ABSTRACT
The post-Stalin period saw a sharp break with the policing of the Stalin years. Many years later, reformers of the perestroika period would assert that the political changes of the late 1980s were dwarfed by those which rapidly followed the death of Stalin in March 1953. The dramatic changes in law and policy that occurred in the USSR during the 1950s revealed that significant political change was possible even within an authoritarian state. Khrushchev, who became First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in September 1953, sought to reform the country’s justice system. His prime objective was to reduce the scope of criminal law and eliminate the harsh penalties and extra-legal procedures that had characterized the criminal justice system during the Stalin era. As de-Stalinization required ending the rule of terrorist law and reestablishing Communist Party control over law enforcement, discrediting the Stalinist police apparatus was a necessity.2 Unlike Gorbachev, Khrushchev did not seek to promote a new conception of society-his reforms profoundly changed Soviet society, but altered neither the fundamental objectives of Soviet law enforcement nor Soviet attitudes towards legal authority. The basis of law enforcement under Khrushchev remained an amalgam of continental, colonial and communist police traditions.
