Corrective labor legislation of the USSR in the 1930-1950s: main development trends

In the Soviet state after its formation as a result of the 1917 revolution, a legislative base began to be created that replaced the previously existing regulatory and legal acts of the Russian Empire and the Provisional Government in all areas, based on the political and ideological communist platform. This also concerned corrective labor legislation. The article examines the main trends of its development in the 1930-1950s, that is, during the period of operation of the infamous GULAG. It is noted that the initial acts of the Soviet government in this area of public relations were quite humane (for example, the Correctional Labor Codes of the RSFSR of 1924), which corresponded to the programmatic goals of the RCP(b), which provided, in particular, for the replacement of prisons with educational institutions due to the lack of conditions for committing crimes in the new state. However, the reality turned out to be different, and by the turn of 1930, the punitive policy of the Soviet state went along the vector of its tightening, including the creation of the infamous GULAG. At the same time, in fact, the conditions of detention in places of deprivation of liberty were determined by departmental acts of the NKVD of the USSR, and in reality the conditions were worse than the normative ones. This policy, with some adjustments, continued until Stalin's death in 1953, after which a wave of mass disobedience by prisoners swept through the GULAG system, which, in the context of Khrushchev's "thaw," contributed to changes in the correctional labor legislation, which was implemented in the second half of the 1950s, when the GULAG was abolished and the Fundamentals of Correctional Labor Legislation of the USSR and Union Republics were adopted with an emphasis on stricter requirements for compliance with the law in the activities of the correctional labor system.