Soviet Law Hits Private Enterprise

...Soviet Law Hits Private Enterprise By Simon Wolin Anew law now being enacted in the Soviet Union provides an ironic commentary on the current Soviet campaign for "socialist legality," whose purpose is allegedly to establish the rule of law and safeguard those rights of citizens which were violated during the Stalin era...

...For this purpose and to crush burgeoning private enterprise, the extra-legal procedure provides potent machinery...

...Since it has to be adopted by the Supreme Soviets of the various Union Republics, its draft has been published in the provincial press but not in the central press...

...They are not entitled to representation by counsel, even their presence is not mandatory, the verdict does not have to be based on any specific legal provision, and they are explicitly deprived of the right of appeal...

...Applications of citizens or social organizations for the deportation of anti-social, parasitic elements are [to be] filed, in towns and urban-type settlements, with street or bloc committees or house managements, and in rural districts with village soviets, which [are to] convene general meetings of citizens for discussion of the case and for passing a public verdict...

...Though these offenders are subject to forced labor, that does not mean restoration of Stalin's concentration camps...

...It provides for 2 to 5 years' deportation at forced labor for persons living on "unearned income...

...These operations, frequently reported in the Soviet press, continue on a large scale despite the great risk involved...

...The law violates Article 127 of the Soviet Constitution, which states: "Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed the inviolability of the person...

...The law is aimed mainly at private enterprise, which is usually referred to in the USSR as "speculation" and a product of "vestiges of capitalism in the minds of the people...

...Nevertheless, things have not reverted fully to the Stalinist pattern...

...Most revealing is Article 3 of the law, which states: "If facts are available indicating that persons leading a parasitic life have committed acts punishable under the criminal laws, the organs of state prosecution and militia must make a thorough investigation...

...The new law tries to create the appearance that it is not the state but public opinion that is responsible for the new repressions...

...Some articles, while professing to agree with the need for such a law, criticize individual provisions, and some even point out that in its present form the law violates civil rights and constitutional guarantees...

...It could never have happened in Stalin's day...

...To entrust the task to the judiciary would mean flooding the "people's courts" with new trials and would be a self-defeating measure since Soviet judges are frequently charged with leniency in handling similar cases...

...This procedure is reminiscent of the first years of the Soviet regime, when "revolutionary consciousness" was substituted for laws and arbitrariness for justice...

...Thus, persons accused under this law are to be tried not by courts but by meetings and executive committees, and are deprived of all the rights guaranteed to defendants by Soviet law...

...The "anti-social" elements are, above all, persons who take advantage of the shortage in consumer goods and bureaucratic mismanagement and engage in profitable private operations...

...A consultant of the Ministry of Justice stressed that deportation is a punishment which only courts and not meetings can impose...

...To use the secret police as of old would unleash a new wave of terror and feed discontent, and would thus be incompatible with Khrushchev's more subtle policy...

...Thus, the law provides almost unlimited opportunities for the secret police—which, of course, will be the anonymous wirepuller behind these trials—to deal with any person it wants deported...

...This negation of the very essence of civilized jurisprudence is now being enacted as a desperate measure to crush the urge for enrichment which naturally thrives in an economy of individual poverty...

...It also recalls the mob justice practiced in China in the early period of Communist rule, probably the most barbaric judicial process of modern times...

...No person may be placed under arrest except by decision of a court or with the sanction of a state prosecutor...

...Thus, the law is intended to punish persons who have not violated any legal provision or whose guilt cannot be proved, since otherwise they would be subjected to the normal judicial procedure...

...So far, the law against "anti-social" elements has been finally enacted by the Supreme Soviets of only two of the fifteen Union Republics...

...Khrushchev apparently feels that be needs public support and must watch his step, at least at this stage...

...In discussion in the local press, it was pointed out that citizens' meetings, especially in villages, may easily be influenced by personal animosities or considerations which have nothing to do with justice...

...of this kind proves that an attempt on Soviet citizens' civil rights now arouses serious protests, seemingly even among Party members...

...Hence the campaign for "socialist legality"—to cover up flagrant illegality...

...At this writing, it has already been Simon Wolin, author of Communism's Postwar Decade and co-editor of The Soviet Secret Police, worked with the Voice of America and is now a consultant to Radio Liberation...

...The fact that the local press in many parts of the USSR could not avoid publishing statement...

...Persons guilty of these vaguely defined offenses are to be tried by an extra-legal procedure...

...Subject to deportation are "able-bodied citizens who lead an antisocial, parasitic life, maliciously dodge socially useful work and live on unearned income...

...Because of the present high level of industrialization and the shortage of manpower, camps in which millions of inmates worked unproductively and died early would be economically obsolete and wasteful...

...The delay in the other Republics seems to be due to the wide discussion of the law at meetings and in the local press...

...The number of such persons can run into hundreds of thousands...

...The same punishment is to be meted out to tramps and beggars, many of whom are veterans of the last war...

...The decision of the executive committee is final...

...The public sentence to deportation becomes valid from the moment of its approval and is to be put into effect immediately...

...Other persons against whom this law can be used are various kinds of temporarily unemployed, young specialists who refuse to accept assignments in remote districts, Government employes shifted to other parts of the country in the wake of the present decentralization of industrial management, youths and specialists who refuse to go to "virgin lands" in Central Asia, recalcitrant kolkhoz members, and politically unreliable persons who can be accused of "speculation" for selling an old coat or a sack of potatoes...

...That a Soviet law should be publicly criticized and its enactment delayed under the pressure of public opinion is an unprecedented event...

...enacted by the Supreme Soviets of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan...

...A lawyer wrote that the proposed law would violate "socialist legality...

...Throughout last May, every issue of the Tadzhik newspaper carried readers' contributions on this subject...

...Under the headline, "Legal Rights of Soviet Citizens Must Not Be Violated," a university professor criticized the term "unearned income ' as vague and susceptible to arbitrary interpretation...

...The only procedural safeguard for the defendant is that the verdict, passed at the meeting by a simple majority in an open ballot, must be approved by the executive committee of the town or regional soviet...

...Yet, the present milder system of forced labor will provide manpower for industry and agriculture in remote regions for which labor is difficult to obtain...