May 4, 1961
May 4, 1961
The USSR adopted a decree on strengthening fight against parasites. That is, with persons “evading socially useful work and leading an antisocial parasitic lifestyle.”
Anyone who hadn't worked more than four months a year at a state enterprise was to be forced to perform community service. This was determined at their place of residence, if they lived in the provinces, or at their place of exile, if they lived in Moscow or Leningrad. Students and women with small children were the exceptions.
By 1964, 37 people had been deported under this decree. Those targeted included those engaged in small businesses—such as rabbit breeding or growing vegetables for sale—and those who made a living from intellectual labor.
Thus, in 1964, Joseph Brodsky, a poet and future Nobel laureate, was tried for “parasitism.”
- Judge: Better, Brodsky, explain to the court why you didn’t work during breaks between jobs?
- Brodsky: I worked. I wrote poetry.
- Judge: But this didn’t stop you from working.
- Brodsky: And I worked. I wrote poetry.
- Judge: But there are people who work in factories and write poetry. What stopped you from doing so?
- Brodsky: But people are not alike. Even in hair color, facial expression
Brodsky was sentenced to five years of forced labor in a remote area. In the Arkhangelsk region, he worked in the fields, hauling logs from logging sites to loading areas. After a year and a half, public pressure led to a review of his case and his release.
The 1961 decree was repealed in 1977. But the fight against parasitism did not end. In 1978, in "Explanation of a Parasite," Vladimir Voynovich describes his conversation with a local police officer:
Aren't you ashamed to accuse a writer of parasitism, whose books have been published in hundreds of thousands of copies and translated into more than thirty languages?.. Perhaps you will take into account that I wrote the songs that you, your children, and almost the entire population of the Soviet Union sang!
In 1991, the Law on Employment of the Population was adopted, which decriminalized parasitism and introduced the concept of “unemployment”.
