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Human rights in the Soviet Union

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The Soviet Union was a single-party state where the Communist Party ruled the country. All key positions in the institutions of the state were occupied by members of the Communist Party. The state proclaimed its adherence to Marxism-Leninism ideology that restricts rights of citizens to private property. The entire population was mobilized in support of the state ideology and policies. Independent political activities were not tolerated, including the involvement of people with free labour unions, private corporations, non-sanctioned churches or opposition political parties. The regime maintained itself in political power in part by means of the secret police, propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, personality cult, restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics, such as political purges and persecution of specific groups of people.

Human rights

Human rights are the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which are often thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

Soviet concept of human rights

The Soviet conception of human rights was very different from conceptions prevalent in the West. According to Western legal theory, "it is the individual who is the beneficiary of human rights which are to be asserted against the government", whereas Soviet law claimed exactly the opposite . The Soviet state was considered as the source of human rights. Therefore, Soviet law rejected the Western concept of the "rule of law" as the belief that law should be more than just instrument of politics. Political and civil rights were considered meaningless without basic "economic rights", which are the provision of basic health care, adequate nutrition, and the right to an education, rather than liberal property rights. Finally, each individual had to sacrifice his rights and desires to fulfill the needs of the collective

Soviet legal system

The Soviet legal system regarded law as an arm of politics and courts as agencies of the government . Extensive extra-judiciary powers were given to the Soviet secret police agencies. The regime abolished Western rule of law, civil liberties, protection of law and guarantees of property.. According to Vladimir Lenin, the purpose of socialist courts was

"not to eliminate terror ... but to substantiate it and legitimize in principle" .

Crime was determined not as the infraction of law, but as any action which could threaten the Soviet state and society. For example, a desire to make a profit could be interpreted as a counter-revolutionary activity punishable by death. The liquidation and deportation of millions peasants in 1928–31 was carried out within the terms of Soviet Civil Code. Some Soviet legal scholars even asserted that "criminal repression" may be applied in the absence of guilt.". Martin Latsis, chief of the Ukrainian Cheka explained:

"Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror."

The purpose of public trials was "not to demonstrate the existence or absence of a crime – that was predetermined by the appropriate party authorities – but to provide yet another forum for political agitation and propaganda for the instruction of the citizenry (see Moscow Trials for example). Defense lawyers, who had to be party members, were required to take their client's guilt for granted..."

Political repression

Main article: Soviet political repressions

The political repressions were practiced by the Soviet secret police services Cheka, OGPU and NKVD. An extensive network of civilian informants – either volunteers, or those forcibly recruited – was used to collect intelligence for the government and report cases of suspected dissent.

Soviet political repression was a de facto and de jure system of prosecution of people who were or perceived to be enemies of the Soviet system. Its theoretical basis were the theory of Marxism about the class struggle. The term "repression", "terror", and other strong words were official working terms, since the dictatorship of the proletariat was supposed to suppress the resistance of other social classes which Marxism considered antagonistic to the class of proletariat. The legal basis of the repression was formalized into the Article 58 in the code of RSFSR and similar articles for other Soviet republics. Aggravation of class struggle under socialism was proclaimed during the Stalinist terror.

File:Kersnovskaya Lucky Car.jpg
Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya Birth in a prison car for Bessarabian deportees

Chronology

The repressions were conducted in several consecutive waves known as Red Terror, Dekulakization, Great Purge, Doctor's Plot, and others.

During Red Terror and collectivization the entire "ruling classes" have been exterminated, including "rich people", and a significant part of intelligentsia and peasantry labeled as kulaks. The numerous victims of extrajudicial punishment were called the enemies of the people. The punishment by the state included summary executions, torture, sending innocent people to Gulag, involuntary settlement, and stripping of citizen's rights. According to NKVD Orders No. 00486 and No. 00689, wives and family members were also punished if they were seen as being involved with their relative in the supposed crime. In 1941 the secret police forces conducted massacres of prisoners as the Soviets retreated from the German invasion..

After Stalin's death, the suppression of dissent was dramatically reduced and took new forms. The internal critics of the system were convicted for anti-Soviet agitation or as "social parasites". Others were labeled as mentally ill, having sluggishly progressing schizophrenia and incarcerated in "Psikhushkas", i.e. mental hospitals used by the Soviet authorities as prisons. A few notable dissidents, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Andrei Sakharov, were sent to internal or external exile.

Suppression of uprisings

State repression led to uprisings, which were brutally suppressed by military force, like the Tambov rebellion, Kronstadt rebellion, or Vorkuta Uprising. During the Tambov rebellion, Bolshevik military forces widely used chemical weapons against villages with civilian population and rebels. A Committee organized by Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Antonov-Ovseenko "took hostages on enormous scale, carried out executions, and set up death camps where prisoners were gassed" according to Black book of communism

Ethnic cleansing

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Ukrainian Famine Victim, 1933

Entire nations have been collectively punished by the Soviet Government for alleged collaboration with the enemy during World War II. In legal terms the word "genocide" may be appropriate because specific ethnic groups were targeted. At least nine of distinct ethnic-linguistic groups, including ethnic Germans, ethnic Greeks, ethnic Poles, Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Chechens, and Kalmyks, were deported to remote unpopulated areas of Siberia and Kazakhstan. The ethnicity-targeted population transfers in the Soviet Union led to millions of deaths due to the inflicted hardships. Koreans and Romanians were also deported. Mass operations of the NKVD were needed to deport hundreds of thousands of people.

Deaths from famines

Main article: Holodomor

According to some historians, "the systematic use of famine as a weapon" was a "particular feature of many Communist regimes." The deaths of 5 to 7 million people during the Soviet famine of 1932–1933, including the Holodomor at the Ukraine that was caused by confiscating all food from peasants and blocking the migration of starving population by the Soviet government, although some historians still believe that the hunger was unintentional The overall number of peasants who died in 1930–1937 from hunger and repressions during collectivisation (including in Kavkaz and Kazakhstan) was at least 14.5 million, according to historian Robert Conquest. The Black book of communism claims five million people died earlier during Russian famine of 1921.

Loss of life

According to the Guiness Book of Records, 66.7 million people were killed in the Soviet Union by state persecution from October 1917 through 1959 – under Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushev (the number apparently includes victims of famines and Russian Civil War) However the exact number of victims may never be known and remains a matter of debates among historians. The result depends on the period of time, the criteria of the democide, and methods used for the estimates. For example, the number of victims under Joseph Stalin's regime vary from 8 to 61 million.

Freedom of expression, literature, and science

Main article: Suppressed research in the Soviet Union Main article: Socialist Realism

According to Soviet Criminal Code, Article 70, agitation or propaganda carried on for the purpose of weakening Soviet authority, circulating materials or literature that defamed the Soviet State and social system were punishable by imprisonment for a term of 2–5 years and for a second offense, punishable for a term of 3–10 years.
Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced. This gave rise to Samizdat, a clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature.

Art, literature, education, and science were placed under a strict ideological scrutiny, since they were supposed to serve the interests of the victorious proletariat. Socialist realism is an example of such teleologically-oriented art that promoted socialism and communism. All humanities and social sciences were tested for strict accordance with historical materialism.

All natural sciences have to be founded on the philosophical base of dialectical materialism. Many scientific disciplines, such as genetics, cybernetics, and comparative linguistics, were suppressed in the Soviet Union, condemned as "bourgeois pseudoscience", and replaced by real pseudoscience, such as Lysenkoism. Many prominent scientists were declared to be "wrecklers" or enemy of the people and imprisoned. Some scientists worked as prisoners in "Sharashkas", i.e. research and development laboratories within the Gulag labor camp system.

Every large enterprise or institution of the Soviet Union had First Department run by KGB people responsible for secrecy and political security of the workplace.

Right to vote

Main article: Soviet democracy

According to communist ideologists, the Soviet political system was a true democracy, where workers' councils called "soviets" represented the will of the working class. In particular, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed direct universal suffrage with the secret ballot. However all candidates had been selected by Communist party organizations, at least before the June 1987 elections. Historian Robert Conquest described this system as

"a set of phantom institutions and arrangements which put a human face on the hideous realities: a model constitution adopted in a worst period of terror and guaranteeing human rights, elections in which there was only one candidate, and in which 99 percent voted; a parliament at which no hand was ever raised in opposition or abstention."

Property rights

Personal property was allowed, with certain limitations. All real property belonged to the state and society. Unauthorized possession of foreign currency was forbidden and prosecuted as criminal offense.

Freedoms of assembly and association

Freedoms of assembly and association did not exist. Workers were not allowed to organize free trade unions. All existing trade unions were organized and controlled by the state. All political youth organizations, such as Pioneer movement and Komsomol served to enforce the policies of the Communist Party.

According to Soviet criminal code participation in an anti-Soviet organization was punished in accordance with Article 64 -treason punishable up to Death penalty

Freedom of religion

Temple of St Vladimir. It was turned into bus station in Soviet time.
Main article: Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union was an atheistic state. The stated goal was control, suppression, and, ultimately, the elimination of religious beliefs. Atheism was propagated through schools, communist organizations, and the media. The Society of the Godless was created. All religious movements were either prosecuted or controlled by the state and KGB. The result of this was the death of 21 million Russian Orthodox Christians by the Soviet government, not including torture or other religious ethnicities killed.

Freedom of movement

January 10, 1973. Jewish refuseniks demonstrate in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the right to emigrate to Israel
Main article: Passport system in the Soviet Union

Emigration and any travel abroad were not allowed without an explicit permission from the government. People who were not allowed to leave the country are known as "refuseniks". According to the Soviet Criminal Code, Article 64. flight abroad or refusal to return from abroad among other offenses was Treason that was punishable by imprisonment for a term of 10-15 years with confiscation of property or by death with confiscation of property.

Passport system in the Soviet Union restricted migration of citizens within the country through "propiska" (residential permit/registration system) and use of internal passports. For a long period of the Soviet history peasants did not have internal passports and could not move into towns without permission. Many former inmates received "wolf ticket" and were allowed to live only at 101 km away from city borders. Travel to closed cities and to the regions near USSR state borders was strongly restricted. Illegal exit abroad was punishable by imprisonment for a term of 1-3 years.

Human rights organizations and activists in USSR

  • USSR's section of Amnesty International was founded on October 6 1973 by 11 Moscow intellectuals and was registered in September 1974 by the Amnesty international Secretariat in London.
  • The Moscow Helsinki Group was founded in 1976 to monitor the Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 that included clauses calling for the recognition of universal human rights.

References

  1. ^ Constitution of the Soviet Union. Preamble
  2. Houghton Miffin Company (2006)
  3. "Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948".
  4. Lambelet, Doriane. "The Contradiction Between Soviet and American Human Rights Doctrine: Reconciliation Through Perestroika and Pragmatism." 7 Boston University International Law Journal. 1989. p. 61-62.
  5. Shiman, David (1999). Economic and Social Justice: A Human Rights Perspective. Amnesty International. ISBN 0967533406.
  6. ^ Richard Pipes Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, Vintage books, Random House Inc., New York, 1995, ISBN 0-394-50242-6, pages 402–403
  7. Richard Pipes (2001) Communism Weidenfled and Nicoloson. ISBN 0-297-64688-5
  8. Richard Pipes (1994) Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage. ISBN 0-679-76184-5., pages 401–403.
  9. ^ Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia – Past, Present, and Future, 1994. ISBN 0-374-52738-5.
  10. Anton Antonov-Ovseenko Beria (Russian) Moscow, AST, 1999. Russian text online
  11. Koehler, John O. Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police. Westview Press. 2000. ISBN 0-8133-3744-5
  12. Template:En icon Richard Rhodes (2002). Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40900-9. Despite the deportations, Barbarossa surprised the NKVD, whose jails and prisons in the invaded western territories were crowded with political prisoners. Rather than releasing their prisoners as they hurried to retreat during the first week of the war, the Soviet secret police simply killed them. NKVD prisoner executions in the first week after Barbarossa totaled some ten thousand in western Ukraine and more than nine thousand in Vinnytsia, eastward toward Kiev. Comparable numbers of prisoners were executed in eastern Poland, Byelorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The Soviet areas had already sustained losses numbering in the hundreds of thousands from the Stalinist purges of 1937–38. “It was not only the numbers of the executed,” historian Yury Boshyk writes of the evacuation murders, “but also the manner in which they died that shocked the populace. When the families of the arrested rushed to the prisons after the Soviet evacuation, they were aghast to find bodies so badly mutilated that many could not be identified. It was evident that many of the prisoners had been tortured before death; others were killed en masse.”
  13. The Soviet Case: Prelude to a Global Consensus on Psychiatry and Human Rights. Human Rights Watch. 2005
  14. B.V.Sennikov. Tambov rebellion and liquidation of peasants in Russia, Publisher: Posev, 2004, ISBN 5-85824-152-2 Full text in Russian
  15. Courtois, Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-07608-7
  16. ^ Robert Conquest (1986) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
  17. ^ Bibliography: Courtois et al. The Black Book of Communism
  18. Davies, R. W.; Wheatcroft, S. G. (2004). The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 (The Industrialization of Soviet Russia). Macmillan, 400–1. ISBN 0333311078.
  19. Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia – Past, Present, and Future], 1994. ISBN 0-374-18104-7, page 107.
  20. Ponton, G. (1994) The Soviet Era.
  21. Tsaplin, V.V. (1989) Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody.
  22. Nove, Alec. Victims of Stalinism: How Many?, in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (edited by J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning), Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-44670-8.
  23. Davies, Norman. Europe: A History, Harper Perennial, 1998. ISBN 0-06-097468-0.
  24. Bibliography: Rummel.
  25. ^ Biographical Dictionary of Dissidents in the Soviet Union, 1956-1975 By S. P. de Boer, E. J. Driessen, H. L. Verhaar; ISBN 9024725380; p. 652
  26. A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Chapter 9 - Mass Media and the Arts. The Library of Congress. Country Studies
  27. Robert Conquest Reflections on a Ravaged Century (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, page 97
  28. A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former). Chapter 5. Trade Unions. The Library of Congress. Country Studies. 2005.
  29. World Christian trends, AD 30-AD 2200, p.230-246 Tables 4-5 & 4-10 By David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, Christopher R. Guidry, Peter F. Crossing
  30. Museum of dissident movement in Ukraine

Bibliography

  • Applebaum, Anne (2003) Gulag: A History. Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-0056-1
  • Conquest, Robert (1991) The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-507132-8.
  • Conquest, Robert (1986) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
  • Courtois, Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-07608-7.
  • Khlevniuk, Oleg & Kozlov, Vladimir (2004) The History of the Gulag : From Collectivization to the Great Terror (Annals of Communism Series) Yale University Pres. ISBN 0-300-09284-9.
  • Pipes, Richard (2001) Communism Weidenfled and Nicoloson. ISBN 0-297-64688-5
  • Pipes, Richard (1994) Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage. ISBN 0-679-76184-5.
  • Rummel, R.J. (1996) Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-887-3.
  • Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10322-0.

External links

See also

For other articles on the topic see

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