ABSTRACT

In the Soviet period violence against the individual, including sexual violence, was not discussed openly. It was not directly forbidden to talk about sexual violence, but it was nevertheless subject to a kind of taboo. This meant that there was virtually no research done on the subject: no public opinion surveys conducted, no statistics published and what analytical material did exist was stamped ‘for official use only’ and left to languish in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The media observed a virtual total silence on the subject; since, apparently, there was no social basis for wide-scale violence in the USSR. Individual cases, which nevertheless came out, were explained away as the actions of sex maniacs or common criminals. In the most detailed of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Volume 41, 1939), violence was described as ‘premeditated actions (blows, beatings, etc.) incurring physical pain’, that is, it was reduced to its definition in Soviet criminal law which makes no mention of sexual, moral or psychological violence. However, special attention was devoted to violence which ‘occurs in conjunction with politically motivated crimes (counter-revolutionary crimes against the administrative regime and violent resistance to Soviet power)’ as well as ‘the use of violence aimed at destroying collective farms and forcing farmers to leave it’. No amnesty applied to people convicted of such violence in accordance with the 1932 law on the protection of socialist property. This law was notorious for its wide interpretation and, after 1935, children from the age of 12 were subject to punishment under it (Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia 1939:256).