Crime and Gun control in the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics = the Soviet Union = Country of Matured Socialism = The Country of practically built Communism)
Many people in The USA, especially young people, sincerely believe that socialism/communism is something new in the world history and, therefore, it can solve every problem existing in our or any other country, including serious crimes. XX century witnessed many socialist countries in the world headed by the USSR, which the soviet propaganda liked calling the first Mature Socialist Country, The Country of Advanced Socialism or The Country of Practically Built Communism. The USSR existed 74 years and collapsed only in 1991. So, history of the USSR is not a very ancient history. As George Santayana said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It means that it is much better to learn on past mistakes and do not repeat them, than ignore history and repeat well known mistakes.
Last 7-8 years The United States are moving very fast in the direction of Socialism and thereby of Communism. There is even a presidential candidate, self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, who is (as the poll showed) popular among majority of Democratic Party members and who promises to create Socialist paradise in the USA as soon as he becomes The President of The USA. Therefore it may be helpful to learn how crime and gun control problems have been handled in the Matured Socialist country, the USSR, and see if it makes any sense to proceed in the direction of the Socialist USA, which at least a half of Democratic Party members dream about.
In the USSR absolutely all kinds of guns and other weapons, including knives 2.5” long, were strictly forbidden and outlawed for all citizens from the time of civil war to the last day of the USSR existence. Only Militia (soviet police) and Army could have knives and guns. For many years of the USSR existence, if Government found a gun in any family apartment, all family have been arrested and sent to prison or worse. If today’s left liberal propaganda machine in the USA is correct, that approach would work miracles by drastically decreasing crime in the Soviet Union in comparison with old tsarist Russia, which gave citizens licenses to have all kind of guns and rifles in their homes. Reality of life in the USSR demonstrated exactly opposite results – despite all super strict and harsh laws to control guns and other weapons ownership, the crime level in the USSR was more than order of magnitude larger than in tsarist Russia. The best example, I can refer to, is Moscow, where my family lived most of our lives; here we should keep in mind that crime in Moscow was not as bad as in many other places of the USSR.
My personal experience, when I was a young boy and teenager and lived in my parents’ one room shack in 1940th and 1950th, is a good illustration of crime, that saturated life of majority, if not all people in the USSR. The first sixteen years of my life we, group of boys from our neighborhood, had almost daily fights with children from other neighborhoods. We considered it as a normal life. We did not have a gang but some of us fought more and some fought less. During fights we used sticks, stones, chains, knives, sharpen files and sharpen thick wire pieces with wooden handles. In one of those fights one boy hit me with sharpen file in my low jaw; there is a triangle scar on my face up to now. My first day in the 1st class of a school I came with a metal milk can in my hand, since I did not have anything else to bring my pencil and pieces of paper to write on. During the meeting in the school lot, before the beginning of the school day, a boy called me jed, derogatory name for a jew national - in the USSR, where all religions were practically forbidden by socialist/communist government; "Jew" was a nationality of a person, written down in his/her passport. I hit the boy in his head by my metal can and we started fighting. I has been sent home to bring back my parents. It was September 1, 1944, my father was a paratrooper in Soviet Army for about 5 years and was fighting with NACI (The National Socialist German Workers' Party – NSDAP) in WWII. My mother, my older sister and I lived on Tzerkovnaya Gorka (Church Hill), in Selo Alekseevskoe, NE outskirt of Moscow, in one 110 sq. feet room-shack. My mother worked seven days a week from early morning to late evening for last several years as many women in the USSR during WWII. She never was in my school during all 10 of my school years, even when a teacher asked her to come. I do not think my mother ever knew, where the school was located. But, my cousin Polina from Odessa, who at that time lived with us and studied in Moscow Bauman Engineering Institute, was home. She went to school with me instead of mom and talked with a teacher. I was forbidden coming to school with a metal milk can, therefore I walked to my school, about one kilometer from my home, every morning with metal stick or metal chain, which I used in fights practically every day. Other children also were ready to fight every day. Almost daily we had one-on-one or group-on-group fights. Some boys of our neighborhood skipped school and have finally become thieves-in-law (professional thieves) and robbers, who, in spite of ruthless laws, had knives and guns and used them in fights. Every few days we heard that one or another boy, whom we knew, was killed or arrested, though most of us did not have guns and knives. After third grade I was moved to another school, where we had less fighting and I did not need a stick or a chain with me every day.
My wife’s family lived in another shack about 150 yards from my parents. It was south Rostokino area, close to VDNKh. Later, in 1960, when my wife and I had our first son, all people from our area has been moved to Ostankino. Later in 1972-76, our second son, 7 years old at that time, on his daily walk to school from our apartment and back (about 400 yards) have seen one or two dyaden’ki-“men”, laying on the ground with or without blood around them. Usually, nobody attended those people on the ground for several hours. My office was on other side of Moscow; travel time between our apartment and my office was a little bit less than two hours in one direction and I travelled daily to and from my office by two electrichka-“suburban electrical trains” with one change in the middle of Moscow. Almost every morning I have seen dead people near or under a train platform or even inside of a train. We considered those scenes as routine facts. We did not think that those facts are worthwhile talking about with family, friends or in an office.
I was not a member of the Party, but I had friends, who were sometime present on weekly reports in District Committee of Communist Party. Those reports had very limited distribution and, in addition to other information, included summary information about crimes happened in the district during last week. Similar reports have been compiled for each district of Moscow. The city district, where our research center was located, was not known for the highest crime in Moscow but it also was not known for the lowest crime. Assuming that it was kind of average crime district we calculated that an average number of weekly murders in Moscow, including electrichka – “suburban electrical trains” was about 300. That experience explains mine and my wife “strange” behavior later in Ostia, Italy, when we were in process of emigrating from the USSR to any country, which would agree to take us. At that time we were refugees without of country of origin - we did not have passports. We were in Italy for about four months and no country wanted to take our family. Finally we have gotten invitation from Detroit community and I visited the lady from the USA, who helped us in Italy from the first day, since we did not have money and none of us knew Italian or English. Somebody told us that she is our "social worker" and I told her that we have invitation from Detroit and we would like to move to Detroit community. She made big eyes and told me “Do not even think about it – it is the place with very high crime and you will not like there”. I asked her about murders statistics for Detroit; she spent 10 minutes and found information for Detroit 1974 – ~1.6 mln population and ~700 murders a year; it gave me about 44 murders per 100,000 people a year. For Moscow I knew estimated numbers by heart - ~7.7 mln population and about 300 murders a week; it gave me about 200 murders per 100,000 people. I double checked my calculation in my mind and after few minutes told to our “social worker” that we would like to move to Detroit. She said that I am a strange person and she never heard about anybody who agreed to take his family to Detroit on the first offer; and she asked why I do it? I told her that by my estimations I and my family lived all our lives in a city with crime level at least 3 to 4 times larger than in Detroit and it sounds to me that Detroit is a good enough place for us.
Later, when we already lived in the USA, I had similar conversation many times, when I tried explaining to my American friends and my co-workers difference between capitalist and socialist/communist countries. Nobody in the Soviet Union and, for that matter, in the world had any idea about crime level in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc, since crime level is one of many secrets of the socialist/communist world. My friends usually told me “OK. But why are crime numbers are so high?” My answer was that in the USSR only criminals have knives and guns forbidden by law. Law abiding citizens did not have any weapons to protect themselves and their family. It was the main reason, why criminals have no fear and robbed anybody on streets, in buses, in metro; they attacked people in their apartments without any fear since the most people did not have phones and weapons. Criminals knew that nobody can resist them. They killed daily a lot of people who did not understand it and tried to resist robbery.
Any socialist/communist government worries about and ruthlessly punishes its political opponents, whom they usually call “enemies of the people”, much more than criminals of all kind including murderers. Very often punishment to a robber and a murderer was smaller, than punishment to government political opponents. Worse than that, in GULAG (Glavnoe Upravlenue Lagerei – “Main Administration of Concentration Camps in the USSR) concentration camps political prisoners were kept together with criminals; criminals controlled all important positions in a camp, and played cards using life of any political as money for the game. The criminal, who lost the card game, killed political prisoner practically without any punishment from a camp management. Interesting description of co-existence of criminals and “political” in GULAG concentration camps is given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in documentary-novel “Gulag Archipelago” and his other novels and stories.
Interesting to mention, that one of the most famous (maybe the most famous) in the USSR bard (singer and song writer) Vladimir Vysotskii wrote and sang many popular songs about all kind of crimes and criminals in the USSR. One of his songs is about a robber, who has been caught and brought to the court in front of a judge. The judge charges the robber with rough talking and hitting the people, whom he robbed. The robber is insulted by that statement of the judge; he tells the judge, that he is never rough or impolite to people, whom he robs; he explains that he comes close to a man or a woman on any street, or in a bus, a tram, a train, metro and quietly asks them to give him 100 rubles (for our reader – it is about monthly salary of an engineer or a doctor in the USSR); not many have with them that huge money but all of them give him everything what they have; nobody ever resisted. Every citizen of the USSR, Matured Socialist/Communist country, agrees with the robber’s words. There is no need for a robber be rough with people, whom he robs in Matured Socialist/Communist country, where any gun or any weapon, including knives are against the law. Robbers knew that citizens do not have any weapon, and citizens knew that any robber has a gun or/and a knife.
This is how deficit economy of any Matured Socialist/Communist country works. Government artificially creates deficit of all products; every product in the country belongs to Government by definition; absolute majority (maybe 99% of population) of people gets tiny salary from the government, which is not enough to exist and provide daily food and cloth for families, and, even if people have money, they cannot buy anything, since every product is deficit; people pilfer everything, they can put their hands on, and use it to exchange on products or services from other people. This chain of events consists of many law breaking actions by any citizen of Matured Socialist/Communist country. Practically every citizen is a criminal if he is alive yet; people know it and government knows it. That situation is intentionally created by any socialist/communist government, since it gives Government complete control of each man and each woman in the country from birth to death. Government bureaucrats are sure that they can arrest any person and create documents proving that this person is a criminal and, thereby, they can put the person in a jail, a labor camp or execute him/her. Every citizen also knows it.
B.V. November, 2015
Many people in The USA, especially young people, sincerely believe that socialism/communism is something new in the world history and, therefore, it can solve every problem existing in our or any other country, including serious crimes. XX century witnessed many socialist countries in the world headed by the USSR, which the soviet propaganda liked calling the first Mature Socialist Country, The Country of Advanced Socialism or The Country of Practically Built Communism. The USSR existed 74 years and collapsed only in 1991. So, history of the USSR is not a very ancient history. As George Santayana said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It means that it is much better to learn on past mistakes and do not repeat them, than ignore history and repeat well known mistakes.
Last 7-8 years The United States are moving very fast in the direction of Socialism and thereby of Communism. There is even a presidential candidate, self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, who is (as the poll showed) popular among majority of Democratic Party members and who promises to create Socialist paradise in the USA as soon as he becomes The President of The USA. Therefore it may be helpful to learn how crime and gun control problems have been handled in the Matured Socialist country, the USSR, and see if it makes any sense to proceed in the direction of the Socialist USA, which at least a half of Democratic Party members dream about.
In the USSR absolutely all kinds of guns and other weapons, including knives 2.5” long, were strictly forbidden and outlawed for all citizens from the time of civil war to the last day of the USSR existence. Only Militia (soviet police) and Army could have knives and guns. For many years of the USSR existence, if Government found a gun in any family apartment, all family have been arrested and sent to prison or worse. If today’s left liberal propaganda machine in the USA is correct, that approach would work miracles by drastically decreasing crime in the Soviet Union in comparison with old tsarist Russia, which gave citizens licenses to have all kind of guns and rifles in their homes. Reality of life in the USSR demonstrated exactly opposite results – despite all super strict and harsh laws to control guns and other weapons ownership, the crime level in the USSR was more than order of magnitude larger than in tsarist Russia. The best example, I can refer to, is Moscow, where my family lived most of our lives; here we should keep in mind that crime in Moscow was not as bad as in many other places of the USSR.
My personal experience, when I was a young boy and teenager and lived in my parents’ one room shack in 1940th and 1950th, is a good illustration of crime, that saturated life of majority, if not all people in the USSR. The first sixteen years of my life we, group of boys from our neighborhood, had almost daily fights with children from other neighborhoods. We considered it as a normal life. We did not have a gang but some of us fought more and some fought less. During fights we used sticks, stones, chains, knives, sharpen files and sharpen thick wire pieces with wooden handles. In one of those fights one boy hit me with sharpen file in my low jaw; there is a triangle scar on my face up to now. My first day in the 1st class of a school I came with a metal milk can in my hand, since I did not have anything else to bring my pencil and pieces of paper to write on. During the meeting in the school lot, before the beginning of the school day, a boy called me jed, derogatory name for a jew national - in the USSR, where all religions were practically forbidden by socialist/communist government; "Jew" was a nationality of a person, written down in his/her passport. I hit the boy in his head by my metal can and we started fighting. I has been sent home to bring back my parents. It was September 1, 1944, my father was a paratrooper in Soviet Army for about 5 years and was fighting with NACI (The National Socialist German Workers' Party – NSDAP) in WWII. My mother, my older sister and I lived on Tzerkovnaya Gorka (Church Hill), in Selo Alekseevskoe, NE outskirt of Moscow, in one 110 sq. feet room-shack. My mother worked seven days a week from early morning to late evening for last several years as many women in the USSR during WWII. She never was in my school during all 10 of my school years, even when a teacher asked her to come. I do not think my mother ever knew, where the school was located. But, my cousin Polina from Odessa, who at that time lived with us and studied in Moscow Bauman Engineering Institute, was home. She went to school with me instead of mom and talked with a teacher. I was forbidden coming to school with a metal milk can, therefore I walked to my school, about one kilometer from my home, every morning with metal stick or metal chain, which I used in fights practically every day. Other children also were ready to fight every day. Almost daily we had one-on-one or group-on-group fights. Some boys of our neighborhood skipped school and have finally become thieves-in-law (professional thieves) and robbers, who, in spite of ruthless laws, had knives and guns and used them in fights. Every few days we heard that one or another boy, whom we knew, was killed or arrested, though most of us did not have guns and knives. After third grade I was moved to another school, where we had less fighting and I did not need a stick or a chain with me every day.
My wife’s family lived in another shack about 150 yards from my parents. It was south Rostokino area, close to VDNKh. Later, in 1960, when my wife and I had our first son, all people from our area has been moved to Ostankino. Later in 1972-76, our second son, 7 years old at that time, on his daily walk to school from our apartment and back (about 400 yards) have seen one or two dyaden’ki-“men”, laying on the ground with or without blood around them. Usually, nobody attended those people on the ground for several hours. My office was on other side of Moscow; travel time between our apartment and my office was a little bit less than two hours in one direction and I travelled daily to and from my office by two electrichka-“suburban electrical trains” with one change in the middle of Moscow. Almost every morning I have seen dead people near or under a train platform or even inside of a train. We considered those scenes as routine facts. We did not think that those facts are worthwhile talking about with family, friends or in an office.
I was not a member of the Party, but I had friends, who were sometime present on weekly reports in District Committee of Communist Party. Those reports had very limited distribution and, in addition to other information, included summary information about crimes happened in the district during last week. Similar reports have been compiled for each district of Moscow. The city district, where our research center was located, was not known for the highest crime in Moscow but it also was not known for the lowest crime. Assuming that it was kind of average crime district we calculated that an average number of weekly murders in Moscow, including electrichka – “suburban electrical trains” was about 300. That experience explains mine and my wife “strange” behavior later in Ostia, Italy, when we were in process of emigrating from the USSR to any country, which would agree to take us. At that time we were refugees without of country of origin - we did not have passports. We were in Italy for about four months and no country wanted to take our family. Finally we have gotten invitation from Detroit community and I visited the lady from the USA, who helped us in Italy from the first day, since we did not have money and none of us knew Italian or English. Somebody told us that she is our "social worker" and I told her that we have invitation from Detroit and we would like to move to Detroit community. She made big eyes and told me “Do not even think about it – it is the place with very high crime and you will not like there”. I asked her about murders statistics for Detroit; she spent 10 minutes and found information for Detroit 1974 – ~1.6 mln population and ~700 murders a year; it gave me about 44 murders per 100,000 people a year. For Moscow I knew estimated numbers by heart - ~7.7 mln population and about 300 murders a week; it gave me about 200 murders per 100,000 people. I double checked my calculation in my mind and after few minutes told to our “social worker” that we would like to move to Detroit. She said that I am a strange person and she never heard about anybody who agreed to take his family to Detroit on the first offer; and she asked why I do it? I told her that by my estimations I and my family lived all our lives in a city with crime level at least 3 to 4 times larger than in Detroit and it sounds to me that Detroit is a good enough place for us.
Later, when we already lived in the USA, I had similar conversation many times, when I tried explaining to my American friends and my co-workers difference between capitalist and socialist/communist countries. Nobody in the Soviet Union and, for that matter, in the world had any idea about crime level in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc, since crime level is one of many secrets of the socialist/communist world. My friends usually told me “OK. But why are crime numbers are so high?” My answer was that in the USSR only criminals have knives and guns forbidden by law. Law abiding citizens did not have any weapons to protect themselves and their family. It was the main reason, why criminals have no fear and robbed anybody on streets, in buses, in metro; they attacked people in their apartments without any fear since the most people did not have phones and weapons. Criminals knew that nobody can resist them. They killed daily a lot of people who did not understand it and tried to resist robbery.
Any socialist/communist government worries about and ruthlessly punishes its political opponents, whom they usually call “enemies of the people”, much more than criminals of all kind including murderers. Very often punishment to a robber and a murderer was smaller, than punishment to government political opponents. Worse than that, in GULAG (Glavnoe Upravlenue Lagerei – “Main Administration of Concentration Camps in the USSR) concentration camps political prisoners were kept together with criminals; criminals controlled all important positions in a camp, and played cards using life of any political as money for the game. The criminal, who lost the card game, killed political prisoner practically without any punishment from a camp management. Interesting description of co-existence of criminals and “political” in GULAG concentration camps is given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in documentary-novel “Gulag Archipelago” and his other novels and stories.
Interesting to mention, that one of the most famous (maybe the most famous) in the USSR bard (singer and song writer) Vladimir Vysotskii wrote and sang many popular songs about all kind of crimes and criminals in the USSR. One of his songs is about a robber, who has been caught and brought to the court in front of a judge. The judge charges the robber with rough talking and hitting the people, whom he robbed. The robber is insulted by that statement of the judge; he tells the judge, that he is never rough or impolite to people, whom he robs; he explains that he comes close to a man or a woman on any street, or in a bus, a tram, a train, metro and quietly asks them to give him 100 rubles (for our reader – it is about monthly salary of an engineer or a doctor in the USSR); not many have with them that huge money but all of them give him everything what they have; nobody ever resisted. Every citizen of the USSR, Matured Socialist/Communist country, agrees with the robber’s words. There is no need for a robber be rough with people, whom he robs in Matured Socialist/Communist country, where any gun or any weapon, including knives are against the law. Robbers knew that citizens do not have any weapon, and citizens knew that any robber has a gun or/and a knife.
This is how deficit economy of any Matured Socialist/Communist country works. Government artificially creates deficit of all products; every product in the country belongs to Government by definition; absolute majority (maybe 99% of population) of people gets tiny salary from the government, which is not enough to exist and provide daily food and cloth for families, and, even if people have money, they cannot buy anything, since every product is deficit; people pilfer everything, they can put their hands on, and use it to exchange on products or services from other people. This chain of events consists of many law breaking actions by any citizen of Matured Socialist/Communist country. Practically every citizen is a criminal if he is alive yet; people know it and government knows it. That situation is intentionally created by any socialist/communist government, since it gives Government complete control of each man and each woman in the country from birth to death. Government bureaucrats are sure that they can arrest any person and create documents proving that this person is a criminal and, thereby, they can put the person in a jail, a labor camp or execute him/her. Every citizen also knows it.
B.V. November, 2015
