Omelchenko, O.A. Conditions for serving punishment for pregnant women and women with infants at the time of GULAG

Abstract: The object of studies includes political, legal, social, economic, and criminological aspects of serving punishment in the form of deprivation of freedom by the pregnant women and women with infants at the GULAG institutions. In particular, it includes the political situation at the relevant historic period, causing the regime of repressions in the said correctional institutions; normative legal status of the said category of convicts and their children, who were kept together with their mothers; statistical data for pregnancies and childbirth; number of children held in the GULAG institutions, rate of illnesses and death there; analysis of the official archive documents and commentaries of participants of the process of implementation of punishments in the said institutions. The methodology of studies was based on the use of general scientific methods (induction, deduction, etc.), and special legal methods and means of scientific analysis (retrospective and statistical analysis, documental, comparative legal analysis, etc.), as well as the studies of the previously used normative legal acts, officially published interviews, other primary sources for the information. The article contains a scientific study of the problem of serving punishment by the pregnant women and women with infants at the GULAG institutions. The scientific novelty of the work is obvious, since this topic is not sufficiently studied both in the spheres of criminology and penal law. The scientific basis for this institution, as well as statistics and materials regarding the topic of the studies were previously top secret, and they show the very strict attitude of the government towards the situation and conditions for serving prison term for the said categories of women and their children. Therefore, the analysis of this problem by the author is a new original scientific “snapshot” of one of the tragic pages of the Russian history in part of penitentiary and criminological policy of Russia of that time.

Keywords: