Article 190: the circulation or composition of texts defaming the Soviet state and its social system (up to three years’ imprisonment or one year’s mandatory labour, or a minimum fine of 100 roubles).
Article 227: infringement of citizens’ rights under the guise of religious ceremonies (e.g. ‘forced’ baptism), punishable by three-five years’ imprisonment or exile, with or without confiscation of property. Active participation in a group, or active propaganda in favour of committing such acts, could mean up to three years’ imprisonment or exile, or a year’s mandatory labour. Note that if the acts and individuals pursued presented no danger to society, methods of social pressure were applied instead.[6]
Most cases of a political character were brought for ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’, ‘organizational activities’, defamation of the state, or (in lesser numbers) violation of the law on separation of Church and state. According to the KGB, 8,124 trials were held for ‘anti-Soviet manifestations’ during the Khrushchev–Brezhnev–Chernenko periods (1957–85), most of them on the basis of the articles targeting anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda and the deliberate circulation of calumnies against the state – the two most widely used articles.[7]
POLITICAL ARRESTS AND ‘PROPHYLAXIS’ (1959–74)
For a period of twenty-eight years, the above figures seem ‘disappointingly’ low. Let us turn to a statistical table drawn up by an authoritative source,[8] furnishing data on repression in four four-year periods: 1959–62, 1963–6, 1967–70, 1971–4. The total number of cases is greater than that given by the KGB for the period 1957–85, because it includes all convictions for crimes against the state based on the six articles of the criminal code. For the four periods, the respective totals are as follows: 5,413, 3,251, 2,456, and 2,424. In the first period, an average of 1,354 persons per annum were charged; the figure drops to 606 for the last period. The majority of the accused were pursued for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda: 1,601 in the first period and 348 in the last. Readers will find full details in Appendix 3. But we should also add the category of those who were not charged or convicted, but made subject to ‘prophylactic’ procedures: 58,291 between 1967 and 1970 and 63,108 between 1971 and 1974. The trigger for a ‘prophylactic’ intervention by the KGB was suspicious contacts with foreigners, treasonable intentions or harmful political manifestations. ‘Prophylaxis’ could be carried on in the workplace and take the form of an official warning. In the event of recidivism, cases could be referred to the courts (this occurred in only 150 cases over eight years). Some publications supply different figures, using different timespans and recording the various alleged offences. But Pikhoia’s data seem the most reliable (they doubtless derive from the presidential archive) and also provide information on categories of offence.
We know more about this curious procedure of ‘prophylaxis’ thanks to data from the KGB for the years 1967–72. Its then head was Andropov, and although its reports still bristled with the usual array of crimes despised by the regime, the emphasis on prophylactic work now became more pronounced. It consisted in ‘measures to prevent attempts at organized subversive activities by nationalist, revisionist and other anti-Soviet elements’ and to ‘confine the potentially dangerous groups that tend to appear here and there’.
This method was not without ambiguities and surprises. Already in use under Shelepin, or even earlier, it took its name from medical terminology, implying that anyone entertaining political opinions different from those of the regime was in need of ‘treatment’. Under Andropov it became a broader strategy, which was actually preferred to other means. We do not possess any sources on discussions about the validity of this option, but it is interesting to examine the report presented to the Central Committee by Andropov and the Prosecutor General Rudenko on 11 October 1972, which precisely deals with the way in which prophylaxis operated.[9]
It is described as being quite widespread. Between 1967 and 1972, 3,096 political groups had been discovered and 13,602 people belonging to them had been subject to prophylaxis. In other words, they had not been arrested, but summoned for an interview with a KGB officer who had explained the erroneous character of their positions or actions. Rather politely, but without concealing the danger they found themselves in, the officer had advised them to desist. In 1967, 2,196 people from 502 groups were ‘interviewed’ in this way; in 1968, 2,870 from 625 groups; in 1969, 3,130 from 733 groups; in 1970, 3,102 from 709 groups; and in 1971, 2,304 from 527 groups. Such groups, which typically comprised only a few people, had been uncovered in Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Tula, Vladimir, Omsk, Kazan and Tiumen, as well as the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia, Moldavia, Kazakhstan, and so on.
Thanks to these preventative measures, the number of arrests for anti-Soviet propaganda had fallen. The majority of interviewees left it at that, but others persisted in scheming that might induce them to commit a ‘crime against the state’. In order to strengthen preventative action against people contemplating criminal activity, and to suppress manifestations by anti-social elements more actively, the authors of the report recommended that the KGB should be authorized, if necessary, to issue a written warning to such people requesting them to desist from politically harmful activity and spelling out the consequences if they refused to comply.
Andropov and Rudenko believed that such a course of action might increase the sense of moral responsibility of those so warned. If they did then commit criminal acts, they should be arrested, subject to preliminary investigation, and turned over to the courts for a ‘character assessment’.
The authors appended a draft resolution for the Central Committee and a draft decree for the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet – the standard bureaucratic procedure when submitting a proposal – with a request that they be considered. Unlike the 1962–3 KGB texts deploring ‘mass disorder’, there was no suggestion this time that the system was threatened. The stress on ‘preventative medicine’, which sounded too soft to conservative ears, was quite liberal for a country like the USSR. A sense of imminent danger might certainly induce regression to the Semichastny-style line, but there was no question of it in the immediate future. Yet the longer-term prospects for the system’s health were scarcely reassuring, as our later excursion into economic issues will show.
In one respect there was something troubling about this ‘preventative medicine’. What did ‘character assessment’ actually mean? Among other things, it could lead to the person in question being sent, not to prison, but to a psychiatric clinic. This can seem like a fairly lenient gesture by judges anywhere. But abuses are possible and, in the case of the Soviet Union, there were numerous well-documented instances of the use of psychiatric wards to incarcerate perfectly sane people, whose political positions were identified as paranoid delirium or some such, and who were pumped full of harmful drugs. This was testimony to the ugly and reactionary mentality of some Soviet leaders.
There is an abundant literature on this subject in the West, but I have not as yet come across any satisfactory sources in Russia itself. We still do not know how long such practices persisted and how many people they affected. We do know that there were internal debates about the propriety of such methods, which were not unanimously supported within the government. It became public knowledge that figures from the academic community, and certainly legal scholars, had protested to the Central Committee – particularly in the case of the geneticist Zhores Medvedev, who was released. There is no doubt that the issue was debated within the KGB, by Andropov and people around him, and probably reached the Politburo.[10]
6
Amnesty International,
7
O. V. Edelman, sost.,
10
Regarding psychiatric wards, a recent publication may be of interest. It is written by D. B. Dmitrieva and entitled