Guilty Relations

During Stalin's great purges of 1936-38, not only the Old Bolsheviks were liquidated but their wives and children, often their parents, brothers and sisters were sent to prison camps. This was no mere autocratic whim; in Soviet Russia an "enemy of the people" is by definition a class enemy, and his offense is a group responsibility. The penal laws which regulate this system include the infamous Article 58, much employed during World War II, under which relatives of deserters from the armed services are sent to prison for terms up to five years.

Last week Soviet Deputy Attorney General P.I. Kudryavtsev told visiting Harvard Law School Professor Harold J. Berman that Article 58 had not been invoked "in a single case in the past three years," i.e., since Stalin's death. With other provisions for reprisals against innocent relatives now "a dead letter," according to Kudryavtsev, Article 58 will shortly be stricken from the Soviet penal code.

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