The Gulag After Stalin: Redefining Punishment In Khrushchev's Soviet Union, 1953-1964
by Jeffrey S. Hardy /
2016 / English / PDF
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In
InThe Gulag after Stalin
The Gulag after Stalin, Jeffrey S. Hardy reveals how
the vast Soviet penal system was reimagined and reformed in the
wake of Stalin's death. Hardy argues that penal reform in the
1950s was a serious endeavor intended to transform the Gulag into
a humane institution that reeducated criminals into honest Soviet
citizens. Under the leadership of Minister of Internal Affairs
Nikolai Dudorov, a Khrushchev appointee, this drive to change the
Gulag into a "progressive" system where criminals were reformed
through a combination of education, vocational training,
leniency, sport, labor, cultural programs, and self-governance
was both sincere and at least partially effective. The new vision
for the Gulag faced many obstacles. Reeducation proved difficult
to quantify, a serious liability in a statistics-obsessed state.
The entrenched habits of Gulag officials and the prisoner-guard
power dynamic mitigated the effect of the post-Stalin reforms.
And the Soviet public never fully accepted the new policies of
leniency and the humane treatment of criminals. In the late
1950s, they joined with a coalition of party officials,
criminologists, procurators, newspaper reporters, and some penal
administrators to rally around the slogan "The camp is not a
resort" and succeeded in reimposing harsher conditions for
inmates. By the mid-1960s the Soviet Gulag had emerged as a
hybrid system forged from the old Stalinist system, the vision
promoted by Khrushchev and others in the mid-1950s, and the
ensuing counterreform movement. This new penal equilibrium
largely persisted until the fall of the Soviet Union.
, Jeffrey S. Hardy reveals how
the vast Soviet penal system was reimagined and reformed in the
wake of Stalin's death. Hardy argues that penal reform in the
1950s was a serious endeavor intended to transform the Gulag into
a humane institution that reeducated criminals into honest Soviet
citizens. Under the leadership of Minister of Internal Affairs
Nikolai Dudorov, a Khrushchev appointee, this drive to change the
Gulag into a "progressive" system where criminals were reformed
through a combination of education, vocational training,
leniency, sport, labor, cultural programs, and self-governance
was both sincere and at least partially effective. The new vision
for the Gulag faced many obstacles. Reeducation proved difficult
to quantify, a serious liability in a statistics-obsessed state.
The entrenched habits of Gulag officials and the prisoner-guard
power dynamic mitigated the effect of the post-Stalin reforms.
And the Soviet public never fully accepted the new policies of
leniency and the humane treatment of criminals. In the late
1950s, they joined with a coalition of party officials,
criminologists, procurators, newspaper reporters, and some penal
administrators to rally around the slogan "The camp is not a
resort" and succeeded in reimposing harsher conditions for
inmates. By the mid-1960s the Soviet Gulag had emerged as a
hybrid system forged from the old Stalinist system, the vision
promoted by Khrushchev and others in the mid-1950s, and the
ensuing counterreform movement. This new penal equilibrium
largely persisted until the fall of the Soviet Union.
