Post
by blindpig » Wed Feb 07, 2024 3:21 pm
About prison, crime and communism
No. 2/90.II.2024
The flow of information from developed countries with a capitalist orientation does not dry up about organized terrorist attacks in schools, editorial offices, shopping centers, institutes, military bases and, in general, in any crowded places, about mass pogroms, about all kinds of “shootings” committed by unorganized individuals, about the long-term sentences of participants in peaceful anti-government demonstrations who entered premises that are usually only entered by officials, deputies, and congressmen, about gigantic amounts of tax evasion, about the falsification of medicines, extortion and bribery on a grandiose scale, about tensions in connection with everything this “work” of the gigantic apparatus of force, judicial and penal influence on people in market democracies. In this context, there is a need to deepen the understanding of our readers about the role of the penitentiary system in maintaining the principles of bourgeois democracy, about the degree of interest of the bourgeois state and the professors serving it in strengthening in the public consciousness a positive attitude towards the penitentiary system in general as an instrument for maintaining order in an ethnic group, an instrument capable to raise reliable, active jailers in mentally predisposed individuals and through this to drive into the consciousness of people with increased social activity stable reflexes of complete obedience for long periods. Let’s begin our study of this problem by analyzing the content of one psychological “experiment” that has become very famous in the West.
I
Today, the best paid minds of Western science - psychologists and mathematicians, chemists and physicists... - are working on the “construction” of new religious movements, or at least “scientific” theories modeled after the “theory of relativity”, capable of fulfilling the role of anti-logical in the human mind "virus".
V. A. Podguzov
The confrontation between Marxism and the entire Western bourgeois ideology, which in the 20th century acquired a truly international character, confirmed the correctness of the classics’ thesis about the partisanship of all sciences without exception: representatives of bourgeois “science” (each within the framework of their “professional interests”), fulfilling a social order oligarchies, sought in every possible way to destroy Marxist theory. Bourgeois “scientists”, trying to show their “professional suitability” to the big bosses, did not stop at any methodological and moral (if this word, of course, is applicable to bourgeois “scientists”) obstacles on the way to justifying capitalism.
Thus, one of the main directions of anti-communist (anti-scientific) propaganda was the biologization concept in psychology, which aims to convince people that the decisive and unchangeable (for example, during the social revolution) factor in human behavior is the animal principles. However, it was impossible to limit ourselves to theory only. What was needed was experimental data that could deal a crushing blow to Marxism, communism and humanity.
One attempt at such a blow was the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” in which Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo used the example of an improvised prison to recreate the conditions of a closed society based on violence and power in order, roughly speaking, to prove a person’s resigned submission, his weak-will in the face of social hierarchy. In order to bring the reader up to date, I will give the main provisions of the experiment conducted in 1971.
20 people were selected to organize it:
“These were people who did not show the slightest deviation from the “ norm ” (no increased anxiety, aggressiveness, suspiciousness), as a rule - representatives of the middle class , the most mature and healthy, both physically and mentally. The group, consisting of twenty-four young men, was randomly divided into prisoners and guards. <…> Volunteers played the roles of guards and prisoners and lived in a mock prison set up in the basement of the Faculty of Psychology.”
Consulting the “test subjects” before the experiment, Zimbardo shared the following recommendations:
“Create in the prisoners a feeling of melancholy, a feeling of fear, a feeling of arbitrariness and that their lives are completely controlled by us, the system. <…> We will deprive them of their individuality in various ways. All this together will create a feeling of powerlessness in them. This means that in this situation we will have all the power, and they will have none.
<…>
The experiment quickly got out of control. The guards used sadistic methods and insults against the prisoners, and by the end many of them suffered severe emotional distress.
After a relatively calm first day, a riot broke out on the second day. The guards voluntarily worked overtime and, without the intervention of researchers, began to suppress the riot, using fire extinguishers against the prisoners. After this incident, the guards tried to separate the prisoners and pit them against each other, choosing the “good” and “bad” buildings, and making the prisoners think that there were “informants” in their ranks. These measures had a significant effect, and there were no further large-scale disturbances. According to Zimbardo's consultants (former prisoners), these tactics were similar to those used in real American prisons.
Counting prisoners, which were originally intended to help them get used to identification numbers, turned into hour-long ordeals during which guards tormented prisoners and subjected them to physical punishment, including forcing them to perform long periods of physical exercise.
The prison quickly became dirty and gloomy. The right to wash became a privilege that could be denied, and was often done. Some prisoners were forced to clean toilets with their bare hands. The mattresses were removed from the “bad” cell, and the prisoners had to sleep on the bare concrete floor. Food was often denied as punishment.
<…>
During the experiment, several guards began to turn into sadists - especially at night, when it seemed to them that the video cameras were turned off. The experimenters claimed that approximately every third guard showed real sadistic tendencies. Many of the guards were upset when the experiment was stopped early."
It would take a long time to list the “features” of the experiment, however, I believe that in general the picture is clear. Having recreated the conditions of an American (equally misanthropic) prison, placing average American citizens (equally moral monsters) in it, Zimbardo received... capitalist society in a concentrated form. But as usually happens, having “not noticed” Marxism, having presented capitalist society (which, for the purpose of identifying communism and capitalism in Western “science,” is used to be called industrial and post-industrial) as the only possible one, the truth remained hidden from the American professor (as well as from all his colleagues and employers), which was reflected in the conclusions at the end of the entire event:
“The results of the experiment were used to demonstrate the receptivity and submission of people when there is an ideology that justifies their actions, supported by society and the state. They have also been used to illustrate theories of cognitive dissonance and the influence of authority. In psychology, experimental results are used to demonstrate situational factors in human behavior as opposed to personal ones. In other words, the situation influences a person’s behavior more than the internal characteristics of the individual.”
Such a supra-class, anti-communist, and therefore anti-scientific conclusion was made by Western psychological “science”. And this is natural. Bourgeois psychology, preaching the principles of positivism, narrow empiricism and objectivism, distances itself from the social conditions that shape the consciousness of the individual; society is presented as something abstract, devoid of class contradictions, qualitatively the same at all times and in all eras; the differences between communism and capitalism are, as it were, “accidentally” left out of the equation. Moreover, despite the obvious vulgarity (for any Marxist) of everything associated with such “scientific activity,” the experiment became very famous, influencing not only anti-Marxist psychology, but even artistic culture [1].
Zimbardo understood perfectly well that the majority of Westerners are moral monsters, since he himself grew up in conditions of permanent competition between everyone for the right to oppress their neighbor, having absorbed with his mother’s milk the misanthropic ideology of the “American Dream,” pragmatism and worship of the “golden calf.” The American professor, who knew about these characteristic features, pursued the goal of proving the naturalness and necessity of the capitalist system on the basis of a tendentious interpretation of empirical material.
In fact, the mental “peculiarities” that manifested themselves during the “Stanford experiment” are born not from a person’s natural anger or submissiveness, but from his illiteracy (ignorance, first of all, of Marxism) and savagery, i.e. traits that mature in man under the yoke of a “society” of private property, which has led, is leading and will lead humanity (until our race finally stands under the banner of communism) to disasters on a local and global scale.
In this context, one more trend cannot fail to be mentioned: sometimes such “psychologists” tear off the last masks of civilization and conduct socio-psychological experiments on animals, on creatures devoid of consciousness, the defining thing that allows us to talk about such a science as psychology (there are referring to those experiments where they try to draw social scientific conclusions based on the activities of animals [2]). Openly proclaiming the identity of animals and people, these no longer hiding biologizers come to “phenomenal” discoveries: man behaves like an animal, and therefore human nature is unchanged, his savagery does not allow the voice of his conscience to sound louder than the thirst for profit and lust, “everything human to man alien,” he is ready to work for food, without asking unnecessary questions. But, as is usually the case in bourgeois research, true observations are subject to petty-bourgeois interpretation, which ultimately leads to the well-known apologetics of capitalism, according to which no revolution will change the current situation, will not change our mental properties, because man was created to exploit or submit, it all depends only on what class God predicted he would be born into.
The fathers of modern European science, Bacon, Descartes and Galileo, argued that the correctness of an experiment is determined by how well it is thought out, by the extent to which the people who organized it took into account all the subtleties and features of the phenomenon being studied, by whether scientists have a scientific method of cognition (we We do not raise the question of the truth of the methods of Bacon, Descartes and Galileo, because we are now interested in their absolutely correct direction of thought); losing sight of the general methodology or ignoring particulars, there is a great risk of destroying the harmonious edifice of experimental activity. “Accidentally forgetting” these instructions of the classics of science, modern would-be experimenters suffer from radical empiricism, infantilism and bourgeois narrow-mindedness, falling into the preaching of social Darwinism in the form of scientific snobbery. With the authority of science they attack the Marxist doctrine of man, transferring Darwinism from biology to the social order. And this is not surprising. Positivism took root in the minds of most modern scientists, replaced holistic knowledge about the general with fragmentary knowledge about the particular, criticized the very possibility of human knowledge, bringing into fashion such principles of bourgeois thinking as agnosticism, subjectivism and relativism. The fathers of imperialist (hence false, corrupt and misleading) “science” Comte, Spencer and Mach argued that the knowledge of the universal is a hoax, that philosophical thinking is the ghost of medieval metaphysics, that reality beyond perception is a theoretical construct, which is fundamentally impossible to prove, and therefore the only thing a modern scientist should be engaged in is activities that do not go beyond the scope of his narrow specialization and “positive knowledge,” in no case risking elevating himself to philosophical generalizations. These and many other provisions became part of the creed of most bourgeois (and in many cases Soviet) science, forming the basis of modern ideology that goes far beyond the framework of natural science and social science.
It is also noteworthy that the popularity of the Stanford experiment went far beyond America itself. For example, a lecture on psychology dedicated to the experiment, which the author of this article was “lucky” to witness, ended with the following words spoken by the lecturer (candidate of psychological sciences):
“The prison experiment is a clear illustration of the naturalness of human submission to authorities and social roles that dominate us.”
Our modern Russian higher school churns out thousands of such “psychologists.” Some of them do not sit still, making money from private consultations, but strive to spread their “deep views”, wanting to “enlighten” the masses. Just look at the hundreds of blogs on the Internet dedicated to the “popularization of psychological knowledge.” And this applies not only to psychology. What's going on in philosophy? In physics? In biology? In history? We, of course, understand the general vector of the “development” of modern “science,” but the particular examples that each of us has the misfortune to encounter clearly and clearly demonstrate the deplorability of the situation. The vulgarity and formalism of our “professors of stupidity” would be the envy of the most eminent scholastics. The vast majority of modern teachers are intellectually traumatized, they are not able to adequately reflect the world, their entire worldview is a set of cliches and fragmentary facts (each in their own specialty), mixed under the influence of everyday and formal logic. Professional cretinism among such “specialists” becomes the principle that determines an already disfigured worldview.
However, there is no time to be discouraged. This is not the first time that communists will have to face the aggressive ignorance of large masses of the intelligentsia, victory over which (ignorance) is possible provided that the process of self-education is conscientiously organized by all those who call themselves communists. One of the forms of the above self-education is journalistic activity that claims to promote, concretize and actualize Marxism, in other words, activity that contributes to a more productive forging of high-quality Marxist personnel for the future party of scientific centralism. In order not to pass off as an eloquent speaker limiting himself to formal slogans, I will give below some of my reflections on the essence and fate of the penitentiary system, reflections that claim to be called “propaganda of Marxism.”
II
I am alone - there is no consolation:
The walls are bare all around,
The ray of the lamp shines dimly
By dying fire;
Only audible: behind the doors
Sound-measured steps
Walks in the silence of the night
Unresponsive sentry.
Lermontov
Studying the experience of Western psychological science necessarily leads to considerations regarding the penitentiary system and a possible option for overcoming it. The lackeys of capital in “professor’s uniforms” come up with fairy tales about certain guarantees of security that, according to them, prison provides to society. These gentlemen diligently avoid questions about the causes of crime, realizing that exposing their selfish employer is a very noble thing, but not very profitable. So various philosophical and legal concepts appear that ignore the theory of communism, justifying the necessity and eternity of prison by repeating the long-known (but sometimes hidden under a pile of scientific terms) anti-scientific thesis that says: “human nature is unchangeable.” On the other hand, the social consciousness of workers who disdain Marxism continues to be in a comatose state, which contributes to mass agreement with the existing order of affairs.
People who justify the need for the eternal functioning of the penitentiary system are not embarrassed by the fact that the occupancy of prisons has no effect on reducing the crime rate, that, no matter how many robbers and murderers (“bloody deeds” of which are quite often associated with the redistribution of property) was caught and convicted, the same banditry continues to flourish. One is being replaced by others, the experienced and “experienced” are being replaced by the young and “green”, either from childhood intoxicated by criminal romance, or forced into such a “profession” by bestial conditions of existence, or both options taken together - it is not the particulars that are important here, and a general rule that says: no matter how many criminals you catch, property relations will supply society with new ones in return for one caught thief. Moreover, the trend, as the crisis of imperialism deepens, only progresses, increasingly dividing society into “trembling creatures” and “those with capital”, which, however, does not really concern temporarily well-fed legislators.
The most “lucky” of those caught will be treated to another original product of the “civilization” of private property - the death penalty, which (which is “surprisingly”) also cannot solve the problem of banditry: the sentence is carried out, the trigger is pulled, current is supplied to the electric chair, poison penetrates into the blood... but crime still does not disappear anywhere, continuing to terrorize capitalist society. Moreover, there are often cases when the news of the execution of one could only provoke or anger others. After all, many of those who are commonly called criminals are people with obvious (and not hidden, like a “law-abiding” tradesman) mental disorders, which guarantee such a non-obvious reaction to a seemingly act of intimidation on the part of the penitentiary system.
However, more often than not, the fear of imprisonment or even execution does not stop a person about to commit a crime for another, much more trivial reason: his life is excessively difficult and fundamentally meaningless; work gives way to sleep, fleeting happiness to long-term despair. Such people do not understand either the world around them or themselves. Truly human dreams are alien to them, because from childhood they were taught to dream about the base, about the material and everyday, momentary and individual; they do not bother themselves with thinking about the great and eternal, because from childhood they have been driven into a capitalist cage, which squeezes them as the political and economic crisis deepens. The “dangers” that arise against this background are assessed as another “gift of fate,” the humble acceptance of which has long been an integral part of their way of existence. That is why many bandits, who were once representatives of the working, middle or any other class, “find themselves” in banditry; imbued with a specific criminal romance, they recall their “life” in freedom with contempt. And even a naively understood, but biologically justified love for the family that remains “in law” is often unable to increase the fear of imprisonment. Death is perceived by such people as one of the natural, and sometimes even the most desirable, ways of getting rid of the constantly oppressive feeling of unsettledness. Thus, intimidating a living dead person with prison or execution is a stupid and naive idea that does not pretend to solve the problem, but to sanctimoniously ignore it.
Most of the criminal element are representatives of the oppressed lumpen-proletarian masses, driven to such a degree of despair when the scale of the potential benefits from a successful crime exceeds the scale of the potential threats from failure. This is especially true for petty thieves who are forced to a similar method of earning money by the latest optimization of business, medicine or education. At the same time, they end up behind bars only because, in terms of cunning and vile intelligence, they are inferior to their “colleagues” in high offices, who commit a hundred times more dangerous crimes every day, trading their destinies on the stock exchange or sending resources to the next warring banana-Maidan republic.
Hence the sincere sympathy that the average person can feel towards Dubrovsky’s bandit gang or Robin Hood’s “Merry Men”, sympathy towards the peasant wars under the leadership of Muntzer or Pugachev, sympathy towards an ordinary bank robber who is perceived as a daredevil who decided rob the main thief; hence the so-called “Stockholm syndrome”, which is a widely replicated example of an idealistic and metaphysical approach to the study of social phenomena. People see comrades in misfortune in some criminals, to some extent identify themselves with them, identify with them on the issue of the injustice of the distribution of material wealth, and therefore understand their motives (it is obvious that bandits often rob representatives of their own class, they commit violence precisely in relation to the same proletarians as themselves; in this circumstance, the bestial essence of capitalism, which the communists will have to fight, is more clearly visible; as Bortnik wrote: “Understanding the social roots of crime is not the same as justifying criminals”). And it is precisely this materialistic view of crime that outright fascists are trying to fight, seeing crime in human nature, metaphysically declaring the fundamental malfunction of criminals, turning a blind eye to the arbitrariness of the financial oligarchy, driving billions of people into poverty and darkness.
On the other hand, the educational system plays an important role in the process of reproduction of crime. The fact is that children are spiritually deformed from an early age, raising petty-bourgeois ideals in them, turning them into philistine psychopaths, destroying truly human traits in them, thereby creating the ground for a criminal future under certain life circumstances. Any educational system in a class society, against its will, makes a significant contribution to the cause of not only general stupidity and ossification, but also, as a consequence, general criminalization (mass school “shootings” that have spread in recent years in Russian latitudes represent an example of the realization of the “dream” fool” shouting “I want to live like in America!”). The very essence of education under capitalism lies not in the education of a comprehensively developed personality, but in the training of an ordinary consumer with a narrow qualification, going beyond which is complicated by a limited worldview. Children are brought up, on the one hand, to be capricious and permissive, on the other - lack of will and submissive acceptance of capitalist reality. So it turns out that the educational system supplies society with a proletarian mass, some of whom, under the pressure of loans, crises and depressions, either slowly go crazy, committing suicide, or begin to engage in criminal activities that promise either quick and easy money, or quick and “easy money”. » execution by electric chair (sometimes both options are implemented alternately).
Through some logical reflection, we arrive at the previously postulated thesis, according to which prisons are not capable of eliminating crime. In this regard, we are left with two possible options for solving the problem: either we recognize that human nature is unchangeable, and therefore talk about the elimination of the penitentiary system is meaningless, or we remain on a consistently scientific position, according to which man is a social being, and therefore his individual vices are only a reflection of social vices. Without recognizing the scientific content of idealism and choosing the second option, we come to the following conclusion: the elimination of human imperfections is possible only on the basis of the planned scientific elimination of social imperfections; It is precisely the property relations and the mass ignorance that protects them, perpetuated by political violence (including prison violence), that guarantee the existence of all the barbarity that has surrounded humanity over the past few millennia.
A liberal (and even left-liberal)-minded reader, forced under the pressure of the above arguments to admit the lack of connection between the development of an extensive penitentiary system and the eradication of crime, a reader forced to support the need for measures to eliminate the prison as an institution, may, however, notice that the most famous, but At the same time, the Bolsheviks made an allegedly failed attempt to overcome the prison system: they say, having come to power under the slogans of freedom and democracy, the communists turned the entire country into one large prison, in which “one half of the population was imprisoned, and the other was guarding.” This way of thinking is possible because the political repressions that are so fashionable to talk about in our time are often attributed only to the Bolsheviks; various fables are composed, for example, that Stalin was a tyrant and executioner, who either started the “Great Terror” to get rid of competitors, or ended it, learning too late about the Trotskyist conspiracy (there are a large number of versions, the choice of which depends depending on the characteristics of political views; at the same time, the concept that denies the “Great Terror” is perceived by the majority of the left as a harmful conspiracy theory). All these historical myths are elevated to the rank of state bourgeois ideology, striving by hook or by crook to hide its own bloody mark left on the body of Russia and the world. It is no coincidence that Vladimir Putin, acting as a representative of the political servants of capitalism, constantly reminds Western partners and Russian citizens that it is necessary to remember “the crimes committed by the [communist] regime against its own people and the horrors of repression.”
It is worth noting that such views are widespread not only among the so-called liberal-democratic wing of Russian politics, but also among those who have the audacity to call themselves communists. Such well-known “theorists and propagandists of Marxism” as Zhukov, Yakovlev, Yulin, Meisner, Semin, Rudoy, Spitsyn, Komolov in matters of repressive policy under the Bolsheviks refer to the data of Zemskov and other “moderate” (in their anti-communism) bourgeois historians, thereby propagating more cunning and therefore more dangerous lies about the Stalinist leadership.
However, the discussion below will not be about slander and opportunism, not about individual mistakes and delusions, but about the penitentiary system itself and the measures that the communists took to deny it. In order to answer all the mentioned “original” claims and accusations against the Bolsheviks, put forward by both open enemies and hidden “friends,” let us turn to world history, which gives us a wealth of material to refute the above speculations.
III
In a system of commodity-money relations, prison is as obligatory as money itself.
V. A. Podguzov
As is known, the state system of violence, one of the components of which is prison, originated several thousand years ago and became one of the first political instruments for suppressing the will of economic competitors, one of the first instruments for the struggle of exploiters not only with the exploited, but also with other exploiters (Khodorkovsky or Navalny will not be allowed to lie). Ownership of property not supported by force in the conditions of a slaveholding/feudal/capitalist world is fundamentally impossible (those who did not recognize this axiom throughout history were burned, hanged, and shot by their competitors), because within the framework of general savagery there can be no other way of preserving and increasing personal wealth than as political violence, coercion and terror. The laws, composed by self-proclaimed tyrants to protect what was looted and taken away, were perceived by the majority of the working population (and are still perceived!) as given by God/king, generally accepted (at least formally) truths, the denial of which would lead a potential insolent person to shamanic-imperial or liberal -democratic (one essence) scaffold. Both the “Laws of Hammurabi”, and their later, but less vulgar version “Roman Law”, and the laws of modern capitalist states - all these mandatory “recommendations” represent the will of the economically dominant class, expressed in various principles, edicts, codes and articles. In other words, the prison, like other political institutions, was brought into existence by the need to protect economic dominance , which, in turn, became possible only in a “society” of private property: where there is private property, disputes necessarily arise about its redistribution; the winners of these disputes are given the opportunity, with the help of prison, to limit the freedom of the losers, which is proven by examples of modern life, when petty swindlers are in prison for their unsuccessful attempts to rob larger swindlers.
Time passed, and in prisons only the features of their appearance and internal situation changed, the wording of sentences was clarified, the ultimatum of which was reinforced by constantly improving forms of execution. Socio-economic formations, successively replacing each other, preserved the prison as a necessary component of maintaining power, modifying its individual features. Humanity slowly but surely walked along the path of social progress, spontaneously approaching communism and Marxism, which for the first time proclaimed the inevitability of the destruction of the prison as an institution of political violence. Moreover, the very procedure of this destruction, which began after the October Revolution, was organized dialectically, that is, scientifically: the Bolsheviks who took power in the fight against internal and external enemies won victory after victory, while simultaneously carrying out the planned construction of communist production relations and the liquidation of the commodity-money system, which, in turn, dealt a serious blow to the foundations of crime in general. Simultaneously with all these processes, the elimination of illiteracy was in full swing, making a tangible contribution to the education of the people on new, communist principles. It was these events, which were a consequence of the application of diamatic methodology to issues of denial of the penitentiary system, that led the USSR to such a state of affairs when, as V. A. Podguzov noted, “most schoolchildren and students learned to fly in flying clubs,” while “elderly the antisocial element was in the camps.” And it is precisely the rejection of this practice that has led modern Russia to a very sad situation in which “many wealthy elderly people belong to flying clubs, have their own airplanes and helicopters, and the vast majority of schoolchildren and students are forced to sniff glue and experience dizziness from “smoking mixtures” and other drugs."
So. Prison is a consequence of the “civilization” of private property, a form of policy of the economically dominant classes , which existed thousands of years before the October Revolution. That is why Lenin, referring to the rich experience of the repressive policies of the ruling classes, noted:
“We will suppress the resistance of the propertied people with all the means with which they suppressed the proletariat - no other means have been invented.”
And it was precisely this feature of the power politics of the Marxists that V. A. Podguzov pointed out in the article “ Fundamental problems of economic development ”:
“For thousands of years, the work of slaves and other “prisoners” was considered the norm of civilization. Therefore, no matter how much they wish, the communists cannot instantly abolish this democratic norm, especially since the atrocities of the White Guards, kulak gangs, and saboteurs convinced the population of the USSR of the need to maintain for some time the prison-camp system of isolating ardent criminals. However, even in this case, the number of repressed “whites”, Trotskyists, kulaks, policemen is fundamentally inferior to the size of the victims of formations based on private property: ancient Egyptian, Asian and European slavery, Asian (Chinese, Indian, Persian Arab, Turkish) despotism, Christianity, Islam, European colonialism and the slave trade, the mass extermination of Indians and blacks on the American continent by immigrants from Europe.”
Throughout its history, private property has needed prison as an apparatus of political violence against the working masses and unwanted political and economic competitors, therefore, as mentioned above, all accusations against the communists of the “repressive nature of their policies” are a manifestation of either naive illiteracy, or ideological corruption. The Bolsheviks, who inherited a feudal-capitalist country, were forced to inherit such a characteristic institution as prison, because millions of psychopaths raised in class society (philistines who believe in God, personal success and exclusivity) could not become well-mannered and prudent immediately after the revolution Soviet citizens. Years and decades of hard work lay ahead for the massive re-education of not only the criminals, but also, no less important, the employees of the institutions in which these criminals were kept.
The successes achieved in this field by the correctional system under Stalin could allow bourgeois professors and “proletarian” opportunists to reconsider their naive and erroneous views. This would be possible if they all not only heard, but also knew about the partisanship of history , which “in all its glory” manifested itself precisely in the form of grandiose anti-communist propaganda, which poured tons of lies and dirt into the Soviet period of our history (among intellectuals usually called loud phrase “historical truth”). In fact, the slander about the “Great Terror”, the Gulag, execution troikas and totalitarian, chilling Siberian prisons is only a somewhat exaggerated story about the penitentiary system of class society, which for thousands of years protected the dominant system, briefly but accurately characterized by the expression “ war of all against everyone ,” put into circulation (which is very significant) by one of the greatest ideologists of capitalism , the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
The Bolsheviks, having created the first state in history that repressed primarily the exploiters, directed their weapons against those who invented the same weapons. It is for this reason that modern ideological followers of the scoundrels of the past are so furious, trying to denigrate the blessed memory of the communists. And it is this slap in the face that modern oligarchs and their lackeys cannot forget, trying by hook or by crook to denigrate the memory of our great ancestors. The Bolsheviks managed to almost completely destroy the material foundation of crime in the shortest possible time, changing the very essence of the penitentiary system, roughly speaking, directing it against the enemies of the people. Therefore, after the October Revolution, instead of prisons, so-called correctional labor institutions began to appear on the territory of the former Russian Empire, the purpose of which was the collective and labor re-education of criminals.
The difference between Soviet correctional institutions and capitalist prisons was not limited to just the name; the very essence of such “institutions” was changed. Instead of hard labor, common under tsarism and capitalism, the principles of free, creative labor were introduced, which had certain pedagogical functions. The prisoner had to understand that his being behind bars does not put an end to him as a person and a citizen, that this is only a temporary measure giving a person a chance to reform, a second attempt, which many prisoners, not yet completely disfigured by bourgeois morality, sought to realize. They were given a chance to prove to the people (represented by Soviet law enforcement agencies) the sincerity of their intentions, to prove their loyalty to the Soviet state and, most importantly, their understanding of the new communist principles. Yes, there were exceptions, but the general trend pointed to the beneficial influence of the Bolshevik strategy of rejecting the prison system.
In addition, such “enterprises” were supposed to gradually transition to self-sufficiency, reimbursing the state budget for the costs of their organization and operation, which, in turn, contributed to instilling in prisoners a sense of responsibility to their people, an understanding of the social essence of man, which is based on collectivism and mutual assistance. The funds received as a result of such practices were spent on the needs of the institution itself: bonuses for colony staff, improving the conditions of prisoners, holding and providing material support for cultural and educational events, and material assistance after release. Correctional institutions gradually turned into unique labor colonies in the manner of the Gorky Correctional Colony under the leadership of Anton Semyonovich Makarenko, into enterprises with their own budget, with their own stamp, with their own traditions.
Work and life in the colony were organized in accordance with Soviet labor legislation: labor protection existed, guards and correctional facility workers were not allowed to exceed their official powers, the initiative of workers was actively encouraged, socialist legality was supported, violation of which was strictly punished, hard labor conditions, torture and bullying were not allowed over the prisoners. In other words, the right pedagogical atmosphere was created, conducive to the mental and physical recovery of the convicts.
Among other things, within the framework of such prisons, libraries were opened to teach prisoners a culture of reading, various cultural and educational events were held, with the goal of educating in each arrested a true Soviet citizen, aware that the world will no longer be the same, that the communists came seriously and for a long time, that living conditions are improving in direct proportion to the strengthening of the power of the Bolsheviks.
In order to satisfy the reader’s conscientious curiosity, let us turn to a collection of articles entitled “From Prisons to Educational Institutions” under the general editorship of A. Ya. Vyshinsky, which contained materials demonstrating the positive trends observed in the field of the correctional system (as communism was built in THE USSR):
“The October Revolution filled the walls of the former tsarist prisons with sounds and colors that were previously unknown there: in the prison one could hear the speech of a speaker, the voice of the leader of a circle, a team of sportsmen, and along with them the sounds of singing and music; posters, slogans, portraits, colors of scenery were full of colors, movie screens lit up.
<…>
In 1931, in the USSR in prison there were, according to incomplete information, 1018 amateur artistic circles (drama circles, small forms, propaganda brigades, string and brass musical, choral, literary and fine arts circles). The largest percentage falls on circles with dramatic shapes. Their total number reaches 700. Thus, on average there are several circles per place of deprivation of liberty in the USSR. <…>
The following table gives a clearer picture of the quantitative volume of mass artistic forms of political and educational work in 1931 in the RSFSR alone :
Number of film screenings - 15,321
Number of performances - 7,763
Number of concerts, evenings, etc. - 3,034
Number of seats - 38,803
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Most theaters and stages in prisons in the USSR were converted from former prison churches. Their capacity on average ranges from 200 to 1,000 seats. The stage construction was carried out mainly by craftsmen and artists from prison camps. In some cases, the stages and areas for spectators are beautifully finished and decorated.
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... Drama clubs, propaganda brigades and small forms ... serve the red calendar, economic and political campaigns, awards evenings for shock workers, propaganda of the industrial financial plan, the fight to eliminate breakthroughs, the fight for cleanliness, the fight for universal education and other events of the sectors of the cultural council of the correctional labor institution.”
For greater clarity, I will give several examples of such cultural and educational events:
“In the Novinskaya correctional labor colony (Moscow), a propaganda team of 20 women deprived of liberty fought for the industrial financial plan of their colony with the litmontage “Rupture-Grass” of their own composition. An even more striking work is provided by Taganka (Moscow), where a propaganda brigade of prisoners deprived of liberty consistently holds a series of performances of their own composition : 1) “Perekop” (showing the corrupting influence of flying, greed and drunkenness on production and the role of the Red Army in the struggle for discipline at a socialist factory), 2) “Alarm” (the fight against breakthroughs in the leather and metalworking industries of Taganka) and 3) an oratorio on the theme of the September plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1930.
In the Leningrad Domzak, for the 14th anniversary of the October Revolution, the propaganda team, using its own text, showed a combined review with a light newspaper, developing the theme: from the Tsarist prison and its regime to the Soviet correctional labor institution fighting for a new man. There, in the department for minors, there is a propaganda team of the latter consisting of 40 people. produced a “Shop Report” based on the achievements and shortcomings available in the shops and workshops.
At the Sinyavinsky peat harvesting sites (Leningrad Region), the propaganda brigade composes and performs a literary montage on the theme of the defense of the USSR “War to War,” which is shown up to two dozen times not only to those deprived of liberty, but also to the general civilian population of neighboring workers’ villages and nearby collective farms.
In Azerbaijan, in correctional labor institutions, there are several drama sections to serve prisoners of various nationalities; for example, the Turkic section of small forms puts on: “Usta Kanber”, “Kiryanishin oziniol dordi” and “Henry Dzhandu” (local and political topics); The Russian section of small forms, in its productions, vividly responds to the latest political issues of the day and fights against the everyday shortcomings of the correctional home .
The Stalinist industrial colony (in Ukraine), through its living newspaper “Udarnik,” notes all current production work to fulfill and exceed the industrial financial plan. The newspaper is musically designed and conducts all political campaigns, fighting against equalization and impersonality, simulations and various production shortcomings .
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The repertoire of drama clubs is extremely diverse. “Mutiny”, “Chapaev”, “Razlom”, “Call of the Factory Committee”, “Dictatorship” and similar plays with industrial and historical-revolutionary themes are advanced. But the bulk of the repertoire of drama clubs consists of numerous plays from the club and village repertoire - anti-religious, collective farm, new life, medical education, etc.
The classical repertoire is often used (Gogol, Gorky, Ostrovsky, Shchedrin, etc.).
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Musical circles are developed mainly in the form of Great Russian and brass bands, ensembles, quartets, etc. Their composition often ranges from 25 to 40 people, as for example in large prisons, mass labor colonies and industrial colonies. There are musical choirs in all prisons in Ukraine (balalaika players, mandolin players and guitarists). In Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and other republics, the network of music circles is quite developed. Among them there are sometimes compositions of national instruments (zurna, etc.). There are brass bands in almost all large correctional labor institutions of the USSR.
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The social usefulness of music clubs in prisons is recognized. Circles perform not only on a daily basis at concerts, evenings, film shows, on revolutionary holidays and anniversaries, at awards evenings for drummers, etc., but also accompany, as for example in Ukraine, organized processions of prisoners deprived of their liberty to carry out work, subbotniks, etc.
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In places of deprivation of liberty in large cities and industrial centers, professional artistic forces are used to serve those deprived of their liberty . For example, in the RSFSR in 1931 there were 2034 such speeches. The proximity of professional art to places of deprivation of liberty is most felt in the national republics.
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The play “Rifle” - on the theme: The Red Army in the fight against juvenile delinquency - played at the 1st Leningrad factory teacher school for minors, had a real impact, expressed in the growth of the cultural and political activists of the colony forces and the revitalization of all political and educational extracurricular work. The play “Bourgeois” by the “Living Book” theater (theme: philistinism as a factor in the growth of crimes), played in the Leningrad House of Detention, immediately after the performance caused a lively discussion among the spectators deprived of their freedom .
Another play of the same theater - “Maxim Gorky” (based on the stories “On Rafts”, “At Night”, “Passion-face”), staged for a mixed audience of women and men deprived of liberty in the 1st factory forced labor colony, gave a long a number of written reviews from those deprived of their liberty. The extraordinary power of M. Gorky's stories forced those deprived of freedom to write excited pages from their own lives .
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The work of film installations takes place in places of deprivation of liberty, as a rule, in most according to the calendar plan from 6 to 25 times a month. On average, films are shown 10-12 times a month. Usually film shows are free, and the entrance fee is from 10 to 20 kopecks. — charged in rare cases to cover the cost of equipment. Prisoners deprived of their liberty who are shock workers in production are the first in line for film screenings.”
In the context of the experience of film screenings, the fact of the influence of petty-bourgeois thinking on the choice of film is very noteworthy, a fact indicating the struggle between progressive and reactionary principles among both prisoners and responsible employees:
“Some employees of prisons have a tendency to stage any kind of films, including adventurous, adventure and pulp-criminal ones.
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The attitude of those deprived of their freedom to cinema ... is twofold . Advanced social elements from those deprived of liberty understand and support all measures aimed at streamlining and strengthening the content of the work of the screen; the backward part of the audience, repeat offenders and others, gravitates towards the light, entertaining and adventurous repertoire.”
Thus, in the correctional labor system of the USSR as a whole the following picture was observed:
“...Mass artistic services for those deprived of liberty, in particular theater, pop music, cinema and radio, have become a strong, integral part of everyday life and the system of political and educational work in Soviet places of detention.”
We should not forget about the remarkable fact that the above data is current at the beginning of the 30s. Subsequent practice (possible thanks to the construction of communism under the leadership of Stalin), of course, qualitatively surpassed previous achievements in this area.
The Bolsheviks knew that repressive policies were only a temporary measure of coercion. They did not absolutize methods of violence, nor did they present prisons as the only possible tool in the fight against crime. The same understanding was reflected in Stalin’s words that “repression is a necessary element of the offensive, but an auxiliary element, not the main one . ” That is why so much effort and time was devoted to cultural and educational events. It is necessary to defeat crime not only “from the outside”, destroying the material roots that give rise to it, but also “from the inside”, enlightening prisoners, introducing them to the spiritual heritage that was developed by our great ancestors (unfortunately, due to the deeply ingrained in the minds of some prisoners of “criminal morality” the process of re-education did not always lead to the planned results). It is not surprising that, as V. A. Podguzov wrote, “ under Stalin, in prisons, on average, the number of prisoners was somewhat less than in modern democratic prisons, and the average age of prisoners was significantly higher .”
Obviously, even in the Lenin-Stalin USSR, not everything was so smooth that there were exceptions: individual employees could exceed their authority, abuse prisoners, violate Soviet legislation in various ways (mostly this happened either due to the dominance of Trotskyists in the security forces, by all forces seeking to distort the only correct Stalinist course, or due to the influence of the anti-human “legacy” left after tsarism, rooted in the heads of individual prison workers; where such influence did not make itself felt, there was no hint of mass sabotage). However, such behavior was not encouraged, eyes were not turned to it (as often happens in prisons of the “civilized world”). On the contrary, violations of socialist legality were severely punished by special authorities, so any correctional officer found committing such violations was punished in most cases.
You can read more about the features of the Soviet correctional system in the same book “From Prisons to Educational Institutions.”
Thus, the development of the criminal system in the Lenin-Stalin USSR in practice proved the correctness of the following position of Marxism: the more successful the construction of communism is, the more rapidly the petty-bourgeois thinking is eliminated, which provides fertile ground for the growth of crime and the growing influence of opportunist, anti-Marxist political movements speculating on it, the more harmoniously (and therefore less randomly, less catastrophically) the process of expanded reproduction of society will be organized. In other words, the more communism, the less violence, savagery and evil.
(Continued on following post.)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
