tion, see O. Ka­shin, “The ­Sickle and Vi­o­lence Every­where,” Kom­mer­sant, De­cem­ber 18, 2004, 1, in Cur­rent Di­gest of the ­Post-Soviet Press, no. 51 (2004): 5–6; V. Per­ek­rest, “I Hate You, Bolshe­viks! Pros­e­cu­tor ­Shouts at Moth­ers of Con­victed NBP Mem­bers,” Iz­ves­tiia, De­cem­ber 21, 2004, 1, in Cur­rent Di­gest of the ­Post-Soviet Press, no. 51 (2004): 6. For ­Limonov’s own de­scrip­tion of the “storm­ing” of the Min­is­try of ­Health, see Ed­u­ard Lim­o­ nov, “You Can Kiss Your Tzar [sic] on His Ass!” ­NBP-INFO, http://naz­bol .cc/2004/09/­kiss-your-tzar-on-his-ass/ (ac­cessed March 22, 2012). 41. The Na­t ional Bolshe­v iks also hit Mi­k hail Gor­b a­c hev and ­P rince ­Charles in the face with flow­ers. For more on the Na­tional Bolshe­viks and their “vel­vet ter­ror,” see Vic­tor Yas­mann, “Na­tional Bolshe­viks: The Party of Di­rect Ac­tion,” Radio Free Eu­rope/Radio Lib­erty, April 29, 2005, http://www.rferl .org/con­tent/­ar­ti­cle/1058689.html (ac­cessed Oc­to­ber 2, 2011). 42. Ira Ios­e­bash­vili, “Putin Calls US Mon­e­tary Pol­icy ‘Hoo­li­gan­ism,’” The Wall ­Street Jour­nal, April 20, 2011. http://on­line.wsj.com/ar­ti­cle/­BT-CO20110420–707680.html (ac­cessed June 20, 2011).

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved. LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:52:52.

Bib­liog­ra­phy Archi­val ­Sources

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

State ­Archive of the Rus­sian Fed­er­a­tion (GARF) (Gos­u­darst­ven­nyi ark­hiv Ros­siis­koi Fed­e­rat­sii) Fond A-259: Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (Sovet mini­strov RSFSR) Fond A-353: Min­is­try of Jus­tice of the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (Mini­sterstvo ius­tit­sii RSFSR) Fond A-385: Su­preme So­viet of the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (Verk­hov­nyi Sovet RSFSR) Fond A-428: Su­preme Court of the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (Verk­hov­nyi sud RSFSR) Fond A-461: Pro­cu­racy of the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (Pro­ku­ra­tura RSFSR) Fond A-577: Ju­rid­i­cal Com­mis­sion of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of the Rus­sian Re­pub­lic (Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia ko­mis­siia pri So­vete Mini­strov RSFSR) Fond R-5451: ­A ll-Union Cen­t ral Coun­c il of Trade Un­i ons (Vse­s oiuz­n yi ­tsentral’nyi sovet ­professional’nykh soiu­zov) Fond R-7523: Su­preme So­viet of the USSR (Verk­hov­nyi Sovet SSSR) Fond R-8131: Pro­cu­racy of the USSR (Pro­ku­ra­tura SSSR) Fond R-9401: Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs of the USSR (Mini­sterstvo vnu­tren­nykh del SSSR) Fond R-9415: The Main Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion of the USSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs (Glav­noe up­rav­le­nie mi­lit­sii Mini­sterstva vnu­tren­nykh del SSSR) Fond R-9474: Su­preme Court of the USSR (Verk­hov­nyi sud SSSR) Fond R-9492: Min­is­try of Jus­tice of the USSR (Mini­sterstvo ius­tit­siia SSSR) Fond R-9547: ­All-Union So­ci­ety for the Dis­semi­na­tion of Po­lit­i­cal and Sci­en­tific Knowl­edge (Vse­soiuz­noe obsh­chestvo Zna­nie)

265

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

page short before new design element

266



Bibliography

Cen­tral Mu­nic­i­pal ­Archive of the City of Mos­cow (TsMAM) (Tsentral’nyi ­munitsipal’nyi ark­hiv g. ­Moskvy) Fond 493: Pre­sid­ium of the Mos­cow City Col­lege of De­fense Law­yers (Pre­zid­ium Mos­kovs­koi go­rods­koi kol­le­gii zash­chit­ni­kov) Fond 1078: ­People’s ­Courts of the So­viet Dis­trict (Na­rod­nye sudy So­vets­kogo ­raiona) Fond 1918: ­People’s ­Courts of the Dzer­zhinsk Dis­trict (Na­rod­nye sudy Dzer­ zhins­kogo ­raiona) Fond 2842: Pro­cu­racy of the City of Mos­cow (Pro­ku­ra­tura g. ­Moskvy) Rus­sian State ­Archive of Re­cent His­tory (RGANI) (Ros­siis­kii gos­ud ­ arst­ven­nyi ark­hiv no­vei­shei is­to­rii) Fond 2: Tran­scripts and Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Ma­te­ri­als of the Ple­nary Meet­ings of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Party of the So­viet Union (Sten­o­ grammy i ma­ter­i­aly Plen­u­mov TsK KPSS) Fond 5: In­sti­tu­tional Ap­pa­ra­tus of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Party of the So­viet Union (Ap­pa­rat TsK KPSS) Fond 13: Rus­sian Bu­reau of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Party of the So­viet Union (Biuro TsK KPSS po RSFSR) Rus­sian State ­Archive of the Econ­omy (RGAE) (Ros­siis­kii gos­u­darst­ven­nyi ark­hiv ekon­o­miki ) Fond 7733: Min­is­try of Fi­nance of the USSR (Mini­sterstvo fi­nan­sov SSSR) Rus­sian State ­Archive of ­Socio-Political His­tory (RGASPI) (Ros­siis­kii gos­u­darst­ven­nyi ark­hiv ­sotsial’no-politicheskoi is­to­rii) Fond M-1: ­All-Union Len­in­ist ­League of Com­mu­nist Youth (Vse­soiuz­nyi Le­nins­kii kom­mu­nis­ti­ches­kii soiuz mol­o­de­zhi) Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

So­viet News­papers and Jour­nals Ag­i­ta­tor ­Iunost’ Iz­ves­tiia Kom­so­mols­kaia ­pravda Krok­o­dil Li­ter­a­tur­naia ga­zeta Og­o­nek ­Oktiabr’ Ot­vety na vo­prosy tru­di­ash­chikh­sia ­Pravda Trud Ve­cher­ni­aia ­Moskva Ved­o­mosti Verk­hov­nogo So­veta RSFSR Ved­o­mosti Verk­hov­nogo So­veta SSSR Sot­sia­lis­ti­ches­kaia ­zakonnost’ So­vets­kaia ius­tit­siia

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

Bibliography



267

So­vets­kaia Ros­siia So­vets­koe gos­u­dartsvo i pravo Uche­nye za­pi­ski Sar­a­tovs­kogo iu­rid­ic­ hes­kogo in­sti­tuta imeni D. I. Kurs­kogo Uche­nye za­pi­ski Vse­soiuz­nogo iu­rid­i­ches­kogo zaoch­nogo in­sti­tuta

Dic­tion­ar­ies and En­cy­clo­pe­dias

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Bal­daev, D. S., V. K. Belko, and I. M. Is­u­pov. ­Slovar’ ­tiuremno-lagerno-blatnogo zhar­gona. Mos­cow: Kraia ­Moskvy, 1992. . ­Slovar’ blat­nogo vo­rovs­kogo zhar­gona v dvukh to­makh. Mos­cow: Kom­pana, 1997. . Ta­tui­rovki zak­liu­chen­nykh. St. Pe­ters­burg: Lim­bus Press, 2001. Burch­field, R. W., ed. A Sup­ple­ment to The Ox­ford En­glish Dic­tion­ary, vol. 2. Ox­ford, UK: Cla­ren­don Press, 1976. Dal’, V. I. Tol­kovyi ­slovar’ zhi­vogo ve­lik­o­russ­kogo ia­zyka. St. Pe­ters­burg: M. O. Vol’f, 1909. Du­bi­a­gin, Iu. P., and E. A. Te­plits­kii. Krat­kii ­anglo-russkii i ­russkii-angliiskii ­slovar’ ugo­lov­nogo zhar­gona. Mos­cow: Terra terra, 1993. McMa­hon, Sean, and Jo O’ Don­og ­ hue. ­Brewer’s Dic­tion­ary of Irish ­Phrase and Fable. Lon­don: Wei­den­feld and Nic­ol­son, 2004. Par­tridge, Eric. A Dic­tion­ary of Slang and Un­con­ven­tional En­glish. New York: Rout­ledge, 1984. Raw­son, Hugh. ­Wicked Words: A Treas­ury of ­Curses, In­sults, ­Put-Downs, and Other For­merly Un­print­able Terms from the ­Anglo-Saxon Times to the ­Present. New York: Crown, 1989. ­Slovar’ sov­re­men­nogo russ­kogo li­ter­at­ ur­nogo ia­zyka. Mos­cow: Nauka, 1965. Vav­i ­lov, S. I., ed. ­B ol’shaia so­v ets­k aia ent­s ik­lo­pe­diia. Mos­cow: ­Izdatel’stvo ­Bol’shaia so­vets­kaia ent­sik­lo­pe­diia, 1949–1958. Volin, B. M., and D. N. Usha­kov, eds. Tol­kovyi ­slovar’ russ­kogo ia­zyka. Mos­cow: Gos­u ­d arst­v en­n oe ­i zdatel’stvo in­n os­t ra­n ykh i ­n atsional’nykh slo­v a­r ei, 1940.

So­viet Crim­i­nal Codes, Legal Com­men­tar­ies, and Crim­i­nol­ogy An­dru­senko, E. A. “Po­ni­a­tie khu­li­ganstva i mery ­bor’by s nim.” Can­di­date diss., Tad­zhi­ki­stan State Uni­ver­sity, 1963. Fil­a­novs­kii, I. G., and I. I. So­lod­kin. ­Bor’ba s khu­li­ganst­vom. Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1957. Fur­senko, A. A., ed. Pre­zid­ium TsK KPSS, 1954–1964. Mos­cow: Ross­pen, 2006. Gert­sen­zon, A. A. Ugo­lov­noe pravo i sot­sio­lo­giia: pro­blemy sot­sio­lo­gii ugo­lov­nogo prava i ugo­lov­noi pol­i­tiki. Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1970. Gri­shaev, P. I. Pre­stu­ple­niia pro­tiv por­i­adka up­rav­le­niia, obsh­chest­ven­noi bez­o­pas­nosti i obsh­chest­ven­nogo por­ia­ dka. Mos­cow: Mini­sterstvo Vyss­hego obraz­o­va­niia SSSR, 1957. Gri­shaev, P. I., and B. V. Zdrav­o­mys­lov, eds. Vo­prosy os­o­ben­noi ­chasti So­vets­kogo ugo­l ov­n ogo prava v UK RSFSR 1960 goda: ucheb­n oe pos­o ­b ie. Mos­c ow: ­Izdatel’stvo Vse­soiuz­nogo iu­rid­i­ches­kogo zaoch­nogo in­sti­tuta, 1962.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

268



Bibliography

Kok­u­rin, A. I., and N. V. Pe­trov, eds. GULAG (Glav­noe up­rav­le­nie la­ge­rei), 1917– 1960. Mos­cow: Mezh­du­na­rod­nyi fond “De­mok­ra­tiia,” 2000. Kom­men­ta­rii k Ugo­lov­nomu Ko­deksu RSFSR 1960 g. Le­nin­grad: ­Izdatel’stvo Le­nin­ grads­kogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1962. Kuz­net­sova, N. F. “Izu­che­nie i pre­du­prezh­de­nie khu­li­ganstva,” in A. A. Gert­sen­zon, ed., Kri­min­ol­o­giia. Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1968. . Os­vo­bozh­de­nie ot ugo­lov­noi ot­vetst­ven­nosti s per­eda­chei dela v tov­a­rish­ches­kikh su­dakh. Mos­cow: Iu­rid­ic­ hes­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1964. . Ugo­lov­naia ­otvetstvennost’ za nar­u­she­niia obsh­chest­ven­nogo por­i­adka. Mos­ cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1963. Na­rod­noe khoz­i­aistvo SSSR: sta­tis­ti­ches­kii ezh­e­god­nik. Mos­cow: Gos­u­darst­ven­noe sta­tis­ti­ches­koe ­izdatel’stvo, 1958–1965. Ni­kif­o­rov, B. S. ­Nauchno-prakticheskii ko­men­ta­rii ugo­lov­nogo ko­deksa RSFSR. Mos­ cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1964. Sbor­nik dok­u­men­tov po is­to­rii ugo­lov­nogo ­zakonodatel’stva SSSR i RSFSR: 1953– 1991. Kazan, Rus­sia: ­Izdatel’stvo Ka­zans­kogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1992. Sbor­nik post­anov­le­nii Plen­uma Verk­hov­nogo Suda RSFSR, 1961–1983. Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1984. Sbor­nik post­anov­le­nii Plen­uma Verk­hov­nogo Suda SSSR, 1924–1986. Mos­cow: Iu­rid­ic­ hes­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1987. Shar­go­rods­kii, M. D., and N. A. Bel­i­aev. So­vets­koe ugo­lov­noe pravo: ­chast’ os­o­ben­ naia. Mos­cow: Iu­rid­i­ches­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1962. Shes­ta­kov, D. A. Se­mei­naia kri­min­o­lo­giia: ­sem’ia, kon­flikt, pre­stu­ple­nie. St. Pe­ters­ burg: ­Izdatel’stvo ­S-Peterburgskogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1996. Trai­n in, A. N., ed. So­v ets­k oe ugo­l ov­n oe pravo: ­c hast’ os­o ­b en­n aia. Mos­c ow: ­Izdatel’stvo Mos­kovs­kogo uni­ver­si­teta, 1957. ­Ugolovno-Protsessual’nyi ko­deks RSFSR. Mos­cow: Iu­rid­ic­ hes­kaia li­ter­a­tura, 1962. Ugo­l ov­n yi ko­d eks RSFSR: ­o fitsial’noe iz­d a­n ie. Mos­c ow: Gos­u d ­ arst­v en­n oe ­izdatel’stvo so­vets­koe ­zakonodatel’stvo, 1933. Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

­Travel Lit­er­a­ture, Fic­tion, Me­moirs, and Jour­na­lis­tic Ac­counts Amal­rik, An­drei. In­vol­un­tary Jour­ney to Si­be­ria, Manya Ha­rari and Max Hay­ward, trans. New York: Har­court Brace Jo­van­o­vich, 1970. Crank­shaw, Ed­ward. Rus­sia with­out Sta­lin: The Emerg­ing Pat­tern. New York: Vi­king Press, 1956. Dom­brovs­kii, Iurii. “Za­pi­ski mel­kogo khu­li­ganka,” in Iurii Dom­brovs­kii: roman, ­pis’ma, esse. Yekat­er­ in­burg, Rus­sia: U fac­to­riia, 2000. ­Feifer, ­George. Jus­tice in Mos­cow. New York: Simon and ­Schuster, 1964. ­Hearns, C. V. Rus­sian As­sign­ment: A Po­lice­man Looks at Crime in the USSR. Lon­ don: Rob­ert Hale, 1962. Hin­dus, Mau­rice. ­Houses with­out a Roof: Rus­sia After 43 Years of Rev­o­lu­tion. New York: Dou­ble Day, 1961. ­Miller, ­Wright. Rus­sians as Peo­ple: A ­Unique Por­trait of Mod­ern Rus­sia, Its Land and Peo­ple. New York: E. P. Dut­ton, 1961. Sa­lis­bury, Har­ri­son. A New Rus­sia? New York: ­Harper, 1962. . To Mos­cow and Be­yond: A ­Reporter’s Nar­ra­tive. New York: ­Harper, 1960. . The ­Shook-Up Gen­er­at­ ion. New York: ­Harper, 1958.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

one line long

Bibliography



269

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Works on Rus­sian and So­viet His­tory Adler, Nanci. Be­yond the Gulag: Be­yond the So­viet ­System. New Bruns­wick, NJ: Trans­ac­tion, 2002. ­Afanas’ev, A. V., and Iu. V. Gal­kin. Ros­siis­kaia mi­lit­siia: krat­kaia khro­nika, ­oktiabr’ 1917–2000. Sar­a­tov, Rus­sia: Sar­a­tovs­kii iu­rid­i­ches­kii in­sti­tut, 2001. Alek­seeva, Liud­mila. Is­to­riia in­ak­o­mys­liia v SSSR. New York: Khro­nika Press, 1984. An­drusz, Greg­ory D. Hous­ing and Urban De­vel­op­ment in the USSR. Al­bany: State Uni­ver­sity of New York Press, 1984. An­nins­kii, Lev. Tri barda. Mos­cow: ­Tret’ia voina, 1999. Aron, Leon. Yelt­sin: A Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Life. New York: St. ­Martin’s Press, 2000. ­Barnes, Ste­ven A. Death and Re­demp­tion: The Gulag and the Shap­ing of So­viet So­ci­ety. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2011. Baron, Sam­uel. ­Bloody Sat­ur­day in the So­viet Union, Nov­o­cher­kassk, 1962. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001. Beda, A. M. “Kurs ­pravitel’stva na det­sen­tral­i­zat­siiu ­pravookhranitel’noi sis­temy v 1953–1958 gg,” in A. V. Vlad­i­mir­o­vich, A. N. Dugin, and A. Ia. Mal­y­gin, eds., Po­lit­siia i mi­lit­siia Ros­sii: stra­nitsy is­to­rii. Mos­cow: Nauka, 1995. Beer­man, R. “Cap­i­tal Pun­ish­ment,” in F. J. M. Feld­brugge, ed., En­cy­clo­pe­dia of So­viet Law. Dobbs Ferry, NY: ­Oceana, 1973. . “The Par­a­sites Law.” So­viet Stud­ies, no. 2 (1961): 191–205. Berg, Ger Van Den. “The So­viet Union and the Death Pen­alty.” So­viet Stud­ies, no. 2 (1983): 54–74. Ber­man, Har­old. Jus­tice in the USSR: An Inter­pre­ta­tion of So­viet Law. Cam­bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1963. Ber­man, Har­old, and James W. Spin­dler. “So­viet ­Comrades’ ­Courts.” Wash­ing­ton Law Re­view, no. 4 (1963): 842–910. Bitt­ner, Ste­phen V. The Many Lives of ­Khrushchev’s Thaw: Ex­pe­ri­ence and Mem­ory in ­Moscow’s Arbat. ­Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2008. ­Boiter, Al­bert. “The ­Comrades’ ­Courts: How Dur­able?” Prob­lems of Com­mu­nism, no. 2 (1965): 82–92. . “So­cial ­Courts in the USSR.” PhD diss., Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity, 1965. Bowen, James. So­viet Ed­u­ca­tion: Mak­a­renko and the Years of Ex­peri­ment. Mad­i­son: Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin Press, 1962. Brad­ley, Jo­seph. “Vol­un­tary As­so­ci­a­tions, Civic Cul­ture, and ­obshchestven­nost’ in Mos­cow,” in Edith W. ­Clowes, Sam­uel D. Kas­sow, and James L. West, eds., ­Between Tsar and Peo­ple: Ed­u­cated So­ci­ety and the Quest for Pub­lic Iden­tity in Late Im­pe­rial So­ci­ety. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1991. Bres­lauer, ­George. Khrush­chev and Brezh­nev as Lead­ers: Build­ing Au­thor­ity in So­viet Pol­i­tics. Bos­ton: Allen and Unwin, 1982. . “Khrush­chev Re­con­sid­ered,” in Ste­phen F. Cohen, Al­ex­an­der Rab­i­now­ itch, and Rob­ert Shar­let, eds., The So­viet Union since Sta­lin. Bloom­ing­ton: In­ di­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1980. Buck­ley, Mary. “The Un­told Story of Obsh­chest­ven­nitsa in the 1930s.” Eu­rope Asia Stud­ies, no. 4 (1996): 569–586.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

270



Bibliography

Bur­ford, Rus­sell. “Get­ting the Bugs Out of So­cial­ist Le­gal­ity: The Case of Jo­seph Brod­sky and a ­Decade of So­viet ­Anti-Parasite Leg­is­la­tion.” The ­American Jour­nal of Com­par­at­ ive Law, no. 3 (1974): 465–508. Cha­lidze, Va­le­rii. Ugo­lov­naia Ros­siia. New York: Khro­nika Press, 1977. Clark, Kat­e­rina. “Lit­tle He­roes and Big Deeds: Lit­er­a­ture Re­sponds to the First ­Five-Year Plan,” in ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick, ed., Cul­tural Rev­o­lu­tion in Rus­sia, 1928–1931. Bloom­ing­ton: In­di­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1978. Cohn, Ed­ward. “Sex and the Mar­ried Com­mu­nist: Fam­ily Trou­bles, Mar­i­tal In­fi­del­ity, and Party Dis­ci­pline in the Post­war USSR, 1945–64.” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 3 (2009): 429–450. Con­nor, Wal­ter D. De­vi­ance in So­viet So­ci­ety: Crime, De­lin­quency and Al­co­hol­ism. New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1969. Cra­veri, Marta, and Oleg Khlev­niuk. “Kri­zis ekon­o­miki MVD (ko­nets 1940-kh1950-e gody).” Ca­hiers du monde russe, no. 1–2 (1995): 179–190. Dob­son, Mir­iam. ­Khrushchev’s Cold Sum­mer: Gulag Re­turn­ees, Crime and the Fate of Re­form after Sta­lin. ­Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009. . “Show the Ban­dits No Mercy! Am­nesty, Crim­i­nal­ity and Pub­lic Re­sponses in 1953,” in Polly Jones, ed., The Di­lem­mas of ­De-Stalinization: Nego­tiat­ing Cul­tural and So­cial ­Change in the Khrush­chev Era. New York: Rout­ledge, 2005. Ed­el­man, Rob­ert. Se­ri­ous Fun: A His­tory of Spec­ta­tor Sport in the USSR. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1993. Elie, Marc. “Les an­ciens dét­en ­ us du Gou­lag: lib­ér­a­tions mas­sives, réin­ser­tion et ré­ha­bil­i­ta­tion dans ­l’URSS post­stal­i­nienne, 1953–1964.” PhD diss., ­L’École des ­hautes ­études en sci­ences so­ci­ales, 2007. Field, Deb­o­rah. “Ir­rec­on­cil­able Dif­fer­ences: Di­vorce and Con­cep­tions of Pri­vate Life in the Khrush­chev Era.” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 4 (1998): 599–613. . Pri­vate Life and Com­mu­nist Mo­ral­ity in ­Khrushchev’s Rus­sia. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Fitz­pa­trick, ­Sheila. “As­crib­ing Class: The Con­struc­tion of So­cial Iden­tity in So­viet Rus­sia.” The Jour­nal of Mod­ern His­tory, no. 4 (1993): 745–770. . The Cul­tural Front: Power and Cul­ture in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Rus­sia. ­Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 1992. . Every­day Sta­lin­ism: Or­di­nary Life in Ex­traor­di­nary Times. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1999. . “So­cial Par­a­sites: How ­Tramps, Idle Youth, and Busy En­tre­pren­eurs Im­peded the So­viet March to Com­mu­nism.” Ca­hiers du monde russe, no. 1–2 (2006): 377–408. . ­Stalin’s Peas­ants: Re­sis­tance and Sur­vi­val in the Rus­sian Vil­lage after Col­lec­ tiv­iza­tion. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1994. ­Frazer, Gra­ham, and ­George Lan­celle. Ab­so­lute Zhir­i­nov­sky: A Trans­par­ent View of the Dis­tin­guished Rus­sian States­man. New York: Pen­guin Books, 1994. Fürst, Ju­li­ane. ­Stalin’s Last Gen­er­a­tion: So­viet ­Post-War Youth and the Emer­gence of Ma­ture So­cial­ism. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2010. Ge­ras­i­mova, Ekat­e­rina. “Pub­lic Pri­vacy in the So­viet Com­mu­nal Apart­ment,” in David Crow­ley and Susan E. Reid, eds., So­cial­ist ­Spaces: Sites of Every­day Life in the East­ern Bloc. Ox­ford, UK: Berg, 2002.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



271

Getty, J. Arch. “Sa­mok­ri­tika Rit­u­als in the Sta­lin­ist Cen­tral Com­mit­tee, 1933– 1938.” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 1 (1999): 49–70. Getty, J. Arch., and Oleg V. Nau­mov. The Road to Ter­ror: Sta­lin and the ­SelfDestruction of the Bolshe­viks, 1932–1939. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 1999. Gor­l izki, Yoram. “Del­e ­g al­i za­t ion in Rus­s ia: So­v iet ­C omrades’ ­C ourts in ­Retrospect.” The ­American Jour­nal of Com­par­a­tive Law, no. 3 (1998): 403–425. . “Po­lic­ing ­Post-Stalin So­ci­ety: The Mi­lit­siia and Pub­lic Order under Khrush­chev.” Ca­hiers du monde russe, no. 2–3 (2003): 477–478. Gor­s uch, Anne. “Flap­p ers and Fox­t rot­t ers: So­v iet Youth in the Roar­i ng Twen­ties.” Carl Beck ­Papers in Rus­sian and East Eu­ro­pean Stud­ies, no. 1102 (1994): 1–33. . Youth in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Rus­sia: En­thu­siasts, Bo­he­mians and De­lin­quents. Bloom­ing­ton: Uni­ver­sity of In­di­ana Press, 2000. Ha­gen­loh, Paul. ­Stalin’s Po­lice: Pub­lic Order and Mass Re­pres­sion in the USSR, 1926–1941. Wash­ing­ton, DC: Woo­drow Wil­son Cen­ter Press, 2009. Han­son, ­Philip. The Rise and Fall of the So­viet Econ­omy: An Eco­nomic His­tory of the USSR from 1945. New York: ­Pearson-Longman, 2003. Har­ris, Ste­phen E. “Mov­ing to the Sep­ar­ate Apart­ment: Build­ing, Dis­trib­ut­ing, Fur­nish­ing, and Liv­ing in Urban Hous­ing in So­viet Rus­sia, 1950s–1960s.” PhD diss., Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago, 2003. Hell­beck, Jo­chen. “Fash­ion­ing the Sta­lin­ist Soul: The Diary of Ste­pan Pod­lub­nyi, 1931-9,” in Sta­lin­ism: New Di­rec­tions, ed. ­Sheila Fitz­pa­trick. New York: Rout­ledge, 2000. Hough, Jerry, and Merle Fain­sod. How the So­viet Union Is Gov­erned. Cam­bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 1979. Iv­a­nova, Ga­lina. Labor Camp So­cial­ism: The Gulag in the So­viet To­tal­it­ ar­ian ­System, Carol Flath, trans. Ar­monk, NY: M. E. ­Sharpe, 2000. John­son, Pris­cilla, and Le­o­pold La­bedz, eds. Khrush­chev and the Arts: The Pol­i­tics of So­viet Cul­ture, 1962–1964. Cam­bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965. Ju­viler, Peter H. Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Law and Order: Pol­i­tics and So­cial ­Change in the USSR. New York: Free Press, 1976. Kelly, Cat­ri­ona. Re­fin­ing Rus­sia: Ad­vice Lit­er­at­ ure, Po­lite Cul­ture, and Gen­der from Cathe­rine to Yelt­sin. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2001. Kelly, Cat­ri­ona, and Vadim Vol­kov. “Obshchestvennost’, ­Sobornost’: Col­lec­tive Iden­tities,” in Cat­ri­ona Kelly and David Shep­herd, eds., Con­struct­ing Rus­sian Cul­ture in the Age of Rev­o­lu­tion: 1881–1940. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1998. Kha­nin, G. I. “The 1950s—The Tri­umph of the So­viet Econ­omy.” ­Europe-Asia Stud­ies, no. 8 (2003): 1187–1212. Khark­hor­din, Oleg. The Col­lec­tive and the In­di­vid­ual in Rus­sia: A Study of Prac­tices. Berke­ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1999. Koi­vu­nen, Pia. “The 1957 Mos­cow Youth Fes­ti­val: Prop­a­gat­ing a New, Peace­ful Image of the So­viet Union,” in Mel­a­nie Ilic and Jer­emy Smith, eds., So­viet State and So­ci­ety under Ni­kita Khrush­chev. New York: Rout­ledge, 2009. Ko­jev­ni­kov, ­Alexei. “Rit­u­als of Sta­lin­ist Cul­ture at Work: Sci­ence and the Games of I­ ntra-Party De­moc­racy circa 1948.” Rus­sian Re­view, no. 1 (1998): 25–52.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

one line long

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

272



Bibliography

Koz­lov, V. A. Mas­so­vye bespor­i­adki v SSSR pri Khrush­cheve i Brezh­neve. No­vos­i­ birsk, Rus­sia: Si­birs­kii khron­o­graf, 1999. Kuche­rov, Sam­uel. The Or­gans of So­viet Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice: Their His­tory and Op­er­a­tion. ­Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970. Lemon, ­Alaina. ­Between Two Fires: Gypsy Per­for­mance and Ro­mani Mem­ory from Push­kin to Post­so­cial­ism. Dur­ham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 2000. Lewin, Moshe. The Gor­ba­chev Phe­nom­e­non: A His­tor­i­cal Inter­pre­ta­tion. Berke­ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1991. Lip­son, Leon. “Ex­e­cu­tion: Hall­mark of So­cial­ist Le­gal­ity.” Prob­lems of Com­mu­ nism, no. 5 (1962): 21–25. . “The Func­tion of Ex­tra­ju­di­cial Mech­a­nisms,” in D. W. Tread­gold, ed., So­viet and Chi­nese Com­mu­nism: Sim­i­lar­ities and Dif­fer­ences. Seat­tle: Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton Press, 1967. . “The Fu­ture Be­longs to . . . Par­a­sites?” Prob­lems of Com­mu­nism, no. 3 (1963): 1–9. . “Hosts and Pests: The Fight ­against Par­a­sites,” in R. Cor­nell, ed., The So­viet Po­lit­i­cal ­System. Engle­wood ­Cliffs, NJ: Pren­tice Hall, 1970. Lok­shina, T., ed. Na­tion­al­ism, Xeno­pho­bia and In­tol­er­ance in Con­tem­po­rary Rus­sia. Mos­cow: Mos­cow Hel­sinki Group, 2002. Lo­vell, Ste­phen. The ­Shadow of War: Rus­sia and the USSR, 1941 to the ­Present. Mal­den, MA: ­Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Ma­thyl, ­Markus. “The Na­tional Bolshe­vik Party and Arc­to­gaia: Two ­Neo-Fascist Grou­pus­cules in the ­Post-Soviet Space.” Pat­terns of Prej­u­dice, no. 3 (2002): 62–76. McRey­nolds, ­Louise, and Joan Neu­ber­ger, eds. Im­i­ta­tions of Life: Two Cen­tu­ries of Melo­drama in Rus­sia. Dur­ham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 2002. Med­ve­dev, Roy, and ­Zhores Med­ve­dev. Khrush­chev: The Years in Power. New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1976. Mo­leva, Nina. Ma­nezh god 1962. Mos­cow: So­vets­kii ­pisatel’, 1989. Mu­lu­kaev, R. S., and N. N. Kar­ta­shov. Mi­lit­siia Ros­sii: ­istoriko-pravovoi ­ocherk. Orel, Rus­sia: Gos­u­darst­ven­noe ­izdatel’sko-poligraficheskoe pred­priia­tie Oka, 1995. Na­gaev, V. V. Chel­o­vek i ­alkogol’: sot­sio­log­i­ches­kie as­pekty. Syk­tyvkar, Rus­sia: Syk­tyv­kars­kii gos­u­darst­ven­nyi uni­ver­si­tet, 1994. Nak­a­chi, Mie. “N. S. Khrush­chev and the 1944 So­viet Fam­ily Law: Pol­i­tics, Re­pro­duc­tion, and Lan­guage.” East Eu­ro­pean Pol­i­tics and So­ci­ety, no. 1 (2006): 40–68. . “Re­plac­ing the Dead: The Pol­i­tics of Re­pro­duc­tion in the Post­war So­viet Union, 1944–1955.” PhD diss., Uni­ver­sity of Chi­cago, 2008. Neiz­vest­nyi, Ernst. Go­vorit Neiz­vest­nyi. Mos­cow: Ros­siis­koe fil­o­sofs­koe obsh­che­ stvo, 1992. Neu­ber­ger, Joan. “Cul­ture ­Besieged: Hoo­li­gan­ism and Fu­tur­ism,” in Ste­phen P. Frank and Mark D. Stein­berg, eds., Cul­tures in Flux: Lower Class Val­ues, Prac­tices, and Re­sis­tance in Late Im­pe­rial Rus­sia. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ ver­sity Press, 1994. . Hoo­li­gan­ism: Crime, Cul­ture and Power in St. Pe­ters­burg, 1900–1914. Berke­ ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1993.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



273

. “Sto­ries of the ­Street: Hoo­li­gan­ism in the St. Pe­ters­burg Pop­u­lar Press.” ­ lavic Re­view, no. 2 (1989): 177–194. S Plat­on ­ ov, Ra­chael. “Mar­gi­nal Notes: Av­tors­kaia Pes­nia on the Boun­dar­ies of Cul­ture and Genre.” PhD diss., Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, 2004. ­Roth-Ey, Kris­tin. “‘Loose ­Girls’ on the Loose? Sex, Prop­a­ganda and the 1957 Youth Fes­ti­val,” in Mel­an ­ ie Ilic, Susan Reid, and Lynne Att­wood, eds., Women in the Khrush­chev Era. New York: Pal­grave Mac­mil­lan, 2004. Sapon, Vlad­i­mir. “Apos­tles of the Other Rus­sia: Mi­khail Bak­u­nin and Ed­u­ard Lim­on ­ ov on Paths of Rad­i­cal So­cial Trans­for­ma­tion.” Rus­sian Pol­i­tics and Law, no. 6 (2005): 43–61. Sar­ki­sov, G. S. Pre­du­prezh­de­nie nar­u­she­nii obsh­chest­ven­nogo por­i­adka. Yere­van, Ar­me­nia: Aia­stan, 1972. ­Schmelz, Peter J. Such Free­dom, If Only Mu­si­cal: Un­of­fi­cial So­viet Music dur­ing the Thaw. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009. Segal, Boris. The ­Drunken So­ci­ety: Al­co­hol Abuse and Al­co­hol­ism in the So­viet Union. New York: Hip­po­crene Books, 1990. ­Shearer, David R. Po­lic­ing ­Stalin’s So­cial­ism: Re­pres­sion and So­cial Order in the So­viet Union, 1924–1953. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009. Shear­ing, David R. Po­lic­ing ­Stalin’s So­cial­ism: Re­pres­sion and So­cial Order in the So­viet Union, 1924–1953. New Haven, CT: Yale Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009. Shel­ley, ­Louise. Po­lic­ing So­viet So­ci­ety: The Ev­o­lu­tion of State Con­trol. New York: Rout­ledge, 1996. Shla­pen­tokh, Vlad­i­mir. Pub­lic and Pri­vate Life of the So­viet Peo­ple: Chang­ing Val­ues in ­Post-Stalin Rus­sia. New York: Ox­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, 1989. Sie­gel­baum, Lewis H. “De­fin­ing and Ig­nor­ing Labor Dis­ci­pline in the Early So­viet Pe­riod: The ­Comrades-Disciplinary ­Courts, 1918–1922.” ­Slavic Re­view, no. 4 (1992): 705–730. , ed. Bor­ders of So­cial­ism: Pri­vate ­Spheres of the So­viet Union. New York: Pal­grave Mac­mil­lan, 2006. Smith, Ge­rald Stan­ton. Songs to Seven ­Strings: Rus­sian Gui­tar ­Poetry and So­viet Mass Song. Bloom­ing­ton: In­di­ana Uni­ver­sity Press, 1984. Smith, Mark B. Prop­erty of Com­mu­nists: The Urban Hous­ing Pro­gram from Sta­lin to Khrush­chev. De­Kalb: North­ern Il­li­nois Uni­ver­sity Press, 2010. Sok­o­lova, Inna. Av­tors­kaia pes­nia: ot ­fol’klora k poe­zii. Mos­cow: Gos­u­darst­ven­nyi ­kul’turnyi ­tsentr-muzei V. S. Vy­sots­kogo, 2002. Sol­o­mon, Peter H., Jr. “Crim­i­nal­iza­tion and De­crim­i­nal­iza­tion in So­viet Crim­i­ nal Pol­icy, 1917–1941,” Law and So­ci­ety Re­view, no. 1 (1981–1982): 9–44. . So­viet Crim­i­nal Jus­tice under Sta­lin. New York: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996. . So­viet Crim­i­nol­og­ ists and Crim­i­nal Pol­icy: Spe­cial­ists in ­Policy-Making. New York: Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­sity Press, 1978. Sus­lov, V. M. “Deiatel’nost’ or­ga­nov vnu­tren­nikh del s ser­e­diny 50-kh do na­ chala 80-kh godov,” in A. V. Vlad­i­mir­ov ­ ich, A. N. Dugin, and A. Ia. Mal­y­ gin, eds., Po­lit­siia i mi­lit­siia Ros­sii: stra­nitsy is­to­rii. Mos­cow: Nauka, 1995. Taub­man, ­William. Khrush­chev: The Man and His Era. New York: W. W. Nor­ton, 2003. Tomp­son, ­William. Khrush­chev: A Po­lit­ic­ al Life. New York: St. ­Martin’s Press, 1995.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

274



Bibliography

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Treml, Vlad­im ­ ir. Al­co­hol in the USSR: A Sta­tis­ti­cal Study. Dur­ham, NC: Duke Uni­ver­sity Press, 1982. Tsi­p ur­s ky, Gleb. “Pleas­u re, Power, and the Pur­s uit of Com­m u­n ism: ­State-Sponsored Youth Pop­u­lar Cul­ture in the So­viet Union, 1945–1968.” PhD diss., Uni­ver­sity of North Car­o­lina at ­Chapel Hill, 2011. Verk­hov­sky, Al­ex­an­der. “Ultra-Nationalists at the Onset of ­Putin’s Rule.” Na­tion­al­ities ­Papers, no. 4 (2000): 707–722. Viola, Lynne, ed. Con­tend­ing with Sta­lin­ism: So­viet Power and Pop­u­lar Re­sis­tance in the 1930s. ­Ithaca, NY: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press, 2002. Weiss­man, Neil B. “Rural Crime in Tsar­ist Rus­sia: The Ques­tion of Hoo­li­gan­ism, 1905–1914.” ­Slavic Re­view, no. 2 (1978): 228–240. White, Ste­phen. Rus­sia Goes Dry: Al­co­hol, State, and So­ci­ety. New York: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press, 1996. Yur­chak, ­Alexei. Every­thing Was For­ever, Until It Was No More: The Last So­viet Gen­er­a­tion. Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 2006. Zubok, Vla­dis­lav. ­Zhivago’s Chil­dren: The Last Rus­sian In­tel­li­gent­sia. Cam­bridge, MA: Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Press, 2009.

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:00.

Index

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

a­ bor­tion, 101 al­co­hol. See hoo­li­gan­ism: al­co­hol and Alek­sa­nian, A. A., 176 ­Alma-Ata, 107 Altai re­gion, 175, 194 Amal­rik, An­drei, 89 ­anti-parasite cam­paign, 5, 15, 196, 198, 259n134 apart­ments. See do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism: com­mu­nal and sep­ar­ate apart­ments as sites of ­Arkhangel’sk, 194 As­tra­khan, 151, 194 Ba­bits­kii, An­drei, 205 Baku, 127 Bash­kir ASSR, 83 Bel­arus, 189, 204 Bel­go­rod, 144–45, 161, 176 Beria, Lav­ren­tii, 169, 188, 191 Ber­man, Har­old, 135, 233n19, 245n26, 247n50 ­Beslan mas­sa­cre, 203 Bitt­ner, Ste­phen, 196 board­ing ­schools, 167 Bres­lauer, ­George, 135 Bri­ansk, 118 ­broken win­dows the­ory, 100–101

Bu­tyrka ­prison, 118 byt, 15, 87, 90–91, 102, 231n112 cases of pri­vate com­plaint (dela chast­ nogo ob­vi­ne­niia), 86 Cen­t ral Com­m it­t ee Bu­r eau for the RSFSR, 189 Che­li­a­binsk, 141, 155, 157 Chi­cago ­School of So­ci­ol­ogy, 6 chil­drear­ing. See hoo­li­gan­ism: ­faulty pa­rent­ing and Cohen, Stan­ley, 6 Cold War, 17, 23, 98, 100, 102, 164 col­lec­tives. See hoo­li­gans: col­lec­tives and the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of com­mu­nal apart­ments. See do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism: com­mu­nal and sep­ar­ate apart­ments as sites of com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity, 88, 97, 164. See also do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism: com­mu­ nist mo­ral­ity and ­comrades’ ­courts: ar­bi­trari­ness ( pro­iz­ vol) and, 16, 148–50, 248n84, 248– 49n91, 249n93; func­tion of, 147; in­ ac­t iv­i ty of, 146; lack of guid­i ng stat­ute and, 148–49, 248n83; over­ bur­dened court ­system and, 136, 147; over­sight of, 150, 248n86; petty

275

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:06.

one line short

276



Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

­comrades’ ­courts (continued ) hoo­l i­g an­i sm and, 128–29, 147, 243n177, 243n181, 247–48n79; pub­lic ac­ti­vism (obshchestvennost’) and, 15, 132–33, 169, 201; so­cial­ist le­gal­ity and, 147–49, 248n87; ­softline cam­paign and, 188, 190 Crank­shaw, Ed­ward, 158 crime: drunk­en­ness and, 20–21; dys­ func­tional fam­i­lies and, 94, 261n17; im­proper pa­rent­ing and, 22; sta­ tis­tics on, 172–74; “sur­vi­vals of the past” and, 19–20, 47–48, 94; un­ pun­ished minor mis­be­hav­ior and, 100; ur­ban­iza­tion and, 22–23; vos­pi­ t­a­nie and, 163–64; West­ern es­pi­o­ n­age and, 20, 22 curs­ing. See petty hoo­li­gan­ism: foul lan­guage and Dage­stan, 181 Dal’, Vlad­i­mir, 29 death pen­alty, 93, 197 ­de-Stalinization, 5–6, 10–11, 19, 23, 28, 96–97, 114, 130–31 Dob­son, Mir­iam, 25, 213n18, 218n29, 218n31 Dom­brovs­kii, Iurii, 89, 108–9, 117–19 do­mes­tic hoo­li­gan­ism: am­bi­gu­ity en­ ables ap­pli­ca­tion of, 62–63, 67–68, 70–72, 75, 82, 95; child abuse and, 14, 59, 65, 72, 79–80, 89, 165; com­ mu­nal and sep­ar­ate apart­ments as sites of, 59–60, 74–79, 81, 83–84, 90, 229n59; com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity and, 88–89, 230–31n97; con­cep­tions of the So­viet fam­ily and, 87–88; con­ tro­versy over am­big­u­ous mean­ing of, 60–61, 71, 82, 226n4; crim­i­nol­o­ gists and legal ­w orkers’ role in leg­i­tim­iza­tion of, 64, 68–69, 71, 75– 76, 80, 89–90, 94, 227n18, 227n21; dis­tinc­tion ­between pub­lic af­fairs/ pri­v ate mat­t ers and, 60, 65, 67, 72, 75, 84, 87–91, 231n111; dis­tinc­ tion ­between the in­di­vid­ual and the col­lec­tive and, 63, 66–68, 72;

Index dys­func­tional per­s onal re­la­tion­ ships and, 62, 64–66, 68–72, 85, 94; fam­i ly men as per­p e­t ra­t ors of, 59–60, 89, 94; Nar­komk­hoz RSFSR and Nar­k o­m iust ­R SFSR’s 1935 cir­c u­l ar on, 60–61; neigh­b ors as vic­tims of, 60, 63–65, 70, 78–79, 85, 229n51; pub­lic/pri­vate ­spaces and, 14, 60–63, 73–74, 84, 87, 90; pun­ish­ ments for, 92–93; re­l uc­t ance to pros­e­cute cases of, 70–71, 82, 85–87; RSFSR Crim­i­nal Code of 1960 and, 81–82; spou­sal abuse and, 14, 59– 60, 63, 66, 72, 80, 86–87, 89, 93–94, 227n14, 231n98, 231n112; USSR Su­preme Court de­cree of April 1939 and, 61–62, 68–69, 228n30; USSR Su­preme Court de­cree of March 1953 and, 69–72, 227n22, 228n28; USSR Su­p reme So­v iet de­c ree of Au­gust 1940 and, 61–62, 72–73, 76; ­victims’ role in leg­i­tim­iza­tion of, 64, 77–80, 89–90, 94 dor­mi­tory guar­dian (vospitatel’), 165 drunk­en­ness. See hoo­li­gan­ism: al­co­hol and dru­zhina: ex­pan­sion of hoo­li­gan­ism and, 150–56; lack of sup­plies and, 145; non­ex­is­tence or in­ac­tiv­ity of, 145–46; num­bers of, 143, 247n53; pro­tec­tion of, 142, 246n49; pub­lic ac­ti­vism and, 15, 132–33, 169, 201, 219n36, 245n20, 247n56; pub­lic/ pri­v ate dis­t inc­t ion and, 155; re­ cruit­ment prob­lems and, 143–45, 247n57; sham­i ng prac­t ices and, 151; vi­o­lence and, 16, 136, 141–42, 190, 196, 201–2, 245n26, 246n44, 247n50 Du­do­rov, Ni­ko­lai, 128, 244n14 Durk­heim, Emile, 11 Es­en ­ in, Ser­gei, 41 FEMEN, 206, 262n34 Fil­a­novs­kii, I. G., 76 func­tion­al­ist the­ory of de­vi­ance, 11

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:06.

Index

Gai­dai, Le­onid, 122 Gert­sen­zon, A. A., 84, 89 ­Gor’kii, 17, 83, 119, 122, 124–26, 151, 160, 231n98 Gor­kin, Alek­sandr, 82–83, 187–88 Gor­lizki, Yoram, 136 Gor­she­nin, Kon­stan­tin, 236–37n59 Gor­such, Anne, 213n18 Greb­neva, Irina, 205 Gulag, 4, 24–25, 210n9, 219n38 gyp­sies, 5, 15, 243n186

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

277



Hall, Stu­art, 152 hoo­l i­g an­i sm: al­c o­h ol and, 11–12, 20–21, 37–38, 45, 53, 151, 156–58, 160–61, 216n14, 225nn120–21, 251n137, 251n144, 252n158; am­bi­ gu­ity of, 28, 31–33, 151–52, 221n57; ­anti-hooligan cam­paigns as cause of, 26–27, 220n38; Ar­t i­c le 58 of­ fenses and, 215n28; as­cribed iden­ tities and, 10; bore­dom and, 158–59, 250n124; cam­paign of 1966 ­against, 199–202; catch­all na­ture of, 8–11, 28, 61, 63; col­lec­tive farm­ers and, 12, 42–44; ­crimes of in­ti­mate vi­o­ lence and, 72; cul­tural per­for­mance cat­e­go­ries and, 34, 39–40; cul­tur­ed­ ness (kulturnost’) and, 37–38; do­ mes­ti­ca­tion of, 14, 59–60, 64, 72, 94, 202; every­day crim­i­nal­ity and, 4, 8; fac­tory di­rec­tors and, 21, 164; fac­tory dor­mi­to­ries and, 164–65; fash­i on/­s elf-presentation/style and, 34–39, 153, 222n89; ­f aulty pa­rent­ing and, 21–22, 94, 165–67, 231n112, 252nn162–63; “gate­way ­crimes” and, 100, 233n15; Gulag am­nesty of 1953 and, 24–26, 217n29, 219n38; hate crime and, 203–4, 261nn25–26; hu­m ane­n ess ( gummanost’) and, 168, 170–71, 175–76, 185–87, 190–91, 253–54n8, 254n11, 254n14; juve­nile de­lin­quency and, 21–22, 46, 48–49, 238n78; late Im­pe­ rial pe­r iod and, 7, 210n11, 212– 13n18; legal con­fu­sion sur­round­ing,

27–28, 66–68; legal def­i­ni­tions of, 4, 28–34, 66, 68, 81–82, 200, 261n18; lei­s ure prac­t ices and, 21, 157– 58, 250n118, 250n126, 251n136, 252n158; liv­i ng stan­d ards and, 23–24; moral ed­u­ca­tion (vos­pit­an ­ ie) and, 21–22, 156–57, 170, 252n158; mo­tives of, 62, 64–69, 70–72, 81; num­ber of peo­ple con­victed of, 4, 17–19, 24–25, 41, 52–53, 103, 171–74, 189, 210n7, 218n33, 260n7; “off the books” pun­ish­ments and, 50, 172– 74, 176, 189, 218n33, 233n12, 254n17; or­i­gins of word, 3, 28–29; po­lit­i­cal the­a­ter and, 206–7; pop­u­lar music and, 41; pop­u­lar under­stand­ings and rep­re­sen­ta­tions of, 29–30, 33– 41; ­post-Communist po­lit­i­cal dis­ sent and, 203–6, 262n28, 262n35; ­p re-Khrushchev era cam­p aigns ­against, 168, 210–11n11, 212–13n18; pub­l ic dis­c on­t ent over, 17–18; pub­lic par­a­digm of, 61–62, 72–74; pun­i sh­m ents for, 4, 29, 31–32, 100, 168, 200–201, 221n53, 233n10, 259n125; Putin era and, 202–7, 261n18; ­radios and, 95, 232n123; re­c id­i ­v ism and, 25, 50–52, 177; rough mas­cu­lin­ity and, 12, 41, 44– 46; sex­u al re­l a­t ions and, 209n2; sham­ing prac­tices and, 39, 120–21, 151, 166, 180, 182, 221n66; shift­ing def­i­ni­tions as a cause of, 24, 27–28; smok­i ng and, 36–37, 39; soc­c er and, 3–4, 210n6; ­soft-line cam­paign ­a gainst, 168–99, 253n7, 255n25, 255nn31–32, 255n42, 256nn47– 49, 256nn52–55, 257n59, 257n66, 257n71, 257nn74–75, 258n101; ­spaces where com­mit­ted, 59, 73–74, 83–84; “sur­vi­vals of the past” and, 20, 94, 216n11; tat­toos and, 38–39; teach­ers and, 21; time when com­ mit­ted, 157; ur­ban­iza­tion and, 12, 22–23, 56–57, 217n21, 226n128 hoo­li­gans: age range of, 12, 22, 46–49, 223–24nn106–7; al­leged cow­ar­dice

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:06.

278



hoo­li­gans (continued ) of, 135, 141; class iden­tity of, 12–13, 42–44; col­lec­tives and the re­ha­bil­i­ ta­tion of, 16, 169, 178–84, 256n47; ed­u­ca­tional at­tain­ment of, 49–50, 224n110, 224n112; gen­der iden­tity of, 44–46, 209n2, 223n100, 223n102, 223n104; Kom­so­mol mem­bers as, 54–55, 225–26n124, 226n125; men­ tal ill­ness and, 224n109, 238n78; Party mem­bers as, 54–55, 225n123; slang terms for, 39, 45, 220n47; as So­viet every­man, 40, 44, 50, 57–58; use of trun­cheons ­against, 191–98, 259n120, 259nn129–30 Iak­i­menko, A. N., 177 ­Iaroslavl’, 83 ­Il’ichev, Le­onid, 90 Ir­kutsk, 175, 194 Iv­a­novo, 17, 67, 83, 119, 126, 166, 194, 231n98

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

juve­nile de­lin­quency. See hoo­li­gan­ism: juve­nile de­lin­quency and Ka­gan­o­vich, Lazar, 111 Kal­i­nin, 84 Ka­luga, 121, 125–26, 177, 194 Kam­chatka, 194 ­Kas’ianov, Mi­khail, 207 Kem­er­ ovo, 179 Khab­a­rovsk, 77, 141, 194, 206, 219n38 Khark­hor­din, Oleg, 135–36 ­Khimki, 118 Khrush­chev, Ni­kita: eco­nomic pol­i­ cies of, 23; ­obshchestvennost’ and, 132–33, 135; ­s oft-line cam­p aign and, 168–69, 193; Third Con­gress of So­v iet Writ­e rs and, 170; UN ­s hoe-banging in­c i­d ent and, 207, 263n38; use of force ­against hoo­li­ gans and, 140–41, 191–92; uto­pian­ ism and, 169–70, 175 Kirov, 149, 194 Kom­so­mol, 20, 25, 54–55, 125, 127, 141, 152, 159, 188, 190–92, 219n36, 245n20

Index Kom­s o­m ols­k aia ­p ravda (news­p aper), 122, 135, 152–53, 155, 157, 188 Kos­troma, 183, 194, 231n98 Kot­en ­ och­kin, Vi­a­ches­lav, 36 Koz­l ov, V. A., 7, 25, 213–14n18, 214n21, 217n29, 218nn31–32 Kras­no­dar, 177, 184 Kras­noiarsk, 146 Krok­o­dil (sa­tir­ical jour­nal), 36, 39, 55, 59–60, 74, 77, 85, 94, 103, 109, 122, 133–34, 174 Kru­glov, A. A., 100 Kru­glov, Ser­gei, 134 Kui­by­shev, 86, 88, 173, 192 Kursk, 173 Kuz­n et­s ova, N. F., 26–27, 76, 100, 216n11, 220n40, 233n15 la­bel­ing the­ory, 10 La­ri­o­nov Af­fair, 175 law­yers, 183 lei­sure. See hoo­li­gan­ism: lei­sure prac­ tices and Lenin, Vlad­i­mir, 91, 210–11n11 Le­nin­grad, 111–12, 119, 122, 124, 126, 139, 145, 151, 178, 184, 188 Lib­eral Dem­o­cratic Party, 206 Lim­o­nov, Ed­u­ard, 206–7, 263n37 Li­ter­a­tur­naia ga­zeta (news­paper), 74, 137 Lom­broso, Ce­sare, 163 Lu­blino, 83 Lu­ka­shenko, Alek­sandr, 204, 262n28 Mag­nit­o­gorsk, 187 Mak­a­renko, Anton, 170 ma­li­cious hoo­li­gan­ism: am­bi­gu­ity of, 31, 33, 221n54; com­mu­nal apart­ ments and, 84; def­i­ni­tion of, 31; in­ di­vid­ual cases of, 65, 67; num­ber of peo­ple con­victed of, 18, 171, 189; pun­ish­ments for, 31, 99 Ma­nezh ex­hibit, 197–98 melo­drama, 79–80 Mezh­du­re­chinsk, 146 Mik­hal­kov, Ni­kita, 207 Mir­o­nov, Ni­ko­lai, 174, 185 Mog­i­lev, 161

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:06.

one line long

Index

Mol­o­tov, 105 “Moral Code of the Build­ers of Com­ mu­nism,” 164. See also com­mu­nist mo­ral­ity moral ed­u ­c a­t ion. See hoo­l i­g an­i sm: moral ed­u­ca­tion (vos­pit­an ­ ie) and moral panic the­ory, 6–7, 22–23, 98 Mor­do­vian ASSR, 89 Mos­cow, 78–79, 83, 86, 92, 105–7, 118, 122, 124, 137, 146, 149–50, 185, 195, 203, 205–6 Mur­mansk, 194, 231n98 ­ arin’iani, Semen, 137–39, 245n27 N Nashi (youth group), 206 Na­tional Bolshe­viks, 206–7, 263n37, 263nn40–41 ­Neo-nazis, 203–4 Neu­ber­ger, Joan, 7, 210n11, 212n18, 214nn19–20, 220n44, 220n46 Nik­o­laev, 155 Noize MC, 205 Nov­go­rod, 177 Nov­o­cher­kassk riot, 191–92, 197–98 No­vos­i­birsk, 107, 126, 231n98 Nu po­godi (an­i­mated se­ries), 36

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

279



­obshchestvennost’, 16, 33, 136, 140–44, 146–50, 156, 172, 177, 192, 197. See also ­comrades’courts; dru­zhina ­Odessa, 107 Og­o­nek ( jour­nal), 153 ­Oktiabr’ (lit­er­ary jour­nal), 155 Omsk, 146 ­Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, 205, 262n32 Oren­burg, 173, 192–93, 195 pal­aces of cul­ture, 158–59 par­a­sites. See ­anti-parasite cam­paign pat­ron­age net­works, 179 Perm’, 195 Peter the Great, 37 petty hoo­li­gan­ism: ­anti-hooligan cam­ paign of 1940 and, 97, 101–2, 129–30, 226n9, 234n20; “broken win­d ows” po­l ic­i ng and, 14–15, 100–101; catch­all qual­ity of, 15, 98, 102–3, 105–7, 109–14, 235n35,

236n40, 237n62; civ­il­iz­ing mis­sion and, 98, 102, 130–31; com­pul­sory labor and, 120–27, 201, 241n113, 241n124, 242n137, 242n167; ­com­rades’ ­c ourts and, 128–29, 147, 243n177, 243n181, 247–48n79; cost of cam­paign ­against, 44, 126–29, 242nn169–70; def­i­ni­tion of, 31–32, 102–3, 232n9, 236–37n59; do­mes­tic dis­or­der and, 105, 107–9, 113–14, 116–17, 237–38n69; drunk­en­ness and, 106–7, 240–41n111; dru­zhin­ niki and, 142; ed­u­ca­tional out­reach and, 234–35n26, 235n28; ­fast-track pun­i sh­m ents and, 15, 115–18, 239n84; foul lan­guage and, 12, 32, 65, 67, 102, 105–6, 109, 112–13, 117, 235n30, 235n34; hu­mane­ness ( gumannost’) and, 101, 233nn18–19; num­b er of peo­p le de­t ained for, 15, 103–4, 109, 115–16, 126, 171, 189, 219n37; pun­ish­ments for, 14, 32, 99–100, 120, 128–29, 241n112, 241nn114–15, 243n184; re­cid­i­vism and, 108–9, 236n54; re­pres­sive in­ tol­er­ance and, 15, 97, 101–2, 114–15, 130, 206; se­ri­ous ­crimes and, 112– 13, 237n68, 237–38n69; so­c ial­i st le­gal­ity and, 97, 114–15, 118, 129– 30, 238–39n82, 239nn85–86, 240n95 petty hoo­l i­g ans: al­c o­h ol and, 103, 106–7, 235n29, 240n110; com­mon crim­i ­n als and, 120, 238n78, 240nn109–10; dem­o­graphic char­ac­ ter­is­tics of, 103, 235n29, 238n78; de­ten­tion and, 118–20, 122–23, 201, 240n98, 240n101, 240n109; es­cape at­tempts and, 123–25; la­zi­ness of, 123–26, 128 petty theft, 4, 101, 110, 150, 210n7, 233n19 po­lice, 133–34, 219nn35–36, 245n16 ­Pravda (news­paper), 17, 36, 137–38 ­Primor’e re­gion, 186, 192, 194 pub­lic ac­ti­vism. See ­obshchestvennost’ pub­lic/pri­vate di­chot­omy. See do­mes­ tic hoo­l i­g an­i sm: pub­l ic/pri­v ate ­spaces and

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:06.

one line long

280



Pussy Riot, 205–6, 262n33 Putin, Vlad­i­mir, 202–3, 205–7

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Red Cor­ners, 158, 223n99 ­Riazan’, 17, 175, 177, 195 Riga, 186 Ros­tov, 77, 195 RSFSR Min­is­try for the Pro­tec­tion of Pub­lic Order (MOOP RSFSR), 194– 95, 259n133 RSFSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs, 119, 192–93 RSFSR Min­is­try of Jus­tice, 75, 102 RSFSR Su­preme Court, 56, 84, 89, 111, 145, 149, 184 RSFSR Su­preme So­viet, 102, 107, 111, 128 Ru­denko, Roman, 82–83, 107, 139, 176, 187–88, 191, 219n34, 233n18, 246n38 Sa­lis­bury, Har­ri­son, 22, 250n124 sam­o­gon, 162–63, 251–52n153. See also hoo­li­gan­ism: al­co­hol and sa­mok­ri­tika, 166, 180 Sar­a­tov, 146, 173, 195 Se­cret ­Speech to the Twen­ti­eth Party Con­gress, 130–31 ­self-defense laws, 137–40, 142, 196, 246n34, 246n38 sham­ing. See hoo­li­gan­ism: sham­ing prac­tices and sim­p le hoo­l i­g an­i sm: am­b i­g u­i ty of, 111; def­i­ni­tion of, 31; num­ber of peo­ple con­victed of, 18, 111, 171, 189; pun­ish­ments for, 31 sin­g le moth­e rs. See hoo­l i­g an­i sm: ­faulty pa­rent­ing and skin­heads, 203 Smena (news­paper), 190 Smo­lensk, 195 So­bi­a­nin, Ser­gei, 205 Sochi, 153 so­cial dis­or­gan­iza­tion the­ory, 6, 8 so­cial­ist le­gal­ity, 5, 97, 114–15, 118, 129–30, 147–49 So­lod­kin, I. I., 76

Index Sol­o­mon, Peter H., Jr., 214n22, 232n8, 234n20, 261n18 Spar­tak (soc­cer club), 206 spec­u­la­tion, 118, 128, 150 Stak­ha­no­vites, 182 Sta­lin, Jo­seph, 169, 186 Sta­lin­grad, 73, 121 ­Stavropol’, 176–77, 194 sti­li­agi, 40, 234n23 sum­mer camps, 167. See also hoo­li­gan­ ism: lei­sure prac­tices and Sus­lov, Mi­khail, 192 Sverd­lovsk, 17, 125, 185, 195 Tad­zhik SSR, 173 Tatar ASSR, 83, 128, 146 Thaw, the: ex­p er­i ­m en­t a­t ion and, 96–97; re­form­ist and re­ac­tion­ary ele­m ents of, 195–97; re­p res­s ion and, 6, 97, 130 Tiu­men, 124 Tok­a­rev, A. M., 90 Tomsk, 177 Tula, 126 Ud­murt ASSR, 91 Ukrai­nian Su­preme Court, 27, 178 ­Ul’ianovsk, 177, 186 Union of So­viet Writ­ers, 108 Usha­kov, D. N., 30, 132 USSR Coun­cil of Min­is­ters, 128 USSR Min­is­try of Fi­nance, 127 USSR Min­is­try of Inter­nal Af­fairs, 43, 126–27, 174 USSR Pro­cu­racy, 5, 77, 122, 139, 146, 174, 187 USSR Su­preme Court, 26, 28, 32–33, 65, 69–70, 73, 75, 80–81, 83, 95, 111, 114, 137, 139–40, 176, 178, 187–88, 191 USSR Su­preme So­viet, 61–62, 78, 87, 91, 112, 142, 150, 173, 185–87 ­Uzhno-Sakhalinsk, 125 Vlad­i­vos­tok, 194–95 Vol­go­grad, 194 Vo­logda, 150, 194

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:06.

281

Index Vor­o­nezh, 106, 194 Vo­rosh­i­lov, Kli­ment, 186–87 vos­pit­a­nie. See hoo­li­gan­ism: moral ed­ u­ca­tion (vos­pit­an ­ ie) and Vy­borg, 151 Vy­sot­sky, Vlad­i­mir, 41

­w orkers’ dor­m i­t o­r ies, 158, 164–65, 223n99 World War II, 48 World Youth Fes­t i­v al of 1957, 98, 232n5, 234n23 Yelt­sin, Boris, 207, 263n38 Zhir­i­nov­sky, Vlad­i­mir, 206–7 Zna­nie (or­gan­iza­tion), 184, 258n101

Copyright © 2012. University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.

Weiss­man, Neil, 212–13n18, 214n20 ­workers’ clubs, 159–60, 250–51n133, 251n135

LaPierre, Brian. Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia : Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance During the Thaw, University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/detail.action?docID=3445274. Created from uh on 2023-02-19 15:53:06.