Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)

Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. It was revised several times. In particular, its Article 58-1 was updated by the listed sub-articles and put in force on 8 June 1934.

This article introduced the formal notion of the enemy of workers: those subject to articles 58-2 — 58-13 (those under 58-1 were "traitors", 58-14 were "saboteurs").

Penal codes of other republics of the Soviet Union also had articles of similar nature.

Summary

Note: In this section, the phraseology of article 58 is given in quotes.

The article covered the following offenses.

"A counter-revolutionary action is any action aimed at overthrowing, undermining or weakening of the power of workers' and peasants' Soviets... and governments of the USSR and Soviet and autonomous republics, or at the undermining or weakening of the external security of the USSR and main economical, political and national achievements of the proletarial revolution"

It was not limited to anti-Soviet acts: by "international solidarity of workers", any other "worker's state" was protected by this article.

Application

The article was used for the imprisonment and execution of many prominent people, as well as multitudes of nonnotable innocents.

Sentences were long, up to 25 years, and frequently extended indefinitely without trial or consultation. Inmates under Article 58 were known as "politichesky" (полити́ческий, short for полити́ческий заключённый, "politи́chesky zakliuchenny" or "political prisoner"), as opposed to common criminals, "ugolovnik" (уголо́вник). Upon release, the prisoner would typically be sent into an exile within Russia without the right to settle closer than 100 km from large cities.

Section 10 of Article 58 made "propaganda and agitation against the Soviet Union" a triable offence, whilst section 12 allowed for onlookers to be prosecuted for not reporting instances of section 10. In effect, Article 58 was carte blanche for the secret police to arrest and imprison anyone deemed suspicious, making for its use as a political weapon. A person could be framed: The latter would arrange an "anti-Soviet" incident in the person's presence and then try the person for it. If the person pleaded innocence, not having reported the incident would also make them liable to imprisonment.

During and after World War II, Article 58 was used to imprison some of the returned Soviet prisoners of war on the grounds that their capture and detainment by the Axis Powers during the war was proof that they did not fight to the death and were therefore anti-Soviet.

Article 58 was applied outside USSR as well. In the Soviet occupation zone of Germany people were interned as "spies" for suspected opposition to the Stalinist regime, e.g. for contacts to organizations based in the Western occupation zones, on the basis of Article 58 of the Soviet penal code.[1] In the NKVD special camp in Bautzen, 66% of the inmates fell into this category.[1]

Evolution

After the denunciation of Stalinism by Nikita Khrushchev the code was significantly rewritten.

Application of the article

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his historical investigation The Gulag Archipelago characterized the enormous scope of the article in this way:

One can find more epithets in praise of this article than Turgenev once assembled to praise the Russian language, or Nekrasov to praise Mother Russia: great, powerful, abundant, highly ramified, multiform, wide sweeping 58, which summed up the world not so much through the exact terms of its sections as in their extended dialectical interpretation.
Who among us has not experienced its all-encompassing embrace? In all truth, there is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58.[2]

See also

Comparable concepts in other countries

References

  1. 1 2 Kai Cornelius, Vom spurlosen Verschwindenlassen zur Benachrichtigungspflicht bei Festnahmen, BWV Verlag, 2004, p.129, ISBN 3-8305-1165-5
  2. ↑ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. Harper & Row, First Edition, 1973. ISBN 0-06-013914-5. Chapter 2, Page 60

Bibliography

(An annotated account of every single case prosecuted under Article 58.10 of the Soviet Penal Code from the death of Stalin until the fall of Communism with reference to the relevant files in the State Archive of the Russian Federation [GARF] for researchers)

External links

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