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THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS
• SPRING 2012 •
18
June 2012
LC: 2011045234 HV
264 pp. 6 x 9 9 tables
Paper $29.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-28744-3
e-book $19.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-28743-6
History / Slavic Studies / Politics / Cultural Studies
Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance during
the Thaw
“A superb piece of work—an engaging, lively, well-written,
and wholly original account of the Khrushchev leadership’s
preoccupation and attempts to deal with a variety of forms
of deviance.”
—Peter H. Solomon Jr., University of Toronto, author of
Soviet
Criminal Justice under Stalin
Swearing, drunkenness, promiscuity, playing loud music, brawling—
in the Soviet Union these were not merely bad behavior, they were
all forms of the crime of “hooliganism.” Defined as “rudely violating
public order and expressing clear disrespect for society,” hooliganism
was one of the most common and confusing crimes in the world’s first
socialist state. Under its shifting, ambiguous, and elastic terms,
millions of Soviet citizens were arrested and incarcerated for periods
ranging from three days to five years and for everything from swearing
at a wife to stabbing a complete stranger.
Hooligans in Khrushchev’s Russia
offers the first comprehensive
study of how Soviet police, prosecutors, judges, and ordinary citizens
during the Khrushchev era (1953–64) understood, fought against, or
embraced this catch-all category of criminality. Using a wide range of
newly opened archival sources, it portrays the Khrushchev
period—usually considered as a time of liberalizing reform and
reduced repression—as an era of renewed harassment against a wide
range of state-defined undesirables and as a time when policing and
persecution were expanded to encompass the mundane aspects of
everyday life. In an atmosphere of Cold War competition, foreign
cultural penetration, and transatlantic anxiety over “rebels without a
cause,” hooliganism emerged as a vital tool that post-Stalinist elites
used to civilize their uncultured working class, confirm their embat-
tled cultural ideals, and create the right-thinking and right-acting
socialist society of their dreams.
is assistant professor of history at
the University of Southern Mississippi.
“
Hooligans in Khrushchev’s Russia
provides a
rich and at times beautifully constructed
portrait of how the Soviet hooligan was
depicted in the public imagination, and it
shows how, at a time of major transition and
uncertainty, the Soviet administration turned
to deviancy as a mirror image that could be
used to affirm its core civilizational values.”
—Yoram Gorlizki, author of
Cold Peace: Stalin
and the Soviet Ruling Circle
Of related interest
“A detailed and thoughtful examination. . . .
Stalin in Russian Satire
is an extremely accessible,
informative and intellectually stimulating work that should appeal to Slavists, historians, and
general readers.”—Anna Tumarkin,
The NEP Era
Published November 2009
LC: 2009012834 PG 256 pp. 6 x 9
ISBN 978-0-299-23444-7 Paper $29.95 s ISBN 978-0-299-23443-0 e-book $14.95 s
A M
ELLON
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LAVIC
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TUDIES
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NITIATIVE
B
OOK
This book is part of an initiative for publishing
first books by scholars in the fields of Russian,
East European, and Central Asian Studies,
supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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