Alcohol and Soviet Society

Abstract

If, in a nation where comprehensive statistics on social problems are rarely if ever published, legislative action and press attention to such problems may be taken as an indication of the seriousness with which they are regarded, then the Soviet Union's alcohol problem is serious indeed. On April 8, 1967, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR approved a decree, On Compulsory Treatment and Labor Re-education of Habitual Drunkards (Alcoholics). This decree, which went into effect on September 1 of the same year, provides for one to two-year terms in special “treatment-labor” medical institutions for excessive drinkers who violate “labor discipline, public order, and the rules of the socialist community.” The new institutions were subordinated not to the Ministry of Health but to the RSFSR Ministry for the Preservation of Public Order (MOOP, now renamed MVD). While it contained a number of significant departures from earlier legislation, the decree's most important point was its “preventive” emphasis. Previously an offending drunkard had to be on trial for a crime in a people's court before proceedings for compulsory treatment could be instituted.