Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia: Defining, Policing and Producing Deviance during the Thaw

Brian LaPierre. Hooligans in Khrushchev 's Russia: Defining, Policing and Producing Deviance During the Thaw. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. xiii, 281 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. US $25.00/Cdn $30.50, paper.What do murder, domestic violence, and snowball fighting (with malicious intent) have in common? The perpetrators of all these offenses could have been considered guilty of hooliganism of one form or another in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev. Brian LaPierre's Hooligans in Khrushchev 's Russia analyzes the causes and outcomes of the campaign that created millions of hooligans. Using extensive data from Russian archives, LaPierre's work demonstrates the contradictions of Khrushchev's thaw. In a period best known for increasing political tolerance, the regime increasingly resorted to invasive methods of policing society.The introduction of Hooligans in Khrushchev 's Russia provides an excellent, concise overview of the literature on hooliganism in Russia and on theoretical approaches to understanding deviance. Engaging with other Soviet labels (for example, kulak) LaPierre asserts that hooliganism was a social-legal category that defined deviance in the Soviet Union-a construction of public mores, personal interactions, and the ever broadening Soviet criminal code. The first chapter provides a broad overview of hooliganism in the Khrushchev period. It delves into the legal and press portrayals of hooliganism before moving into a detailed statistical examination. LaPierre argues that, in contrast to young scofflaw in public portrayals, the statistically average hooligan was a man who was older than twenty-five, had a typical level of education, and was a blue-collar worker. Khrushchev's average hooligan was thus the average male urban dweller.The remainder of the book examines the ways that Khrushchev's regime expanded the definition of hooliganism, the cohort of hooligans, and its methods of policing social behaviour. Under Stalin, hooliganism had loosely encompassed various forms of disorderly behaviour (for example, public intoxication or assault) but only outside the home. Khrushchev-era authorities extended hooliganism into homes through the introduction of domestic hooliganism, a criminal offence that reconfigured the boundaries between private and public space. The redefinition of hooliganism allowed authorities to police offences from domestic violence to noise complaints. Along with domestic hooliganism, petty hooliganism enabled police to enlarge the number of offences and offenders whom they could punish. The ambiguity and elasticity of these offences became the pretence for charges against millions of Soviet people, bringing the regime into the mundane lives of citizens. …