These reforms did not proceed smoothly, but public pressure to accelerate ‘normalization’ was supported by the Interior Minister and the office of the Prosecutor General. The latter were highly critical of the practices of the MVD’s prisons directorate and pressured it to implement party and state decisions concerning the penal system. Two reports, separated by four years, are highly instructive in this regard. The first, dating from 1957, was written by the Interior Minister Dudorov (it was his second year in post) and concerned ‘The Problem of the Camps and New Penal Policies’. The second was by the deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR, Mishutin, reporting in 1961. We shall begin with the latter, since it contains a survey of the steps taken between 1953 and 1956.[1]
Mishutin’s main points were as follows. Until 1953, camp administrations did not bother about the ‘correction and re-education’ of prisoners. The prison population was predominantly regarded as manpower; and the MVD thus neglected what should have been its main duty. For years, legislation on penal policy was virtually non-existent. Access to penal institutions by representatives of society was barred and oversight of their functioning by prosecutors limited. On 10 July 1954, the Central Committee had adopted a resolution seeking to improve the situation in the MVD’s camps and colonies. The MVD was criticized for concentrating exclusively on economic output, when its main task was to engage inmates in productive labour and thereby prepare them for their reintegration into society. On 24 May 1955, the Central Committee, followed shortly afterwards by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, promulgated a ‘statute on prosecutorial supervision’ in the USSR, chapter five of which dealt with the supervision of detention centres. Henceforth camp prosecutors had to refer to the territorial offices of the Prosecutor’s Office, rather than directly to the Prosecutor General. This measure in itself was an improvement. But the situation in the camps remained unsatisfactory. On 25 October 1956, a joint decree of the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee was issued listing ‘measures to improve the work of the MVD of the USSR’ and its republican equivalents, which were accused of neglecting their reeducation duties – the evidence for this was the number of re-offenders. The government now speeded up measures to reduce and abolish the system of corrective labour camps (ispravitel’ no-trudovye lageria – ITLs), and to create supervisory bodies in conjunction with the executive committees of local soviets to oversee what occurred in what were now to be called ‘colonies’.
Minutes of a session of the MVD Collegium from early 1957, under the chairmanship of Dudorov (former party apparatchik), give us some idea of the situation. Appointed to head the MVD by the party in order to improve its functioning, Dudorov was not at all content with the camps and colonies directorate in his own ministry, particularly when it came to the re-education and utilization of prison manpower.[2] Some 6 per cent of prisoners were not working because there were no jobs for them; and for those who were employed, the remuneration system was complete chaos. In 1956 the MVD had devoted much of its energy to dealing with police matters, and the minister hoped that 1957 would be the year when it would finally succeed in resolving the outstanding problems in the prison system, as required by the Central Committee. He continued:
You know that the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers have decided to move from a system of camps to a system of colonies. Colonies do a much better job, but there is still work to be done on this system. At the moment, 35 per cent of prisoners are in colonies, while the rest are in camps where they work on a contractual basis with various economic agencies. The task before us is to transfer all prisoners to colonies. Over the next 4–5 years, that involves building some 370 colonies. All production work should be done by prisoners inside their place of confinement. [That, and a normalized pay system, was supposed to be the main difference between a colony and a camp. – ML] The 66 colonies already in existence are yielding good results as regards re-education – the key objective of incarceration – and labour is the main method.
In passing, the minister observed that ‘colonies produce consumer goods (clothing, furniture, household utensils, some agricultural machinery). Thus, the zeks earn some money for themselves and their families.’
Dudorov was painting a rather rosy picture. Experience suggested (as he himself noted) that prisoners should not be paid in cash, because many of them tended to lose the money playing cards or being robbed by other prisoners. Some of the zeks themselves preferred payment in kind. Dudorov ended his report by stating that the directorate and collegium of the ministry hoped to resolve this problem in the course of 1957 (in the event, establishing the colonies was to take several more years).
Returning now to Mishutin’s 1961 text, we learn that the initial liberalization had gone too far; that it was creating malfunctions in the system; and that adjustments were required (something we already gleaned from Dudorov’s recommendation not to give prisoners too much money).
Local authorities were charged with finding employment for those being released. On 8 December 1957 the government approved a decree jointly drawn up by the Prosecutor’s Office and the MVD on the ‘correctional labour colonies and prisons of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’. The text required strict separation between different categories of prisoners, so as not to mix hardened criminals with first-time offenders. It ordered revision of procedures for early release based on a calculation of working days and sharply reduced the number of prisoners who were allowed to leave colony confines unescorted. It introduced non-cash payment, as well as other measures.
From 1953 onwards, the number of prisoners decreased regularly. Between 1953 and 1957, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet announced several amnesties for different categories of prisoner – among them, one in 1955 for people who had collaborated with the German occupier. In 1957, the fortieth anniversary of the October revolution saw a new amnesty affecting a significant number of inmates. In 1956 and 1959, commissions were set up in the republics to review directly in prison establishments the cases of those convicted of crimes against the state, malfeasance and other economic crimes, as well as minor offences. The Prosecutor General of the USSR helped to draw up these measures and oversaw their implementation.
By January 1961, the prison population had declined significantly and its composition by category of crime had changed. In 1953, 10.7 per cent of prisoners were sentenced for organized crime, robbery, premeditated murder, and rape; in 1961 the corresponding figure was 31.5 per cent. This meant that a substantial percentage of prisoners was now composed of common-law offenders, with a hard core of recidivists and dangerous criminals. This is why the colonies and prisons statute issued on 8 December 1958 now seemed inadequate: it was insufficiently severe on dangerous recidivists and the fight against crime was suffering in consequence. So on 5 November 1959 the Central Committee enjoined the Prosecutor General’s Office to step up the fight against such criminals and ensure an appropriate prison regime for them.
Two years later, the government was still not satisfied with the situation. On 3 April 1961 a new decree by the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers ordered the internal affairs ministries of the republics to do more for the prison systems they were responsible for, to analyse the condition of each institution carefully, and to reinforce the separation between different categories of criminal. It also abolished the liberal system of early release for a good work record. As our documents indicate, these and other measures had been under discussion for almost five years, but had not always been implemented. Liberal and conservative politicians and jurists had sparred over every point, and there were many. Another important measure was the creation on 27 February 1959 of the collegium of the Prosecutor General and republican equivalents, followed by numerous tours of inspection and training sessions by leading functionaries from the USSR Prosecutor’s Office, with a view to reinforcing the fight against crime and improving prison administration.
1
GARF, 8131, 32, 6610, LL. 9196 – from a longer report by A. Mishutin, deputy Prosecutor General, 13 May 1961.