Pritt, D. N. ‘Bolshevo: A Russian Labour Colony for Criminals’. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, ahead of print, 1933. https://sci-hub.ru/10.1111/j.1468-2311.1933.tb01266.x
I have shortened it below, there is slightly more to learn in the original. The image is supposedly from Bolshevo.
In August, 1932, I visited a “labour commune” or colony at Bolshevo, lying in pleasant pine woods about 20 miles from Moscow. It is not called a prison, and it certainly should not be so called; but it is established for, and largely inhabited by, thrice-convicted criminals who would in England certainly be in prison and probably under sentences of penal servitude. […]
The colony itself is indistinguishable from any other modern Russian community that has built itself round a factory. There is no wall, no ditch, no fence, no boundary, no guard. There are factory buildings like any other, a factory canteen like any other, a co-operative store like any other (but, of course, managed exclusively by recidivist thieves), a central radio receiving station like any other, blocks of ordinary workmen’s dwellings, giving to families a little more space than is at present usual in crowded Moscow, and dormitory buildings for unmarried men and for unmarried women such as surround nearly every new extra-urban factory in Russia. […]
The colony was originally started to deal with the once appalling problem of Moscow’s “homeless children,” […] It was founded in 1924, with small beginnings and no previous experience. It now receives only recidivist thieves, generally between 16 and 24 years of age, and almost all with at least three convictions. Entrants come from prisons of various types. They may apply for entrance to Bolshevo, subject to election by the Inspection Commission which is mentioned later, or they may be elected by that Commission on its own initiative when it visits various prisons. […]
The population of the colony consists at present (a) of about 2,000 thieves or ex-thieves (mostly, but not all men), some whose term of sentence to prison or concentration camps has not yet expired, some whose term has expired, and many who have fulfilled their term and have also been restored to full citizenship, but who remain in Bolshevo in preference to going to work elsewhere; (b) of the wives (numbering 500) and children (numbering 300) of men in (a), who were married either before they last went to prison or since their admission to Bolshevo; (c) of a staff of educationists and factory managers numbering only five in all; and (d) of the medical staff of the hospital.
[… P]ractically the whole management of the colony is in the hands of the inhabitants, who form a “collective,” (or general meeting), which in its turn elects every six months a sort of executive committee or commission. This committee decides all questions of management, subject to the right of the Collective (not very often exercised), to reverse or vary the decision. The Inspection Committee mentioned above is appointed by the Collective, visits the various prisons and camps, and selects (as already indicated) numbers of youngish prisoners with bad criminal records, who yet appear to its experienced eyes to be capable of reform. (The mass of the Collective will occasionally exercise its power to overrule the selection.)
Once an entrant is in Bolshevo, he leads as nearly as possible the ordinary life of a Russian worker. He lives in a dormitory if unmarried, in a flat if married; he works in the factory or in fruit and vegetable growing for the ordinary wages of the Russian worker; he belongs to the “Co-op” and shops there at cheap rates like other Russian workers. Careful investigation elicited only the following differences between such entrants and completely free men or women:
- Having lost their citizenship, they cannot be members of a trade union or of […] the Communist party, until they have regained their citizenship;
- The men cannot marry either a girl in the colony or a girl from outside the colony, nor can they bring their wives to the colony if already married, without the leave of the Collective, which is given or withheld on the Collective’s estimate as to whether the applicant is likely to become or continue a good colonist, and on a consideration of his economic position, and is in any case not usually given in the first 18 months;
- Their pay for the first few months (when money may be a strange and deadly temptation), is paid subject to a substantial deduction;
- Their pay is given in special coinage, only current in the colony, and they cannot buy playing cards, or vodka or other intoxicants. (The colony is “dry,” and the main pre-entry social defects of the entrants are drink, drugs, and gambling.)
- They must be indoors by 11 p.m.
To recover citizenship, colonists must normally remain three or four years, and then (if they choose to leave) must work satisfactorily outside for two years more, whereupon all effects of their convictions disappear, and they recover full citizenship, have the right to join or re-join a trade union, and are eligible for election to the Communist party. They may equally, and many do, remain in the colony indefinitely, and recover citizenship in the same way; those who do this are free from the slight restrictions set out above, although 25% of their pay will still be in special currency. […]
Discipline is enforced by the Court of the Collective, subject as before to review by the Collective itself, and the only sanctions are cutting off the weekly rest-day, fine by deduction from wages, or expulsion from the colony. The latter is a very serious punishment, and is almost solely applied to the offence of stealing, which is naturally regarded as the gravest offence in the colony. (Crimes of violence are almost unknown; drunkenness does occur in spite of precautions, but is not frequent.)
Every member of the colony is free to leave at any time; but if he leaves voluntarily it is almost impossible for him ever to return, and if his original sentence period is still running he will probably have to return to prison for the remainder of the period. Any colonist desiring to leave with honour, so as to qualify for restoration to citizenship, applies to the executive commission, who put the case before the Collective with their recommendation, and the Collective decides whether the applicant is sufficiently cured to leave with honour.
[…]
Apart from some cultivation of fruit and vegetables, the whole work of the colony is devoted to four factories, all manufacturing sports goods, such as footballs, lawn tennis rackets, skates, and skis. Colonists are allowed, as far as practicable, to choose the work in which they will be engaged. Sports goods were selected, out of the innumerable kinds of consumers’ goods for which there is a demand in Russia, as the main product of the colony, because it was thought to have a good psychological effect to make something devoted to pleasure; […] The output is, of course, sold without the slightest difficulty, […] and the sale prices are sufficient to render the entire colony more than self-supporting, its substantial profits being devoted to extensions and improvements (under the direction, of course, of the Collective).
[…]
In addition to the free day (on which they can go where they like), the colonists are in general entitled to a fortnight’s vacation every year, as are substantially all Russian workers.
The colonists, besides being taught the branch of factory work in which they are engaged, receive both general and technical education according to their needs; their children, of course, go to school in the ordinary way.
There are the usual radio, cinema, sports, and club amenities of modern Russian factory life, including lectures, amateur dramatics, an orchestra, lawn tennis, athletics, etc. The colony entered a team for the “Spartakiad,” (an all-Russian sporting championship meeting), being held in Moscow at the time of my visit. I saw a very remarkable collection of paintings and drawings by the colonists; the bulk, it is true, were done by one man, whose technique was modern and very interesting. The “wall-newspaper” which figures in every Russian community was very well done; […]
I enquired whether the curse of so many criminal reform schemes, the “stigma,” had any operation. The answer was, in substance, that the men who stay on voluntarily obviously need not and do not suffer from “stigma,” and that those who leave and regain their citizenship are accepted on their merits in the outside world and have no need to disclose their history. […]
The staff of five above-mentioned was introduced merely for educational purposes and because technical help was necessary to the proper running of the factory. […]
Failures, that is to say, men who leave voluntarily without re-habilitation (which is not necessarily in all cases equivalent to relapse into crime), do not exceed 18%.
The demand for entrance exceeds the available accommodation, but the colony is […] always extending, and there are eight similar colonies already established in different parts of Russia as a result of this colony’s success.
The problem of “after-care” hardly arises. Everybody in Russia can get work; the real incentive to reform is the desire to recover citizenship, with the attendant social and material advantages; and men once restored to citizenship are usually fully capable, the difficulties of unemployment or “stigma” being absent, of resisting the temptation to relapse.
One senior official of the People’s Commissariat of Justice recently spent three months in Bolshevo as a colonist to make a practical test of its operation. This method of investigation, I understand, is not usual in England.
These colonies are not under the Commissariat of Justice; they were all started by, and are still technically subject to, a body known as O.G.P.U. [Edie: Later to become part of the NKVD], and the actual originator was one Felix Dzerzhinsky.
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