Anti-Soviet propaganda

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Within the law of the Soviet Union, Anti-Soviet propaganda and anti-Soviet agitation was a criminal offense, the subject of the Article 70 of the Russian SFSR Criminal Code, inherited from the Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the Stalin era.^[1]

It was defined as: ^[1]

propaganda or agitation with the purpose of undermining or weakening of the Soviet power or with the purpose of committing or incitement to commit particularly grave crimes against the Soviet state (as defined in the law);
the spreading with the same purposes of slanderous fabrications that target the Soviet political and social system;
production, dissemination or storage, for the same purposes, of literature with anti-Soviet content

The penalty was from six months to 7 years of imprisonment, with possible subsequent internal exile from 2 to 5 years.^[1]

The article 70 was considered by the critics of the Soviet System as the grave violation of the freedom of speech. It was among the main legal instruments for the prosecution of the Soviet dissidents, some other being the punitive psychiatry and the offence of the social parasitism. In particular, the clause about literature targeted the samizdat.

While the clauses was phrased using the provision "with the purpose of", official commentaries (referred to as "Additions and Explanations to..."), as well as the actual legal practice made it sufficient to assert that the prosecuted person of sane mind must have realized the malicious implications of their utterances.^[1]

Shortly after the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial, the Soviet Penal Code was augmented with a weaker Article 190-1, which basically repeated the Article 70, with the omitted provision of the "anti-Soviet purpose". The penalty was lower: up to 3 years of imprisonment.^[1]

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Ferdinand Joseph Maria Feldbrugge, Gerard Pieter van den Berg, William B. Simons (1985) "Encyclopedia of Soviet Law", BRILL, ISBN 9024730759