At the dawn of the formation of Soviet Russia in the 1920s, the bully became the figure that determined the life of the cities. The account of crimes of this kind (beatings, robberies and other violence) went to hundreds of thousands. Gradually, hooliganism began to turn to terror - "rail war", disruption of rallies and mass events. The panicky moods of the townsfolk led to the strengthening of the "death psychology" in the public consciousness, and the society itself was morally prepared for the repressions of the 1930s.
The term "hooliganism" appeared in official documents at the end of the 19th century (an order of the St. Petersburg mayor von Wahl, who in 1892 ordered all police bodies to take decisive measures against the "hooligans" who raged in the capital), from 1905 - in print, and from 1909 - go - in reference publications. At the same time, pre-revolutionary legislation did not provide for such a crime as hooliganism. It was only in the 1920s that the composition of this crime appeared in the criminal code - it was at this time that the spread of hooliganism reached the degree of national disaster, which was reflected in the legislation of that era. Reached - in cities. In the countryside (peasants then made up 80% of the population of the USSR), this phenomenon was not widespread.
The main reason for the flourishing of hooliganism in the cities is the absence of the "institution" of the community. In the village, above the youth, there was a 3-storey superstructure: a small family, a large family, a community under the leadership of the Bolshak (it was supplemented by a church). The output of hooligan energy was given in a metered manner and under control - in the form of the same fist fights or village-to-village struggles. In the cities, however, both the tsarist and the Soviet authorities did not envisage any lower institutions of control over yesterday's peasants who had left the countryside. The situation was aggravated by the fact that mainly men left the village; by 1916, women in large cities accounted for only 35-40% of society. The same problem was faced in the West, but there the authorities quickly began to impose these institutions of grassroots control - scout organizations for youth, sports clubs, social circles and political parties, charity societies: the worker had a choice of what to do with his leisure time and how to find
In the USSR, after 7-8 years of wars, revolution and devastation, with the destruction of the former state apparatus, the new authorities for a decade did not know how to cope with the problem of hooliganism. The only grassroots "institution" in such conditions was only the criminal subculture. So, according to the statistics department of the NKVD, in terms of the intensity of committing hooliganism, Soviet cities were far ahead of rural settlements. At that time, about 17% of the country's population lived in cities, and more than 40% of the total number of hooligan acts were committed here. In Leningrad, the number of those sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for violation of public order from 1923 to 1926 increased more than 10 times, and their share in the total number of convicts increased from 2 to 17%. The bulk of the hooligans were between the ages of 12 and 25. At the same time, hooliganism occupied one of the main positions in the list of offenses committed by minors. World and Civil wars, revolution, epidemics and famine traumatized children and adolescents physically, mentally and morally. Psychiatrists stated that young people, whose childhood and adolescence coincided with a period of social upheaval, showed increased nervousness, hysteria, and a tendency to pathological reactions. For example, out of 408 Penza adolescents surveyed in 1927, 31.5% turned out to be neurasthenics, and among working adolescents, 93.6% had nervous diseases complicated by tuberculosis and anemia.
The situation was no better among schoolchildren. At the beginning of 1928, 564 students from various educational institutions of Penza were examined in the neuropsychiatric office. 28% of the mentally retarded were found. Moreover, in schools on the outskirts of the city (inhabited mainly by workers), this percentage increased to 32-52, and in the central regions (with a minimal presence of workers) fell to 7-18. A study conducted in the capital cities in the 1920s by the famous researcher of the problem A. Mishustin revealed that among the surveyed hooligans, traumatic-neurotics were 56.1%, and neurasthenics and hysterics - 32%. The 1920s became a time of massive spread of "slum" diseases, and primarily sexually transmitted diseases, among urban residents. The spread of these diseases among the youth has become a real disaster. In advanced forms, syphilis and gonorrhea had a significant impact not only on the physical, but also on the mental health of the population. They had a destructive effect on the perception of the surrounding reality and, as a result, often caused an inadequate response to external stimuli.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that among the hooligans of the NEP era there was an extremely high percentage of "venereiki", reaching 31%. "Gray everyday life", the absence of heroism and romance, very, very specific, strengthened the youth's already inherent craving for protest against the reality around them, including through actions considered by society as hooligan. In this regard, the appearance of part of the hooligans of the NEP era was significant: flared trousers, a jacket that looked like a sailor's jacket, a Finnish hat. These attributes of the bully's appearance copied the entourage of the brother-sailor of the first years of the revolution. The bully's tongue also played a significant role. It was characterized by profanity and thieves' jargon. The use of alcohol and drugs was of great importance in the escalation of urban hooliganism during the study period. “All experts now, of course, agree that modern alcoholism is different from pre-war. The war and revolution with their tremendous experiences, a greater number of invalids and traumatics, in particular those with a weakened nervous system, epidemics, especially malnutrition of the hungry years, made many less resistant to alcohol, and reactions to alcohol became more violent,”he said in 1928 year Dr. Tsirasky.
In addition, the population of Soviet cities in the second half of the period under study consumed more alcohol than townspeople in Tsarist Russia. All this taken together determined the significant influence of alcohol on the etiology of hooliganism in the 1920s. According to A. Mishustin's research, in the families of hooligans of the 1920s, both parents drank in 10.7% of cases, the father drank - 61.5%, the mother drank - 10.7%. Hooligans of this time were 95.5% drinkers. 62% drank constantly. 7% used drugs. From the materials of the GUMZ it can be seen that among those convicted in cities in the 1920s for hooliganism, 30% grew up without one or both parents, 45% were homeless for some time. Hooligans rarely acted alone. They showed their personality in a comrade group or gang, the opinion of the members of which they valued and for the influence over which they usually fought. If in tsarist Russia the desire for self-organization was demonstrated only by the capital's hooligan communities, then in the 1920s this tendency spread to the provincial cities. There were created "Hooligan circles", "Society down with innocence", "Society of Soviet alcoholics", "Society of Soviet idlers", "Union of hooligans", "International of fools", "Central committee of punks" and others.
Hooligan circles were formed in schools, and they even elected bureaus and paid membership fees. Hooliganism in city schools has reached such a level of self-organization and aggression that, for example, under the influence of terror by hooligans, both external and internal, the administration of the 25th school in Penza was forced to close the educational institution for some time. The inaccuracy of the definition of hooliganism has led to the fact that hooliganism was understood as a wide variety of actions: uttering obscene words, shooting firearms, making noise, shouting, singing mischievous or obscene songs and ditties, spraying citizens with sewage, aimlessly knocking on the doors of houses, blocking the roads, fistfights, fights, etc. At the same time, there were undoubted leaders in the number of commitments. So, from among those detained for violation of public order in 1926, 32% were arrested for beating passers-by, 28% for drunken brawl, 17% for swearing, 13% for resisting the police. Most of the hooligan acts were committed on the streets of Soviet cities, and they often resembled terror. For example, in Kazan, hooligans threw sticks and stones at the plane and the Aviakhim pilot and disrupted the propaganda flight, in Novosibirsk they dispersed a Komsomol demonstration, and in the Penza province they even launched a real "rail war."
Her tactics consisted in the fact that the hooligans dismantled the railway track and put sleepers on the way of passing trains in Penza and Ruzayevka. But if in Penza it was possible to detect it in advance, then in Ruzayevka the events got out of control. In the spring of 1925, hooligans managed to derail three trains here: in March a high-speed train derailed near the station. Sura (two were killed and nine people were injured), in April there was a crash of freight train No. 104, and in May for the same reason a steam locomotive and 4 carriages derailed. Urban hooliganism of the 1920s was often committed with the use of cold steel and firearms, which were in abundance in the hands of the population. As a certain Maksimov wrote in 1925 in the "Administrative Bulletin" about the city hooligan: "He is armed - a glove, brass knuckles, a Finn, and sometimes the object of all the hooligan's highest desires - a tapestry - a revolver is always with him." From September to December 1926, many residents of Penza could not get to work on time, as three streets of the city were paralyzed every morning - hooligans periodically poured human excrement from the sewage bag at night.
In the evenings, workers and employees returning or, conversely, going to work, risked being beaten or even killed. In the same year, the management of the Mayak Revolution factory was forced to file a statement with the Penza provincial prosecutor. It noted that regularly "from 20.00 to 22.00 there were attacks by gangs of hooligans on the workers of the factory and on the students of the FZU school at the factory." The immediate reason for the appeal was the fact of another beating of five students-workers of the FZU school and the regular breakdown of her studies for this reason. In Astrakhan, due to the spread of hooliganism in the evening, construction workers stopped visiting the reading room and the red corner of the Ukom # 8.
The newspaper Vozrozhdenie on January 18, 1929 reported on the situation in Moscow: “On the outskirts of Moscow, the hooligans became insolent. From seven o'clock in the evening, when the working part of the population goes out to rest on the streets and in the squares, they are greeted by swearing. Hooligans invented playing football with dead cats, and for fun they throw this "ball" at the audience, preferably at women. Woe to the one who tries to calm the hooligans: he can easily get acquainted with the Finnish knife. In the Cherkizov area in the evenings you can watch a chain of hooligans, arranged according to all the rules of art. This chain is engaged in the fact that it detains the hooligans who for some reason did not like. " By the end of the 1920s, the scale of hooliganism was only growing: only in the first half of 1928 in the cities of the RSFSR, 108,404 cases of hooliganism were opened only in the police. The spread of hooliganism caused discontent, despair and fear among the townspeople at the same time. Panic moods led to the strengthening of the "death psychology" in the public consciousness. The townspeople were unhappy with the way the authorities were fighting hooliganism, and called for the maximum tightening of the punitive policy. For example, the Provincial Department of the GPU for the Penza province reported to the Center in 1927 that the workers of the largest pipe plant in the region were talking as follows: “After all, what is this, it has become impossible, you have no rest from these hooligans. You go to a family evening, to a club or a movie, and there all the time you hear that someone is beaten or swearing, shouting: "I'll cut you!", "I'll shoot you!" This is due to the fact that the Power is weakly fighting hooliganism. " In this regard, the toughening of the punitive / repressive machine in the 1930s was perceived by the majority of that society as a "normalization of the situation" - especially since all this was happening against the backdrop of a once again increasing flow of villagers to cities (industrialization, collectivization).
