On the Role of the 1957 Decrees of the Baltic Soviet Republics in Dismantling the Gulag and Special Settlement System

Abstract

The article looks at the process of dismantling the Gulag and special settlement system in the USSR from 1953 to 1957. Some of the specific outputs of this process were the decrees adopted by the Presidiums of the Supreme Soviets of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSRs in 1957. In all three cases, there were two simultaneously approved legal acts with similar contents: one on the establishment of a Presidium commission to review the cases of special settlers, and one on the ban on the return of convicts. The research paper describes the legal and political framework of the process that led to the adoption of the decrees mentioned, and sheds some light on their application. The relationship between the all-Union and the Soviet republic levels is observed. The reaction to the events of 1956 led to a tightening of the Soviet regime. In the light of the events abroad and in the USSR in 1956, the 1957 decrees of the Baltic Soviet republics were an example of the USSR’s ad hoc approach to governance more generally, and of the release process specifically. The content of these legal acts was evidence of the primacy of political expediency over the law.