A Soviet Moral Panic? Youth, Delinquency and the State, 1953–;1961

Abstract

The keynote speech at the 11th Moscow city Komsomol² conference in 1954 took the unusual step of condemning “unworthy, amoral, and occasionally even criminal behavior among a certain portion of the youth”.³ Exploding in frequency at conferences, in resolutions and in newspapers in subsequent years, such sentiments reflected the initiation of a broad campaign by the Party-state⁴ which targeted young people perceived as spending their free time in inappropriate ways. The Soviet Union shares its experience of rising concerns about youth transgressing sociocultural norms with post-Second World War developments in “western” capitalist democratic countries.⁵ In the latter, expert commentary on and newspaper stories about youth misbehaviour inspired widespread popular worries, which in turn propelled an exaggerated and coercive government backlash against alleged young people perceived as juvenile delinquents. Scholars termed this phenomenon a “moral panic”.⁶ This chapter explores the Soviet anti-deviance campaign of the mid-1950s, asking: what motivated the post-Stalin leadership to launch the anti-deviance campaign? How did the authorities implement it? What does the new initiative reveal about the nature of the Soviet system in the 1950s and 1960s? Can we term this campaign a “moral panic” in the western sense of the term? What can it tell us about how different societies react to perceived deviance?