Amnesty, of a Sort

The Soviet radio last week broadcast news of a "general amnesty" for perhaps hundreds of thousands locked inside Russian prisons. It was the third such decree to be proclaimed in the 35 years the Communists have been in power.* Like most decrees from the Kremlin, this was a carefully contrived pudding of prose which would have to be tasted for awhile before it could be judged. It called for immediate release of 1) those serving prison sentences of less than five years for crimes of "no great danger to the state," and 2) all pregnant women, women with children under ten, minors of 18 or less, women over 50, and prisoners suffering incurable disease. For those serving more than five years for non-political crimes, the decree cut sentences in half.

For the most part, the amnesty gave freedom to minor offenders and Russians imprisoned under the severe 1939 laws, which stipulated stiff punishment for such acts as arriving late for work, missing too many days work on the collective farm, pilfering a few nuts & bolts, falling down on the factory quota.

The amnesty does not extend to anyone serving more than five years for "major thefts of social property," for premeditated murder or banditry, or for "counterrevolutionary crimes." The barbed wire is thus kept tight around the bulk of the estimated 10 million to 20 million prisoners in Soviet slave labor camps. Also apparently unchanged is the old MVD regulation which stamps the "Minus Six" or "Minus Fifteen" code on the papers of ex-convicts, barring them forever from the six, or, in more extreme cases, the 15 most important Russian cities and their environs.

The occasion for this particular amnesty, the Kremlin explained, is "the increase in well-being and cultural standards of the population." The likely explanation is considerably less hopeful: Malenkov & Co., in need of as much public acquiescence as they can muster while they nail down the power they inherited from Stalin, are unlocking a few cell doors to appease the population, but throwing away none of the keys which make all of Russia's 210 millions their prisoners.

*There were annual amnesties in the first years of Lenin, but only the amnesty proclaimed on the tenth anniversary (1927) and after victory in World War II (1945) were officially called "general."

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