Crime and power in the era of formation of the soviet statehood

As early as in 1917-1918 during the first years of its existence the Bolsheviks’ power in Russia acquired a criminal character. The criminality of the new authority was due to a wide range of violence practiced for “ideological” and “revolutionary” reasons as well the massive contingent of criminals present in a newly formed elite. The article which refers to comprehensive factual materials including the archival one analyses various factors relating to the criminalization of the Bolshevik party, soviet, military and punitive institutions. One of the factors is the Soviet state’s conciliatory attitude toward offenders and criminality during the first years of the Bolshevik governance. The party and government machine created by the Bolsheviks used to resort to active marginal lower masses and practiced extrajudicial punishment and robberies of “class enemies” (“enemies of the people”). Moreover, the government was vulnerable to corruption. These criminal methods of fighting against “enemies of the people” were most manifest in the activities of military and punitive establishments, particularly, of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution (Cheka). The leadership of the Bolshevik party accepted such unlawful actions of local authorities unless the latter proved inefficient at implementing central government policies or aroused the population’s anti-soviet and anti-bolshevist outcry.