The Gulag After Stalin: Redefining Punishment in Khrushchev's Soviet Union, 1953-1964

In The Gulag after Stalin, Jeffrey S. Hardy reveals how the vast Soviet penal system was reimagined and reformed in the wake of Stalin's death. Hardy argues that penal reform in the 1950s was a serious endeavor intended to transform the Gulag into a humane institution that reeducated criminals into honest Soviet citizens. Under the leadership of Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Dudorov, a Khrushchev appointee, this drive to change the Gulag into a "progressive" system where criminals were reformed through a combination of education, vocational training, leniency, sport, labor, cultural programs, and self-governance was both sincere and at least partially effective. The new vision for the Gulag faced many obstacles. Reeducation proved difficult to quantify, a serious liability in a statistics-obsessed state. The entrenched habits of Gulag officials and the prisoner-guard power dynamic mitigated the effect of the post-Stalin reforms. And the Soviet public never fully accepted the new policies of leniency and the humane treatment of criminals. In the late 1950s, they joined with a coalition of party officials, criminologists, procurators, newspaper reporters, and some penal administrators to rally around the slogan "The camp is not a resort" and succeeded in reimposing harsher conditions for inmates. By the mid-1960s the Soviet Gulag had emerged as a hybrid system forged from the old Stalinist system, the vision promoted by Khrushchev and others in the mid-1950s, and the ensuing counterreform movement. This new penal equilibrium largely persisted until the fall of the Soviet Union.

About the Author :
Jeffrey S. Hardy is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University.

Review :
[This book] is particularly good at gauging the extent of the Stalinist legacy into the latter half of the 20th century and the changing attitudes to (Soviet) crime and incarceration.... Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. (Choice) This clearly written, well-organized, and amply documented monograph is a detailed overview of the Soviet penal system from 1953 to 1964 in both its theory and practice.... [T]his comprehensive monograph is recommended for both scholars of the period as well as students. It has a cross disciplinary appeal, reaching to historians, social scientists, as well as literary scholars. (The Russian Review) This fine work is centered on the period of Khrushchev's Thaw and explores the transformation (not without continuities) of the Gulag in these years.... [It is] a valuable contribution and is grounded in real expertise in Soviet history and penal history more generally. (Journal of Modern History) As a convincing reappraisal of the Gulag and, by extension, the character of Soviet authoritarianism, this book is valuable for deepening our understanding of the Soviet system, particularly in the Khrushchev era. Given its global context, it should also be of use to scholars interested in modern penal systems and notions of criminality and rehabilitation. (Slavic Review) In his compelling study, Jeffrey Hardy argues that penal reform functioned as a central philosophy in the recalibration and reorganization of the Soviet prison system.... This brief review cannot do justice to Hardy's painstaking research that produced this fascinating, informative, and nuanced study. Specialists and armchair enthusiasts alike will gain valuable insights. Students in seminars on the Gulag and in general Soviet history courses at the undergraduate and graduate level will profit from this work.... He achieves that which is often hard to come by these days: a rigorous, fact-based analysis of an important historical phenomenon situated firmly within its own context in order to understand the Gulag reform process not as we would have liked it to be, but how it actually was. - Cynthia A. Ruder (American Historical Review) Jeff Hardy's monograph, The Gulag After Stalin, presents the first major study of Soviet attempts to reform the penal system after Stalin. Hardy's well-written and powerfully argued book is an important contribution to the field. Scholars, students, and anyone who wishes to gain insight into the Soviet society after Stalin should read this exciting book. (Canadian-American Slavic Studies)