LAW ENFORCEMENT IN SOVIET RUSSIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01048A000100070020-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 31
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 26, 2000
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: September 28, 1959
• Content Type: SPEECH

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/1
Ap
Talk to Convention of
onal Association of Chiefs of
k City 28 September 1959
Amory?, Jr.
y
e
-et*
CEEENT IN SOVIET RUSSIA
privilege for me to be with you and to extend the
igence community to this conference.
In choosing my topic I elected, not to give a t
ace of
t onal Communism and its nefarious activities in the free world.
I really thought
d be orrying coals to Newcastle.
myself adding significantly to yo
address.
have chosen, to use my t1me to tako a look with you inside the
nts there in your field of
sAkciali ce. I hope in so doing to contribute slightly to y ur realistic
understanding of this powerful atate2balancing the good and evil and
akipping the luxury of vituperation and polemics of wiz. we have all
bellyla in the peat fortnight.
in this ares in a 2 minute
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There we4 to be *
Po
ould be divided into three parte* those goidg
CO
M1: though -with a grain of truth
ooa. purge are now gone
which there no igit to confront
Ap
proved
16
regular courts and t
&
since Stalin
ages or to have counsel. and
right
eyed
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amid
bs no
3 of t
posthumous *rehabilitation.*
significanos of ?
5av1st peoples inoluding good Cononists, fer
'Water tribunnUtinutuni
the ruling praosidium
maqr students of Soviet
so the regime is it iced not rsinstitute this kw
deop and po3etb explosive motion,
JAM. 58 making criminal esor sot tending stassard the undermining
4,
lte believe
tus will not be
Ap
**section of
. of the
has "been in foot repealed. The important
nOW
0
0 is add= used and the
log filing 1;thoor Plops a gull
oussessfullr as in the wise a ehile ago of esvorol P
medal for advocating lionise.
proved
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do
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A
?
have reason
ice has sbrusdc to less than
on is err longer- under the 41wiset...
tan. interest In their elcamitilg-
an. The
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? *
dividd c oozi'ectte labor colonies a.nd liricons. The
end that prisoners hs1i be
hen. ri* but the rauiot an* in the Arctic ilorth and
ed appear to display maw characteristics
1on&i OPO2'tUflLti**
ties including librarr and athletic)
airs4
It
Ap
v. know ere In
si the Soviet *Lion mains
$304letely
d, The primary tunoti
legal system is, in their own words; "to
sptrtt of b
proved
The Soviet court in not
but is called
Ise
d to
and
and and to the gauge orcommanien.
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Ap
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is ticit presumed to
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such thing in the Soviet Union. It is also very unlikely
that he can wina,cquittal with a good lawyer because defense
attorneys in the USSR don't really defend their clients as
we understand the term. They point out extenuating circum-
stances to the court, and help to show the defendant that
he has wandered from the straight and narrow path of communism.
This is easy to do because there are so many acts which
are unlawful. Murder, robbery, assault and the other common
crimes, of course, are on Soviet statutes, but so are a number
of things which would never pass for crimes in a Western society.
Speculation is one of these. This consists of buying up goods
at one price and selling them for a profit; we would call it
retail merchandising. Making war propaganda in any form is
considered a crime against the state- but this one obviously
isn't very rigorously enforced. And a couple of weeks ago,
Pravda ran an article about a young lad who was arrested by
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the secret police Tor committing still another anti-state
crime. He had spred "hostile rumors" that he had picked
up trom 7lstening to lorein news broadcasts. These cases
rather ridiculous, but they are punishable in
the USSR with as much as 15 years imprisonment.
Give such a stringent set of laws, the job of the Soviet
policeman should be quite busy but relatively simple. It is
comlicated, however, by the rather peculiar outcome of Khrush-
chevi.: campaig% tb break the back of the Stalinist police empire.
I meutioned moment ago, this campaiga was successful, but
it was accomi: nted by a major propaganda drive to prove to
the peopl thal the Jays of police terror were finally over. At
this point the Kremlin apparently went a little too far.
In its effort to make itself popular Khrushchev's new regime
painted such a black picture of the past that two things hap-
pened. The common people lost some of their dread fear but ,
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none of their traditional hatred of the police. The law
enforceme!Lt agencies themselves were demoralized, Despite
a rather (eeble attempt to repair the damage with propaganda
praising i,tir loyalty and efficiency, the morale of the
Soviet
oli(e still seems to be quite low. There is
no real esprit ce G?Irps a ong them, no sense of being the
'Ipride of the finesi. This, of course, has its negative
effect in law entoroement and certainly 'does nothing to dis-
courage (;r1me. As for the people themselves, they may respect
tne laws of their country to some extent, but the most oommon
attitude toward the patrolmen on the beats is indifference,
and sometimes open disrespect which borders on contempt.
It Is bad enough, I stippo'se, to work in law enforcement
under these circumstances What makes it worse le the rate
of crime in the Soviet Union. This is something about which
Moscow has always been very closemouthed, and with good reason.
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The standard party line claims that crime results from
capitalism and the exploitation of the working man. Under
communism, there is no exploitation, and thus all the
causes of crime have been eliminated. If this were true,
the logical conclusion is that crime cannot exist in the
USSR. Of course, this line of reasoning is a lot of
Marxist nonsense which only makes the existence of crime
an embarrassing fact for the Kremlin to admit.in
point of fact, the Soviet leaders are no closer to solving
the problem than they were when they came to power
42 years ago.
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They say that they have succeeded in reducing crime, and
they sometimes reduce the size of the police apparatus in
various places on the grounds that there is not enough
crime to keep the police busy, We feel that these claims of
reduced crime rates are primarily propaganda for home con-
sumption, We have no real evidence that crime in Russia has
dropped to any appreciable extent, and a little later I'll
give you our reasons for thinking that it might actually be
on the increase.
The Soviets never publish crime statistics, in contrast
to the United States, where we are open and above board about
our shortcomings?and where crime stories make good copy
accounts of robberies or murders very seldom appear in the
tightly censored Russian press. When they do, they are
usually accounts of "show" trials and are intended primarily
as warnings to would-be lawbreakers *bat retribution will be
swift and decisive, Those few arises which the Soviets
admit to are always blamed em what they call "the remaaats
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of capitalism in the minds of the people," If they really
believe this, they have to admit that the capitalist spirit
in Russia is not nearly tdead as Mr, Khrushchev would like
it to be. The truth of the matter is that the very nature
of a communist society is probably aS much to blame for crime
as any other factor, I don't want to burden you with a descrip-
tion of the workers paradise, but a couple of factors are
worth keeping in mind, in the first place, the USSR does
not have the classless society of which Marx dreamed by any
stretch of the imagination. The economic gap between the
commoh working man and the executive is much greater than
that in this eountry, Regardless of all the high-sounding
propaganda l the people are not equal. They are divided into
the "haves" and the "have mots." For over forty years now,
the Soviet Union has concentrated on building up a powerful
heavy industry, The production of consumers' goods has never
met d
mand, and those goods which have been produced are so
highly priced that they are beyond the reach of the average
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worker. Therefore, the elite--the managers and communist
party big-wigs--get them, Human nature being what it is,
people have a natural desire for the better life--for a wash-
machine, a new TV, a refrigerator or a car, But there is
for the Russian worker the very serious problem of money, In
addition, living conditions in major Soviet cities are terribly
overcrowded, and those of you who head police departments in
large American cities know what that can mean,
Against this very general background, what we have been
able to piece together about crime in the Soviet Union becomes
fairly Linerstandable. As you may already have guessed,
robbery is by far the most common crime with which the Soviets
have to contend. Embezzlement, murder and speculation are
next in order of frequency.a the four most commonly con-
mttLed crimes, three have As their object the obtaining of
money or goods--or both, Fraud and bribery are also high on
the list, and recently there has been a rather marked increase
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in the incidence of moonshining. Russians are traditionally
hearty drihker and moonshining has always been common. Mr.
Khrushchev's recent edicts cutting down on the sale of vodka
have apparently led increasing numbers of his thirsty and
enterprising citizens to brew their own booze.
Misdemeanors are lumped into the broad category of
"hooliganism." This equates generally to disturbing the
peace, and the most frequent offense is being drunks Drinking
is a serious problem both socially and economically. Moscow
claims tat 70 percent of the major crimes are committed by
persons under the influence of alcohol, and about 49 percent
of Moscow's traffic accidents are attributable to drunkenesm
of drivers or pedeetrians, The regime also considers drinking
dangerous because it results in absenteeism and poor work on
the job
by many crimes are committed by juveniles we don't
know, but the Kremlin's claim that it is less than 5 percent
should be swallowed with a very large grain of salt 4 They have
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just as much trouble with juvenile delinquency as anybody
else, And mayte mo e. Oace again, the Soviet system seems
to bear a large sha e ot the blame. In almost all Russian
families, both father and mother have to work to mate ends
meet. The kids, from their earliest years, do not receive
their full share of aenta1 guidance and family life, For
the most part whatever sense of belonging they have cameos from
the state nurseries, Many only finish 7-year schools, and
are free of such home ties as they have by the time they are
15. They run in street gangs and get pretty rough at times.
I dou't know how many of you read Harrison Salisbury's
article on Russian social ills in the New York Times last
week, but his description of one such gang is worth repeating,
A group of young hoodlums cornered the son of an army colonel
at a new housing development and solicited his help in robbing
his father's apartment, When the boy refused, they pinned
him against the wall and broke his legs with a slodge bummer.
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One evening a couple of months ago, another gang knifed and
drowned a husband and raped his wife,
1 don't want to imply that such cases are typical of
Soviet youth or even of Soviet juvenile delinquents, But
they de servc to illustrate the problems the Kremlin is
running into with the younger members of that generation
whicu grew Lai. entirely under communism, The majority of
those iLid Caom we woulo. classify as delinquents are charact-
erizeu by their non-conformism, They are known as the "stil-
yaga, 4 take-off on the Russian word for style, becase they
. are iiahitually flashy dressers, They favor loud sport
(jackets and ties, pegged pants and crepe-soled shoes, Rather
surprising4,) they are avid fans of rock-and-roll, and an
lmerican jazz record is a prized possession. It is no secret
that they mimic western styles and are constantly on the look-
out fur any item manufactured in the West, It can be anything
from a fountain pen to a piece of chewing gum, and they are
willing to pay fantastic prices for such souvenirs, According
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to the Soviet press, the stilyagA,are not very such inclined
to go to work in factories, but want to spend their time
drinking, listening to rock and roll music, and disturbing
the peace in general,
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,
When these kids are aporehencied for commitLing A crime,
they axe tried in an adult court if they are 1.) or over. In
Cases of the major crimes of murder, rape and assault with a
deadly weapon, the legal age of responsibdity 16 14. It is
not a crime to dance rock and roll or to imitate Kestern styles
or manners; ;lowever, these nabits are anti-social by Soviet
andarcl, ni thi just one step away from anti-Soviet
Lehavior. Yor this, the kids sometimes get some very special
attention..
3t! can see, the police enough.to worry about
just 1r3khi? to eniorce the la* unoer conditions which are far
from the hest. They are or anized for the Jon in much the
same way that yOur own departments are, with one major exception.
Police forces in Russian towns and cities are subordinate to
the local povernmente but at the same time are directed from
Moscow. All police departments are a part of the chief directorate
of 10.1itia of the USSR internal affairs ministry?the MVD.
This situation would be the same as having your departments
working simultaneously for the city and for the Department of
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Justice here in Washington.
Incidntally, the word "militia" does not mean the same
thing to the'6ussians as it does to us. This is simply
another reflection of the peculiar Marxist way of thinking.
It seems that Mulice" 16 a. capitalist word--and therefore
one whlch cannot lie api1le,.1 to a communist institution.
"Militia" is their substitute; but it means nothing more nor
less than "police."
The militia department of a Soviet city has a centril
hearJ4uater and suboroi-te precinct stations. The force
is it several units including the regular street
patrol, a crimivai ihvestiation uepartment, traffic safety
and automobile ins,ectjon uhits, motorcycle squads, harbor police,
and a squad which s ecializes in combatting speculation and
theft of state property. There is also a section for internal
passport control. All Soviet citizens over 16 years of age
are required by law to Garry a passport at all times, This
is the basic identity document and must be produced on demand:
If a citizen visits another city for a period exceeding three
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days, he .at register his propenes aud prove his identity with the polies.
If he moves permanently, he at Cheek out with the police on departure
and register at the nearest station house an arrival at his new hose.
The sise of the estebtishment is illustrated by the ease of Loni ad, a
city of roughly 3,000,000, which has a faros of 8,500 or we per 350 inhabi-
2.61 3.90
tants. This compares with simper 1000 for Chien?, Ammrper 1000 for
Boston, and 1.98 per 1000 for Cleveland.
Life on a Soviet police beat is not mush different from that in other
Gauntries. However, under normal conditions, ?Mews do not carry sidearms,
but walk their beats equipped only with night sticks and whistles. This
may have something to de with the rather marked relustance of the individual
militiaman to tackle superior numbers of boisterous citisens. It is not
very unusual in Russia to see a group of drunks late at night drinking and
singing at the tops of their voices, with a nearby polioman rather pointedly
ignoring the whole proceeding. And speaking of drunks, Russian police
apparently do not look them up until they are sober. The over./tipsy individual
is deposited by the offieer on the beat at a eurious thing called the netabering
\\ up station.* As far as I knew, no Western
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citizen has ever been inside one of these places, so we don't
A
really know what techniques are employed on the victim. What-
ever it is apparently works. The drunk emerges after a couple
,
of hours in a somewhat shaken but comple F sober state.
To continue in a more serious vein, information of any
kind about the Soviet Union has always been vary hard to come
by and detailed information on the workings of the police is
next to impossible to obtain. We do know that at least in the
major cities, the police enjoy the benefits of the latest
developments in scientific crime detection and that they employ
the time tested methods of criminology used the world over.
Finger-printing, "mug books" of known criminals, police radio
nets and interrogations of suspects are as common to them as
to us. They also make use of what is probably the worlds'
most hly developed system of informers. Just to give you
an example, every apartment house has a sort of major doso,
gand every city hlo as a "block chairman." Mese people
plus the maids in hotels habitually report to the police on
the comings and goings of the people they serve.
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The civil police evidently do not do much plain-
clothes work. This kind of activity seems to be almost
the exclusive province of another lawenforcsment agency
which I have deliberately not mentioned up to this point.
14111,
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The Soviet secret police are in a class by themselves.
They are now known as the KGB, or Committee of State
Security. By any name, they are one of the most
efficient police forces in the world. Their business is
spying and they are tops at it. They spy on us, on our
allies, and on their own people. The Russian citizen nay
sometimes show considerable disrespect for the civil
police but he has a real fear and a. healthy respect
for the KGB.
Charged only with safeguarding the security of the
Soviet state, the secret police enforce laws dealing with
anti-state crimes. These include such acts as treason,
espionage, sabotage, draft evasion, inciting to riot,
illegal entry into and exit from the country, and revealing
state secrets. A few moments ago, I mentioned that Soviet
kids who too closely mimic Western styles and habits
sometimes gat special treatment. They are hauled in by
the KGB, and in most instances, a single session with
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the secret police is quite sufficient to stop whatever kind
of anti-social behavior they have been up to.
I realize that this is a very sketchy description of
the KGB, but I think you will appreciate why this must be.
During the past year, there have been some very
peculiar developments in the field of Soviet law enforce-
ment, and these lead us to believe that perhaps crime and
certainly misdemeanors are on the increase. Several
organizations which amount to vigilante committees have
taken over some of the minor functions of law enforcement.
Squads of volunteer police have been formed in almost all
cities, and patrol the streets after working hours. Their
job is the apprehension of drunks, breaking up loud and
boisterous groups, and bringing in any "hooligans" they
are able to catch. This is no 'easy task. At least one
member of the volunteers has already been murdered, and
several have been rather severely beaten and knifed.
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General meetings of the residents of a block of
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41 apartments or of.a given street hays been 6 morod to
enforce so-called "anti-parasite" laws against any of
their neighbors who are not inclined to work for the
common cause. Such persons as speculators and moral
loafers can be exiled to remote areas for as long sa 5 roars
by these meetings. The latest innovation in this lima iX
the "comrade's court." This is also a citissn's group,
formed primarily in factories and shops. When a worker
is chronically drunk, or beats his wife or is frequently
absent from work, he is hailed before the comradss court.
There he is subjected to the embarrassment of Waal his
misdeeds aired in public, and is subjected to mONStary
fines. More serious offsnOrs are bound over to the
regular police.
Obviously, the chances of injustice are very greet.
If you don't like the guy down the street, dougailie
War, a passion of the comrades' court. VW, Vim, Iwo
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these organizations come into existence? Marxist
philosophy teaches that as communism approaches, the
state apparatus will begin to "wither away" and will
disappear under conditions of full communism. Soviet
propaganda justifies these vigilante committees by
calling them signs of this process: state functions are
beginning to be turned over to the public as the state
begins to wither. This, too, is a lot of nonsense.. The
real reasons seem to be to pressure the people into social
conformity, into the common mold, to force the population
out of its apathy toward crime, and to help the civil
police combat drunkenness and hooliganism. A few days
ago the Minister of Justice of the Russian republic stated
at a press conference that the police force had been cut.
by 40% because crime had dropped so much. It may be true
that some cuts have been made. How many patrolmen were
taken off their beats remains to be seen. At the same time,
the justice minister admitted that robbery, public dlmorders,
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brawls and drunkenness head the list of crimes in his
republic. We will believe that crime has dropped if and
when they publish crime statistics, which are still con-
sidered a state secret, and when we have some real reason
to believe that these statistics are accurate and complete.
Soviet law enforcement does not stop with the
apprehension of a criminal. The whole communist concept
of lega 'y plays a major role in his court trial and
sentencing. Once a suspect has been arrested, there begins
a period of pre-trial investigation, during which the
state prosecutor, or the equivalent of our district
attorney, prepares his basic case. Only when this process
has been completed--in about 10 days or two weeks--does the
accused receive the right to a defense attorney. The
defense counaellor has a right to review all evidence in
preparing his defense, but please bear in mind what we
said before about the role he will play when the case
comes to court. His primary duty is not to defend the
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suspect, but to help him see how he went wrong.
The ease is tried before one judge and two assistant judges known as
assessors. All three are sleeted officials, and the only requirements they
must meet to sit on the bomb are to be 25 or older and to have the right
to vote. They need not have any legal training, and they don't have to
morry about any fine points of law whieh crop up, because their work is
'guided" by the state prossentor.
Punishment is not meted out aseording to any established norms of
penal servitude determined by the seriousness of the crime committed. The
criterion is rather the degree of "re-edueation" which the eriminal requires.
at it amounts to is horsefly years in jail will be required to eonviace a
man to be a good eommunist. At present, the death sentenos is pronounced
only in oases of premeditated murder, for treason and espionage in time
of war and for organised banditry. The maximum prison term is fiftsen years.
Until last year, the USSR had no body of federal laws comparable to
the United States code. The legal codes of the individual republics had
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always been hosed on thaut of the Russian republics whic471 is the largest
of the 15 6oviet states. In Dec:sober, the Soviet legislature finally
pad a neticnal code vthich incorporates into law the legal rforms of
the Khrushchev regime. Arbitrary police power as I described earlier has
The "doctrine or analogy," ,Aade ihfuLaous by Andrei' Vyahineicy
during the great purge trials of the Ithirtica, ha, also been abandoned.
Under this doctrine, a an accused of co-ollitting an act not specifically
forbidden by law was tried and senteneed for committing the crie most
closely similar to *hat he had done. Some of the legal
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provisions 1 have already mentioned are also the result '
of the 'new code, Such as the right to defense counsel before
a case come- to trial and setting the legal age of
criminal responsibility at 16 years instead of the former
14. In general, the new iode reduces the length of
i.:Mprisonment for less serious offenses, while increasing
those for major crimes.
All of these reforms are steps in the right
, direction, and have done much to lift the weight of
terror from the shoulders of the Russian people. There-
fore, they are to be commended. But the new code does
not go as far as either we or the Soviet citizen had
hoped that it would. Before the code was published, there
was much heated debate in Soviet legal circles on the
presumption of innocence; this was a very healthy sign,
and many lawyers thought that this would at last become
a fundamental principle of Soviet justice, But no such
basic safeguard over the rights of the individual was
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enacted. In time it may be; at least Soviet legal experts have begun to
think in terms of individual rights which should be guaranteed under the
law. We can only hope that this trend is allowed to oontinue. Ultimately,
any further liberalisations of the law will come not from the juridical
scientists or even from the Soviet law-making orgahs. They will ewe from
the leaders of the Communist Partly whiah remains the master and not the
servant of the legal order. inatever rights the Russian people come to
enjoy will be handed them by the rulers of the Kremlin.
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