The political and legal foundations of educational work in places of deprivation of liberty in the USSR (the second half of the 1950s - 1960s)

In the Soviet state after its formation as a result of the 1917 revolution, a legislative framework 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 the correctional labor legislation, in which the most important place was given to educational work with convicts held in places of deprivation of liberty; at the same time, educational work was not always given due attention in law enforcement practice. The article, based primarily on a significant volume of archival materials, examines the main trends in the development of this direction in the activities of correctional labor institutions during the Khrushchev "thaw", when the infamous GULAG was transformed into a correctional labor system with a significantly smaller political component, and in the 1960s, when the given trend towards humanization of correctional labor activities began to be reflected in party documents of the CPSU, departmental acts of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and was enshrined in the ITK RSFSR of 1970.