Contenu de l'article

Titre Crime and social disorder in Stalin's Russia [A reassessment of the Great Retreat and the origins of mass repression]
Auteur David R. Shearer
Mir@bel Revue Cahiers du monde russe
Numéro volume 39, no 1-2, janvier-juin 1998 Les années 30 - Nouvelles directions de recherche
Rubrique / Thématique
Articles
Page 119-148
Résumé anglais David R. Shearer, Crime and social disorder in Stalin 's Russia. Historians have traditionally regarded the middle years of the 1930's as a time of stabilization and accomodation. The era of the Great Retreat supposedly followed the revolutionary period of the early 1930's and preceded the sudden onslaught of a second period of state-induced violence in 1937 and 1938. Using police, NKVD, and other reports, this article questions such an interpretive periodization. Far from being an era of stabilization, the middle part of the decad witnessed continued social unrest — not in the form of overt, organized acts of opposition to the regime, but in terms of thousands of small (and often big) acts of disobedience and even violence directed against state property and representatives of Soviet power. The article distinguishes between the political purge process of state and party elites and the mass operations, known as the Great Terror, that began in the summer of 1937. By examining the patterns of crime and policing throughout the decade, this article shows that the so-called Great Terror did not descend on Soviet society suddenly, after a period of relative social peace. The mass operations of 1937 and 1938 are best understood as the culmination of a decade-long, largely failed, attempt to impose Soviet authority on an unruly population.
Source : Éditeur (via Persée)
Article en ligne http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cmr_1252-6576_1998_num_39_1_2516