The very origin of this term has not been established, but it is known that already in 1898 it was already used in the reports of the London police. A popular, but unproven version says that there lived, they say, in the 19th century a man like Patrick Hooligen, Irish by birth and a clear sociopath. And it was his name that became a household name in this case. There are other versions, but the French explanatory dictionary "Le Grand Robert" even believes that the word Hooligan in the mid-1920s was borrowed from English through Russian, in which it meant "a young oppositionist to the Soviet regime."
Here he is, "darling" Alexei Alshin, nicknamed Alla - the famous Penza bandit of the NEP era. The mouth is bared, the teeth are small, like a ferret, the glazed eyes … Brrrr, the sight is not for the faint of heart, especially when you look closely at this glassware …
Well, in Russia itself, "hooligans" were first noted in print in 1905, and they got into the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia in 1909, so the "Soviet trace", I think, should have been left to the French. Although … it was in the USSR, and immediately after the Civil War, hooliganism turned into a serious social problem. Before the revolution, "hooliganism" was something like a semi-criminal youth subculture that spread in the working-class suburbs, and from there with people from the village, which ended up in the countryside. But what can I say - even Sergei Yesenin gave her due, in particular.
All this was a tribute to their time. There were street gangs in New York, and in St. Petersburg the hooligans also formed gangs, of which the most famous were five: "Vladimirtsy", "Peskovtsy", "Voznesentsy", "Roshchintsy" and "Gaydovtsy". And if the “vladimirites” used to move their caps to the left ear, and wear a scarf-muffler in red, then the “gaidovtsy” shifted them to the right, and the color of the muffler was blue. In addition to fights among themselves, they were engaged in a variety of "affairs": they used foul language and threw stones at the windows, tortured other people's cats and dogs, sawed down lamp posts, spoiled tombstones, harassed women, "sent natural needs among the public," and even took them away. log house logs prepared for construction!
But hooliganism became especially widespread in Russia, now the USSR, after the end of the Civil War during the NEP years. As always, people expected one thing, but received something completely different. And “disappointed hopes” are always stressful! What is the best treatment for stress? Only more stress! This is where the hooliganism started! And about it like this, for example, our hooligans of the 20s sang directly:
There was a revolution, but it didn't give us freedom:
We had the police, the police are doubly strict.
I'll walk down the street, do something, What the police tell me, I'll show her the knife.
But gangs of hooligans were operating not only on the street, by no means. They broke into clubs and cinemas, theaters and pubs, staged massive fights and even beat up “pioneers and employees”. In Kazan, local hooligans threw stones and sticks at the plane and even the pilot from "Osaviakhim" - that is, it already smacked of politics. In Novosibirsk, a demonstration of Komsomol members was dispersed, and in the Penza province they were engaged in a completely gangster business: they dismantled the railway track, and laid the sleepers on the rails in front of passing trains, which caused several railway accidents!
But it was Penza in those years that was a quiet and "God-saved" city. And what is left of this "salvability" in him? But practically nothing - the growth of hooliganism according to the OGPU was simply catastrophic, since 15-20 people were detained daily for hooligan actions in the city, with a total population of 100 thousand people!
Immediately there were criminologists who considered that the hooliganism of those years was a "perverted thirst for activity, energy inherent in youth." What prevented this thirst for activity from being perverted to not being perverted is understandable - the lack of culture. However, the state itself often added fuel to the fire here. For example, he contributed to the growth of hooliganism and the release of forty-degree vodka. “In connection with the release of 40-degree vodka, hooliganism in the city took on a spontaneous character. On the night of October 2, about 50 drunken hooligans were arrested. There were cases of attacks by hooligans on senior officials of the Governmental Executive Committee and the Governmental Committee passing through the city … ".) And the Penza newspaper "Trudovaya Pravda" in 1926, No. 214, wrote that the hooligans attacked the policemen who were making a round at night and killed one, and disfigured the face of the other and pierced the head. Well, in the period from September to December of the same year, three streets in Penza were completely paralyzed, since hooligans poured human excrement from a sewage convoy over them in barrels and they could not stop it!
And what did the police do, you ask, and the answer will be: "she did something." I detained them, drew up protocols, and two days later released them again! (GAPO. F. 2. Op. 4. D. 224. L. 532.) After all, the hooligan was his own "worker-peasant origin", therefore he deserved all kinds of indulgence. In the ditties of that time, this condescending attitude towards hooligans was sung like this:
Forty eight protocols
All made up for me
I know the police
Not afraid of a damn thing.
Children, cut, beat, Nonche light ships:
I killed seven -
Served four days.
Well, the Bolshevik A. A. In 1926, Solts even noted that, they say, the former Gorky hooligan did not respect the foundations of that society, well, we (the Bolsheviks) also did not respect them, which means that our today's hooligans deserved a "good-natured" and "soft attitude." That was his logic!
But it was necessary to live. Therefore, mounted policemen began to patrol Penza, and from 1927 they began to arrange round-ups on hooligans, and at least twice a week, although even this did not bring much effect and the number of those arrested for hooliganism continued to remain very significant. There appeared "hooligan societies" ("Down with innocence" Society, "Soviet Alcoholics Society", "Soviet Loafers Society", "Hooligan Union", "Fools International", "Central Committee of Punks", etc.), and hooligan circles ("Trample Committee", "A gang of hooligans", etc.) even appeared in schools, and some of them elected their own "bureaus" and collected membership fees. was even forced to shut it down for a while, because the fear of terror from the hooligans was so great.
Hooligans very often supported the bandit elements themselves. So it is not surprising that when in Penza it was possible to put an end to the well-known raider and bandit Alexei Alshin, nicknamed Alla (he was arrested in Petrovsk, but tried in Penza, where the judges, after a 27-hour meeting, sentenced him to death), his body immediately after the execution placed in the window of one of the shops on Moskovskaya Street. For the edification, so to speak, to all antisocial elements! “Look,” they threatened their offspring, prone to hooliganism, to their mothers."You will walk on a slippery path, and it will be with you too!" Moreover, then the head of his corpse was cut off, drenched in alcohol and deposited in the local medical history museum at the Burdenko regional hospital. Not every city has such a "souvenir" in the storerooms of its museums, which clearly testifies to how much then these … "bad people" got all ordinary citizens!
Only in the 1930s did they begin to fight hooliganism in the USSR for real, and the measures against it took on a really harsh character. In particular, by the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of March 29, 1935 "On measures to combat hooliganism" the prison term for him was raised to 5 years.
Well, and in 1940, after the decree of the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces issued on August 10 "On criminal liability for petty theft at work and for hooliganism", "hooligan cases" began to be heard at all without any preliminary investigation, and in special " the duty chambers of the people's courts”. Those who cursed in public places now, without looking at their workers 'and peasants' origins, were immediately given a year in prison. Well, and the usual sentence under a hooligan article was five years in prison, and even with the subsequent five-year ban after the release from living in all the main cities of the USSR. It was only by such harsh measures that hooliganism as the "heavy legacy of the tsarist regime" was curbed. And no other measures have been able to achieve this for a whole decade!
