Mass Prisoner Disobedience in Corrective Labour Camps of Post-War USSR

Abstract

This paper studies mass disobedience among the prisoners of Soviet corrective labour camps (CLCs) during the post-war years (1945–1956) in the context of Soviet corrective labour policy of that time. Noteworthy, there have been conflicting assessments of this aspect of the history of the aforementioned institutions. This research is based on the systematic approach as well as on the principles of historicism and objectivity. The main trends of Soviet corrective labour policy in the wake of the Great Patriotic War are identified; the contradictory nature of this policy is pointed out. On the one hand, documents were adopted to strengthen the rule of law in CLCs, including ensuring the rights of prisoners (e.g., the 1947 Instruction on Regimes in Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies), while on the other hand, the conditions in these camps for certain categories of prisoners were getting more strict (e.g., special camps were established by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in 1948). Further, the authors focus on revealing the main reasons behind mass disobedience of prisoners in the camps. In particular, during the post-war years more people were sent to CLCs convicted of aiding the Nazis in the temporarily occupied territories of the USSR, treason, espionage, sabotage, nationalist banditry, etc. According to the authors, in the overwhelming majority of cases it was these prisoners who organized large-scale mass disturbances, including protests. Disobedience on the part of prisoners was facilitated by the discrepancy between the imposed requirements and the actual conditions in the CLCs, as well as by the rudeness of the camp administration and some prisoners being strong ideological opponents of Soviet rule, etc. The fact that a significant number of prisoners were exempt from Beria’s amnesty (March 1953) acted as yet another catalyst. The authors come to the conclusion that, in spite of the large scale of prisoner disobedience in certain camps, it was generally not characteristic of the corrective labour system of the period under study.