Local Soviets, public order, and welfare after Stalin: Appeals from Moscow's Kiev Raion

Russian Review

Volumn 62, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 281-293

  Bittner, Stephen V ^a  

^a SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248054095     PISSN: 00360341     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9434.00277     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. G. Kreslavskii, "V ispolkom postupila zhaloba," Sovety deputatov trudiashchikhsia 8 (August 1962): 65-66
2. The phrase "public letter-writing" was coined by Sheila Fitzpatrick and refers to letters that individuals wrote to public officials about concerns that tended to be personal and/or private. See her "Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s," Slavic Review 55 (Spring 1996): 78-105
3. See, for instance, Valerie A. Kivelson, "The Devil Stole His Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Uprising," American Historical Review 98 (June 1993): 733-56
4. and Horace Dewey and Ann Kleimola, "The Petition (Chelobitnaja) as an Old Russian Literary Genre," Slavic and East European Journal 14 (1970): 284-301
5. Jennifer Lee Anderson, "Gender Role Construction, Morality and Social Norms in Early Modern Russia" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 2001), 24-47
6. See, for instance, Daniel L. Field, Rebels in the Name of the Tsar (Boston, 1989)
7. Gregory L. Freeze, From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia (Oxford, 1988)
8. and Andrew Verner, "Discursive Strategies in the 1905 Revolution: Peasant Petitions from the Vladimir Province," Russian Review 54 (January 1995): 65-90
9. See, for instance, Golfo Alexopoulos, "Exposing Illegality and Oneself: Complaint and Risk in Stalin's Russia," in Reforming Justice in Russia, 1864-1996, ed. Peter H. Solomon (Armonk, NY, 1997), 168-89
10. idem, "The Ritual Lament: ANarrative of Appeal in the 1920s and 30s," Russian History/Historie Russe 24 (Spring-Summer 1997)
11. Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Boston, 1958), 378-408
12. Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation in the 1930s,"
13. and Vladimir A. Kozlov, "Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944-1953," both in Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately (Chicago, 1997), 85-120 and 121-52, respectively
14. and Nicholas Lampert, Whistleblowing in the Soviet Union: A Study of Complaints and Abuses under State Socialism (New York, 1985)
15. See, for instance, Kreslavskii, "V ispolkom postupila zhaloba," 66-67
16. and idem, "V uchezhdenie postupila zhaloba," Sovety deputatov trudiashchikhsia 2 (February 1960): 21
17. Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s "ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK (Moscow, 1986), 9:156-66, 251-55
18. On the emasculation of the soviets under Stalin see Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 305-6
19. On their empowerment under Khrushchev see L. G. Churchward, "Continuity and Change in Local Soviet Government," Soviet Studies 9 (January 1958): 256-85
20. Theodore H. Friedgut, Political Participation in the USSR (Princeton, 1979), 156-62
21. and Jeffrey W. Hahn, Soviet Grassroots: Citizen Participation in Local Soviet Government (Princeton, 1988), 68-70
22. George W. Breslauer, Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (London, 1982), 42
23. "Rabotu Sovetov - na uroven' novykh zadach," Izvestiia, 24 January 1957
24. I. Vinogradov, "Ne otmakhivat'sia ot pisem, a chufko reagirovat' na nikh," Pravda, 3 August 1958
25. See, for instance, Donald A. Filtzer, The Khrushchev Era: De-Stalinization and the Limits of Reform in the USSR, 1953-1964 (Basingstoke, England, 1993)
26. I. Leibovich, Reforma i modernizatsiia v 1953-1964 gg. (Perm, Russia, 1993)
27. Elena Iur'evna Zubkova, Obshchestvo i reformy (Moscow, 1993), 103-88
28. and idem, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945-57 (Armonk, NY, 1998), 149-201
29. The population figure is accurate for 15 January 1959. See Moskva v tsifrakh (1959-1962 gg.) (Moscow, 1964), 9
30. Kreslavskii, "V uchrezhdenie postupila zhaloba," 22
31. Friedgut, Political Participation, 225-27, 229
32. For a sampling of the literature on the various forms of legal and social-welfare appeals in prerevolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union see Robert Osborn, "Citizen Versus Administration in the USSR," Soviet Studies 17 (October 1965): 226-37
33. Gareth Popkins, "Code versus Custom? Norms and Tactics in Peasant Volost Court Appeals, 1889-1917," Russian Review 59 (July 2000): 408-24
34. idem, "Peasant Experiences of the Late Tsarist State: District Congresses of Land Captains, Provincial Boards and the Legal Appeals Process, 1891-1917," Slavonic and East European Review 78 (January 2000): 90-113
35. and Emily E. Pyle, "Peasant Strategies for Obtaining State Aid: A Study of Petitions during World War I,"
36. and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, "Narratives of Appeal and the Appeal of Narratives: Labor Discipline and Its Contestation in the Early Soviet Period," both in Russian History/Histoire Russe 24 (Spring-Summer 1997): 41-64 and 65-87, respectively
37. A. E. Lunev, Administrativnaia otvetstvennost' za pravonarusheniia (Moscow, 1961 ), 5-51
38. Harold J. Berman, Soviet Criminal Law and Procedure: The RSFSR Codes (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 5-13
39. L. A. Nikolaeva, G. I. Petrov, and V. D. Sorokin, "Administrativnoe pravo," inSorok let sovetskogo prava, 1917-1957, ed. O. S. Ioffe (Leningrad, 1957), 1:128-78
40. Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, rev. ed. (New York, 1982), 347
41. M. Postnikov, "O resheniiakh ispolkoma Mossoveta, za narushenie kotorykh ustanovlena administrativnaia otvetstvennost'," Biulleteri ispolkoma Moskovskogo gorodskogo Soveta (BIM) 24 (December 1958): 16-21
42. G. E. Vinokurov, Administrativnye shtrafy: Sbornik normativnykh aktov (Moscow, 1965)
43. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy (TsMAM), f. 328, op. 1, d. 324, l. 51
44. See, for instance, "O nedostatkakh v rabote komissii po nalozheniiu administrativnykh vzyskanii pri ispolkomakh raionnykh Sovetov," BIM 19 (October 1955): 14-16
45. and "O ser'eznykh nedostatkakh v rabote otdelenii militsii i komissii po nalozheniiu administrativnykh vzyskanii pri ispolkomakh raionnykh Sovetov po privlecheniiu grazhdan kadministrativnoi otvetstvennosti," BIM 24 (December 1959): 16-18
46. For problems with administrative commissions outside of Moscow see Lunev, Administrativnaia otvetstvennost', 16-17
47. Pravda, 13 October 1959
48. and E. Fedorov, "Administrativnyi sud," Sovety deputatov trudiashchikhsia3 (March 1960): 111
49. Paul M. Hagenloh, "Administrative Fines in Moscow, 1930-1940" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AAASS, Denver, November 2000)
50. "O nedostatkakh v rabote komissii," 15
51. "O khode vypolneniia reshenii raionnykh Sovetov gor. Moskvy o sobliudenii sotsialisticheskoi zakonnosti i okhrane prav grazhdan," BIM 22 (November 1956): 24, 27
52. According to the reformatio in peius (povorot k khudshemu) clause in the RSFSR Code of Criminal Procedure, which was dusted off by the Supreme Court in 1957, a defendant could in no way worsen his or her position by filing an appeal
53. See Iu. M. Kozlov, Priem i rassmotrenie zhalob i zaiavlenii trudiashchikhsia, 2d rev. ed. (Moscow, 1959), 10-16
54. Lunev, Administrativnaia otvetstvennost', 148-62
55. and I. Skorokhodov, "Nedopustimost' 'povorota k khudshemu,'" Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost' 8 (August 1958): 51-54
56. TsMAM, f. 328, op. 1, d. 306, ll. 219-26, 232-35
57. Alastair McAuley, Economie Welfare in the Soviet Union: Poverty, Living Standards, and Inequality (Madison, 1979), 269-76
58. A. A. Zabozlaev and A. V. Levshin, eds., Sotsial'noe obespechenie v SSSR: Sbornik ofitsial'nykh materialov (Moscow, 1962), 7
59. V. M. Piskov, ed., Sotsial'noe obespechenie i strakhovanie v SSSR: Sbornik ofitsial'nykh dokumentov (Moscow, 1964), 275-76
60. TsMAM, f. 328, op. 1, d. 345, l. 164
61. d. 346, ll. 216-16ob
62. and d. 306, l. 134
63. N. M. Ershova, Opeka i popechitel'stvo (Moscow, 1971), 9-10
64. V. A. Riasentsev, Semeinaia prava (Moscow, 1967), 208-13
65. G. M. Sverdlov, Sovetskoe zakonodatel'stvo o brake i sem'e (Moscow, 1961), 83-92
66. P. I. Kudriavtsev, ed., Iuridicheskii slovar', 2d ed. (Moscow, 1956)
67. s. ν. "Opeka." For a description of Soviet guardianship law and foster families in the 1920s and 1930s see Alan M. Ball, And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918-1930 (Berkeley, 1994), 144-49
68. Ershova, Opeka i popechitel'stvo, 48-55. Although opeka and popechitel'stvo both translate into English as "guardianship," there were important juridical differences between the two categories of supervision. Popechitel'stvo was used to protect the legal rights and interests of minors between fourteen and eighteen years old, and of adults who were physically incapable of looking after these affairs on their own. Opeka was used to protect the property interests of children younger than fourteen years old, of mentally retarded and mentally ill persons, and of persons who had died or whose whereabouts were unknown. In the case of minors, neither form of guardianship constituted adoption (usynovlenie), since none of the familial rights and obligations (inheritance, residency, and mutual care) were bestowed upon guardian or ward
69. TsMAM, f. 328, op. 1, d. 312, l. 61
70. Vinogradov, "Ne otmakhivat'sia ot pisem."