ABSTRACT
Yet the party was far from complacent. According to Stalinist doctrine, the revolution’s advance and the imminence of communism only served to make their enemies ever more deadly.3 Safonov’s article contained a cautionary message. In order for communism to be achieved, he claimed, the ‘reinforcement and the strictest adherence to socialist legality’ was imperative. He argued that the successful transition from socialism to communism necessitated a new campaign against crime. He produced an impressive catalogue of the criminal activities still plaguing Soviet society, which included theft of state property, substandard factory work, speculation, the divulging of state secrets, lapses in revolutionary vigilance, and violations of labour discipline. With no distinction between political, criminal, and labour offences, all were presented as actions of Soviet enemies that would prevent the building of communism. The General Procurator argued that the key to the revolution’s advance lay in the concept of ‘socialist legality’ (sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost’), which he defined in terms of universal vigilance, intolerance towards transgressors, and strong state power.
