Roman Evgenievich Romanov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Turn to Coercion in the USSR on June 26, 1940: Reading at the Junction of Global and National History
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2024-4-7
The article is devoted to proving the research hypothesis that the decree of June 26, 1940, before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, was a criminal law mechanism for forcing employees to indefinitely fulfill employment contracts in the Soviet industry, typologically close to the “similar” British experience of the 19th century. This task is solved on the basis of an interdisciplinary synthesis of concepts of global and national labor history. In line with the stated methodology, the processes of formation and development of the phenomenon of legal criminalization of unauthorized departure of workers from enterprises in the leading countries of Western Europe, their overseas colonies and Russia in the Modern era are analyzed. It is revealed that at that time in the world and domestic industry there was a class hierarchical order of masters and servants, based on the legislative right of manufacturers to prosecute hired proletarians for non-fulfillment of fixed-term contracts. In recent times, it has been replaced by a new hierarchy of industrial managers and employees, which functioned mainly through a system of disciplinary penalties. It is shown that, unlike the West, the Soviet state relied not only on administrative, but also judicial and repressive practices of disciplining the working class. In the 1920s–1930s, the most stringent forms of social control over production workers operated according to ideological criteria within the framework of correctional labor and criminal law. It is established that on June 26, 1940, under the influence of the internal crisis and the Second World War in the USSR, there was a return to the rational and legal foundation of state violence. On the one hand, the transfer of criminal law norms to pre-war labor legislation was a revival of the already well-forgotten tradition of criminalizing the unauthorized departure of personnel from factories, which, according to formal signs, according to the typology similar to the Anglo-Saxon “analogues” of the second and third quarters of the 19th century. On the other hand, the Soviet specifics of the reminiscence of coercion to fulfill civil employment contracts consisted in the presence of permanent attachment of workers and employees to enterprises. In addition, the country’s top leadership has followed the path of historically atypical expansion of the scope of judicial repression, which also applies to truants and those who are late for work. As a result, the enforcement of the decree of June 26, 1940 in the last pre-war year (until June 1941) acquired an absolutely unprecedented scale from the point of view of world history. It is concluded that the specified criminal law mechanism for stimulating employment was a social atavism, which under the conditions of Stalin’s early industrial modernization experienced a rebirth and acquired explosive dynamics. In general, based on the above facts, the stated research hypothesis can be considered objectively proven.
Publishing: 28/08/2024
The article has been received by the editor on 01/05/2024
How to cite: Romanov R.E. The Turn to Coercion in the USSR on June 26, 1940: Reading at the Junction of Global and National History // Historical Courier, 2024, No. 4 (36), pp. 84–101. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2024/ISTKURIER-2024-4-07.pdf]
The work was carried out on the topic of the state task “Socio-Economic Potential of the Eastern Regions of Russia in the 20th – Early 21st Centuries: Management Strategies and Practices, Dynamics, Geopolitical Context” (FWZM-2024-0005).
Links: Issue 4 2024
Keywords: global history; Stalinist USSR; workers and employees; decree of June 26; 1940; legal criminalization; absenteeism; unauthorized retirement from production