{"product_id":"9781501706592","title":"The Gulag after Stalin: Redefining Punishment in Khrushchev's Soviet Union, 1953-1964","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eThe Gulag after Stalin\u003c\/em\u003e, Jeffrey S. Hardy reveals how the vast Soviet penal system was reimagined and reformed in the wake of Stalin's death. Hardy argues that penal reform in the 1950s was a serious endeavor intended to transform the Gulag into a humane institution that reeducated criminals into honest Soviet citizens. Under the leadership of Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Dudorov, a Khrushchev appointee, this drive to change the Gulag into a \"progressive\" system where criminals were reformed through a combination of education, vocational training, leniency, sport, labor, cultural programs, and self-governance was both sincere and at least partially effective.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe new vision for the Gulag faced many obstacles. Reeducation proved difficult to quantify, a serious liability in a statistics-obsessed state. The entrenched habits of Gulag officials and the prisoner-guard power dynamic mitigated the effect of the post-Stalin reforms. And the Soviet public never fully accepted the new policies of leniency and the humane treatment of criminals. In the late 1950s, they joined with a coalition of party officials, criminologists, procurators, newspaper reporters, and some penal administrators to rally around the slogan “The camp is not a resort” and succeeded in reimposing harsher conditions for inmates. By the mid-1960s the Soviet Gulag had emerged as a hybrid system forged from the old Stalinist system, the vision promoted by Khrushchev and others in the mid-1950s, and the ensuing counterreform movement. This new penal equilibrium largely persisted until the fall of the Soviet Union.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47127165731056,"sku":"9781501706592","price":31.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781501706592_p0.jpg?v=1763707945","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781501706592","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}