Darya Andreevna Mamontova,
Postgraduate Student, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Discussions of the 1920s in Legal Circles on the Use of Forced Labor of Convicts
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2024-4-6
The paper is devoted to the analysis of coverage of the issue of forced labor in the legal press in the 1920s. Labor was one of the main means of correcting criminals, along with cultural and educational events. This principle was first reflected in the decree of VTsIK, dated 17 May 1919, “On the forced labor camps” and the decree of the RSFSR People’s Commissariat for Justice, dated 15 November 1920, “The Regulations on general detention places”. Since 1924 the Corrective-Labor Code of 1924 became the fundamental document in this sphere. However, the issue of use convicts’ labor was reflected not only in legislation but also in the works of legal scholars and in legal periodicals. Based on the materials of magazine “Ezhenedel’nik sovetskoi yustitsii” (Eng. The Weekly of Soviet Justice) in 1922–1928 the characteristics of the coverage of this issue in its dynamics are examined. The analysis of messages devoted to the organization of forced labor shows that during the 1920s there were problems in this area that didn’t allow organizing the work of criminals to the fullest extent which are lack of work, competition with the unconvicted population, etc. In this regard throughout the entire period under study authors published in the magazine proposed various solutions. In the early 1920s the most loyal proposals were voiced such as sending convicts to unskilled work or organization of work in economic enterprises of places of detention. By the mid-1920s it turned out that these proposals didn’t have a significant effect and therefore at first proposals to abandon forced labor were made and then this topic practically ceased to be covered at all. Changes in the Criminal Code of 1926 which revealed the role of forced labor without detention led to the emergence of the most radical ideas in the form of using convicts’ labor free of charge. Later, in 1928, the idea became official in the form of the resolution of VTsIK and the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR, dated 28 March 1928, which confirmed the freeness of convicts’ labor and marked a turn towards harsh forms of using prison labor.
Publishing: 28/08/2024
The article has been received by the editor on 28/04/2024
How to cite: Mamontova D.A. Discussions of the 1920s in Legal Circles on the Use of Forced Labor of Convicts // Historical Courier, 2024, No. 4 (36), pp. 73–83. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2024/ISTKURIER-2024-4-06.pdf]
Links: Issue 4 2024
Keywords: sphere of labor; forced labor; penal policy; the Corrective-Labor Code of 1924; the Criminal Code of 1926