Soviet and Yugoslavian Criminology

Abstract

Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union have created very different criminologies in the post-war period. The criminologies of these two countries differ in terms of quality, diversity of subject matter and the level of analytical sophistication. Yugoslavia, with many fewer criminologists in proportion to its population than the Soviet Union, has achieved international recognition for its crime research, a distinction that eludes Soviet scholars despite the significant commitment of financial and human resources by the Soviet state to the study of crime. Soviet and Yugoslavian criminology differ significantly in regard to their organizational structure, internal distribution of their research centers, the training and affiliation of their criminologists and the purpose and nature of their criminological research. These differences, discussed in this paper, are attributable to the historical heritages of the criminologies, the extent of freedom allowed researchers, the degree of ideological commitment and the part...