Talk:Crime in the Soviet Union

This whole article is a mess
Why is western experts the people who discuss this? Do we have Eastern experts discuss crime in Britain? Not to mention that plenty of criminologists correlate poverty and economic inequality with crime statistics, and it's only fair to assume this played a role in the USSR too. I also think that collectivisation probably had an impact since it made people more community minded, and less atomised towards one another. You don't have to steal from your neighbour if you can just ask them for help. I suspect this might be why the USSR never paralleled the US in the large wave of serial killings in the 70s as a partial result of social alienation and breakdowns in communities. Meanwhile, there's plenty of evidence to suggest heavy policing doesn't lower crime. So I don't know who these experts are, especially since the current source doesn't cite any names.

Moreover the USSR had heavy investment into rehabilitative justice and social programmes, which according to APA does for a fact lower recidivism. I know that Wikipedia is primarily western, and that the USSR is regarded as a foreigner and an enemy among academics. But there's a fine line between nationalistic bias and outright lying.

Also, why use the US Library of Congress as the main source? Isn't that a bit of a conflict of interest for impartial research? 78.69.180.157 (talk) 03:09, 17 August 2019 (UTC)


 * I am here to point out the same "Why is western experts the people who discuss this?". Not a healthy entry for the article, and screams 'western propaganda want you to think so and so'. Also this article should have much more real content, stats and so on. 92.220.168.151 (talk) 15:01, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you. Proletarian Banner (talk) 19:33, 14 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Nonsense, the article uses plenty of Soviet and Russian sources, including The Chronicle of Current Events. I suppose what you really mean is why the article is not using any of the revisionist articles praising USSR published during Putinism period, in which case the answer is - because it's Wikipedia, not Ruexpert - Справочник патриота or another modern propaganda source. Cloud200 (talk) 15:07, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Labour camps vs prisons
"99% of convicted criminals served their sentences in labor camps" what is the practical difference between a labour camp and a prison? In the USA, most prisons have penal labour systems, does that make them labour camps? "Labour camp" seems to be just an inflammatory and derogatory term used for prisons in Socialist states. 188.146.96.55 (talk) 16:07, 11 April 2024 (UTC)