The Soviet Criminal Correction System: Change and Stability

Abstract

The publication in July, 1969, of the of Corrective-Labor Legislation of the USSR and the Union Republics was notable for a lack of fanfare. This was in itself not surprising, since in the area of corrective-labor law, even since the death of Stalin, unpublished statutes have been the main guides for the operation of corrective-labor colonies and prisons. The old corrective-labor codes of the union republics, while still legally in force, had admittedly lost any real legal power.1 While the new Principles came upon the scene with little advance announcement, this fact should not obscure the more important one that reform, clarification, and codification have been on the minds of jurists for the preceding thirteen years--years which have seen the promulgation of two successive statutes (polozheniia) to guide the operation of the corrective-labor system in the RSFSR but, until 1969, little by way of publication or systematization of new provisions. This paper is a preliminary attempt to analyze some key provisions of the new Principles in the light of the discussions of the last decade, of earlier legislation, and of some contemporary problems in the operation of corrective-labor institutions.2 It limits the consideration of Soviet criminal corrections, by and large, to the regulation and operation of penal institutions, and does not consider the administration of such legal penalties as fines, corrective works without deprivation of freedom, exile or banishment.