Еlena I. Belyankova

Associate Professor, PhD in Pedagogy, Head of the Chair of Legal Disciplines

Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University

(Tula, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2021-4-36-46

Abstract. The article looks into the topic of child delinquency in Soviet Russia during the period of 1920s – 1930s. The author examines the practice of creating educational and correctional institutions for juvenile criminals. The work sites statistical data on the increase in the number of street children and delinquents among children and adolescents at that time, which indicates the urgency of this problem. The article draws attention to the fact that the system of education in orphanages and labor colonies created for juvenile offenders was based on the ideas of collectivism and self-government. Work and strict discipline were thought to play a huge role in the prevention of child delinquency. The educational and correctional institutions that were organized for this category of children faced many difficulties: insufficient funding; simultaneous stay in orphanages both juvenile delinquents and children with mental developmental disabilities and mental retardation, lack of qualified personnel and conscientious managers. The article provides information about the work of some institutions, in particular the Perm Labor Colony, the Arapov orphanage of the Tambov County, and the Ulyanovsk Labor School-Commune in the village of Maksimovka. At the beginning of the 1930s there was a reorganization of correctional educational institutions aimed at enlarging orphanages and labour colonies, improving the equipment of workshops, increasing the material well-being of teachers and educators in order to attract more qualified and interested in the results of their work staff, organizing patronage of the public and professional community, bringing factories and plants workers to train children.
Keywords: Soviet Russia, 20–30 years of the twentieth century, juvenile delinquents, juvenile delinquency prevention, educational and correctional institutions, labor colonies, orphanages, moral defectiveness, labor education.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Belyankova, ЕI 2021, “And the results are amazing. Former "inveterate" boys… have changed beyond recognition": from the experience of preventing juvenile delinquency in Soviet Russia (1920–1934)’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 4 (8), pp. 36–46, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2021-4-36-46 (in Russ.)

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