Rules, incentives and Soviet campaign justice after World War II

The opening part of the article, which sets up a broad framework for comparing the industrial and justice agencies, is followed by a more detailed discussion of the post-war criminal justice system. The article then looks at Stalin's 1947 campaign against theft. As in earlier campaigns, legal officials and criminal sanctions were mobilised in a merciless struggle against those who threatened Stalin's economic policies. As on earlier occasions the 1947 offensive also drew on Stalin's personal authority and was supported by a nationwide media blitz and by an emergency communications system which involved the use of telegrams and 'special lists'. As such the 1947 war on theft will be regarded as a form of 'campaign justice'. The article goes on to show that by 1947 rules and incentives acted as a brake on 'campaign justice'. By comparison with campaign justice in the 1930s the criminal justice agencies were relatively constrained. Notwithstanding the strong terms in which this campaign was couched, the article shows how, in an analogue to the social and moral conservatism that had set in elsewhere in Soviet life, the internal world of the justice bureaucracies had by this time become comparatively rigid and governed by a relatively uniform and conservative set of social values. While being more constrained, the question of whether the pattern of rewards and penalties in the command economy and in the criminal justice system was sufficient to foil the ambitions of the political leadership, as the Dunmore thesis would imply, is a more complex issue, and is dealt with at the end of the article.