IVAN Petrovich was what one would call an exemplary worker. His comrades in the machine tool plant where he worked had never known him to arrive late in the morning. He was efficient and pleasant. to work with and on Thursday night he would come down to the workers’ club to read quietly and smoke, join in a discussion with some of his fellow workers on some topic of current interest, or, perhaps, attend one of the educational lectures which were presented fairly frequently in the larger meeting room upstairs. He was liked by his friends at the plant and loved by his wife and little daughter. One would never have imagined that Ivan Petrovich would ever cause the factory management even the slightest amount of difficulty.
The situation changed, however, shortly after he came back from his two-week vacation. One morning, Ivan Petrovich came in to work fifteen minutes late. When he did so again the following day, his brigade leader spoke to him about it. Ivan Petrovich snapped back a sharp reply and remained in bad humor for the rest of the day. Thursday night he didn’t make his usual visit to the worker’s club and Saturday night he was found in a drunken state by a policeman and sent home. His brigade leader noticed that, in addition to being late every day, Ivan Petrovich was getting careless. There was more breakage in his department than either usual or acceptable. By flouting the rules, Ivan Petrovich was causing his entire brigade to suffer. His whole unit was slowing up and the brigade leader began to fear that his group would not be able to meet its monthly quota if this condition persisted.
He finally took matters in his own hands and discussed the problem with the plant manager. They decided that the best solution would be to call a meeting of the factory collective, which would sit as a comradely court, hear the problem, and give Ivan Petrovich an opportunity to justify his actions.
One evening of the following week almost all of the three hundred workers of the machine tool plant met in a large hall. Ivan Petrovich sat at the front of the room, with the members of the court (a president and two deputies) sitting before him at a table. The brigade leader first made his charge against the worker for coming in late and being short-tempered with him on a number of occasions. After this, another worker told how Ivan Petrovich had spoken insultingly to him at lunch several days before. A third arose to remark that Ivan Petrovich, until a few weeks ago, had been an outstanding worker and comrade; he was seconded in this statement by one of the men who worked very close to the accused. Someone else brought out the fact that Ivan Petrovich had been drunk the previous Saturday.
After about fifteen workers had made their comments on the merits and faults of Ivan Petrovich as a worker, the accused stood up in his own defense. He explained that during his vacation his wife had been told she would have to have an operation and that he now had many problems on his mind. His daughter was too young to take care of the house. His wife was in poor spirits and her state of mind affected him and the child; he was constantly worried about her condition. He had finally been so distraught on Saturday that he drank too much and had to be taken home.
When Ivan Petrovich had concluded his defense and all further comments had been made by his fellow workers, the court called for an intermission to arrive at a verdict. A few minutes later they returned to the table and announced their unanimous decision: no fine or punishment, but supervision under the watchful eye of the collective for the next few months. They first said that the defendant was wrong in not bringing his problem to his foreman in the first place, because he had hampered his brigade’s effort t to fulfill its quota. The court also reprimanded several of the workers who lived in his apartment house for not being friendly enough to discover that Ivan Petrovich’s wife was sick or that he was faced with a difficult situation. At this point, several of the women got up and offered to help his wife with the cooking and see to it that his daughter was cared for while the mother was in the hospital. Ivan Petrovich stood up before the collective and, with tears in his eyes, expressed his gratitude for the of his comrades support and his regret for having endangered the factory’s record by worrying over a problem the group could readily ease. As he walked out of the meeting hall a number of workers, both those who had praised him and those who had pointed the accusing finger, came over to talk to him good-naturedly. Once the trial was over, all were fellow workers again and the situation of the accused versus the accuser no longer existed.
*This case is a composite of various cases cited in the Soviet press and serves to typify the work of the comradely court. It is not based entirely on one particular offense brought before a court.
The article continues…
Rogovin, Edith B. “Social Conformity and the Comradely Courts in the Soviet Union.” Crime & Delinquency 7, no. 4 (1961): 303–11. https://annas-archive.gl/scidb/10.1177/001112876100700402/
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The other end of the comradely courts:
This community involvement with the individual’s actions and attitudes brings up another problem, which can be illustrated by citing an incident written up in Izvestia. The author of the article complains of the illegal trial of five women who, he asserts, were brought before a public meeting and there were unjustly accused of immoral conduct. It seems that several male students at a nearby technical transport institute had over-imbibed and were disturbing the peace. A firm believer in practical use of the adage, cherchez la femme, the director of the institute had the women brought before a public meeting and there charged them with immoral conduct in causing the students’ sinful actions.
In reality, the case was “rigged”; the women were innocent, victims of the search for convenient scapegoats by the school director and the police chief. Having decided that the moral sense of the public had to be reawakened, they charged these women with immoral conduct, basing their accusations on suppositions, inferences, and gossip. The chairman of the local party committee later admitted that the group really had no right to sit in judgment on the accused, but he insisted that, nevertheless, the trial was justified because it had enhanced the role of morals in the community. The fact remains that five innocent women were brought by the police into a room filled with five hundred people and, for all intents and purposes, were judged by the group on charges known by the accusers to be false.
This trial brings to light the dangers of the comradely court-namely, that Party or union control over the court can result in fabrication of an issue for the “education” of the public. Publication in Soviet magazines and newspapers of feuilletons, cartoons, and articles dealing with such social problems reflects a situation the Party must consider dangerous. Frequent anecdotes and cartoons about drinking clearly show that the problem is prevalent; articles of this sort are not published for entertainment value. An astute reader of the Soviet press can learn much from noticing the topics of such articles. How much influence the Party and union leadership now have on the working of the comradely court is still a question. One can safely assume, from the very publication of newspaper articles such as the one mentioned above, that the “rigged” trial in the comradely court is not a rare practice.Ibid
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But capitalism has a better solution: HR who are there to protect you :)
