"The posh bandit underground is a beautiful myth"
The war was a severe test for the country, but even after the Victory, life did not immediately return to normal. In 1946-1947, crime in major cities reached its peak, and the hunt for hiding Nazi collaborators was in full swing. The new domestic TV series "Rooks", which premiered in April, is dedicated to this period in the life of Leningrad, which was particularly affected. Izvestia decided to find out how the city and its criminal investigation department really lived. We talked with Sergey Rossinsky, Chief Researcher of the Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and Criminology Branch of the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Law, Professor, about how the war changed the criminal world and the life of the police and what technical capabilities were at the disposal of the post-war investigation.
"After the war, criminals became more cynical and tougher"
First of all, let's talk about post—war Leningrad - the years 1946-1947 are often referred to as the heyday of crime, the period of a sharp increase in crime. Was this really the case, and if so, why?
— Of course. Several factors played a role here. First, major disasters are traditionally followed by a surge in crime. And in Leningrad, as we remember, there was a terrible cataclysm, post—war Leningrad is a special zone. Of course, this was observed throughout the USSR, but Leningrad was under siege, it has a special position. After such cataclysms, an increase in crime is natural, but there were also a lot of additional factors. First of all, there are a huge number of weapons. It is clear that after the war it was found — somewhere in the forests, in other places of former battles, there were a lot of abandoned and lost weapons, and they were taken from the dead and so on. That is, there are a lot of "free", relatively speaking, in quotation marks, of course, weapons. Unaccounted for. Plus, the number of law enforcement officers, again, has decreased dramatically for obvious reasons. Many went to the front, including as volunteers. During the war, divisions were formed from NKVD officers. They went to the front, and therefore, naturally, there were few people left in the rear, and above all, literate people. This is very well shown in the famous film "The meeting place cannot be changed", when after the war young guys began to come to the criminal investigation department, really inexperienced, untrained, who had to be taught, who had to be educated, who could not do anything, and, naturally, the old staff who could, there was a furious load.
And how did the war actually change the criminal world? Because we know that, conditionally, St. Petersburg of the 1920s, these are the gopniks. After the war, the first post-war years, was there any layer that was particularly pronounced?
— I would not say that crime has changed much after the war. But, let's just say, the predisposition to certain types of crimes, of course, manifested itself during the war. For example, there were immediately more robberies and assaults. For obvious reasons, in particular because of the availability of weapons. There have been such crimes before, just not so audacious, not so boundless. There was also terrible speculation during the war, especially in besieged Leningrad. They sold bread and other products, and this remained after the war. Plus, they began to sell all kinds of valuables that were in museums or in the possession of the population before the war, and during the war it was unclear to whom. For example, some very valuable paintings. And, by the way, I can't say that before the war there were all gopniks. This is not a completely correct representation, but rather a cliche from the movies. This is not to say that there were only gopniks there either, by gopniks we mean small-time street robbers. No, of course, this was all before the war: there was speculation, there was corruption, and all this happened. But after the war, it all became, let's say, more cynical. So I would say that the portrait of the criminal has not changed much, it has just become more cynical, tougher, more audacious. And, of course, the number of serious crimes has increased. So it took very tough measures to overcome all this.
That is, the same criminal investigation officers had a serious opponent.
"You're forgetting one more thing. When we talk about a criminal, for some reason we always draw a portrait of such a selfish person who already has a lot of everything, but he wants more, more, more and more. That is, you know, someone who already has three cans of black caviar, but he still wants the fourth, he doesn't have enough. But the fact is that at that time there were a lot of crimes that were committed not from the point of view of criminal cynicism, but from hunger. People committed theft, and some other economic crimes, and even thefts, not because they were so bad, but because they had nothing to feed their children. Of course, there have also been a lot of such crimes. And they were harshly persecuted in the same besieged Leningrad, and a person did this not because he was neglectful of the rules, but because he found himself in a situation where he had nothing to eat and nothing to feed his children. That is, they could be quite respectable people who, having found themselves in difficult conditions, were forced to become criminals. Therefore, the criminal is at odds with the criminal.
But the luxurious life of bandits, with beautiful women and restaurants, which we sometimes see in TV series, how true is it?
— The posh bandit underground is a beautiful myth. When bandits go to restaurants, when femme fatales are with them, tables full of food, all this gangster romance. In fact, they tried very hard not to stand out too much. In those years, people generally tried not to stand out too much, especially criminals. It also attracts attention when a man goes to fancy restaurants with a beautiful woman. Why is that? Although, of course, there is no smoke without fire, maybe something like this happened, but mostly they tried to behave very modestly.
"Young employees were trained from the wheels"
Who was the main staff of the police and criminal investigation department in the first post-war years? Are they former front-line soldiers or are they those who worked throughout the war?
— Of course, we cannot say that these are only former front-line soldiers. Because during the war, of course, law enforcement officers remained in the rear. The police worked in besieged Leningrad, of course, both in Moscow and in other cities. It would be a terrible mistake to completely dismantle law enforcement agencies during the war. Therefore, many law enforcement officers, especially experienced ones, did not go to the front, but, as they say, fought the enemy in the rear. That's understandable. But, of course, their number was much less. And naturally, in the first post—war years, what is shown in the film "The meeting place cannot be changed" is shown quite correctly.: that the staff began to be replenished with young people or not so young people who came from the front. Among other things, communist permits were sent to the police, that is, Komsomol orders were given, communist orders were given so that former front-line soldiers would come to help fight the personnel shortage. Of course, by 1947, which we are talking about, they had not yet had time to train them, but they were doing it later — by the early 1950s, higher education institutions were actively operating. They were taught in an accelerated manner. But that happened a little later, and in 1946-1947, people were being trained from wheels. That is, for example, the hero we see in the TV series "Rooks" is a fairly strong, experienced operative, of course, there was a minority of them.
It turns out that most of the employees, especially the young ones, solved the issues to the best of their abilities?
"Of course not. They tried to develop all sorts of methodological recommendations for them, even in those conditions. As they say, they wrote textbooks on their knees so that new employees would have some introductory ones, and they would be told what to do on their fingers. But that, of course, wasn't enough.
A shot from the TV series "Rooks"
Let's talk about the technologies, so to speak, that were available to them. For conducting examinations, for example...
— That was just it. And by the way, I can't say that modern technology has made much progress in some areas. No, of course, in the last few decades or even in the last few years, science has advanced, and now we have all kinds of digital tools, all kinds of new types of examinations have appeared, genomic examinations, for example. But this has been happening lately. But the so-called traditional examinations, which we primarily think about when we talk about the work of a forensic expert: handwriting, ballistic, examination of signs of a person's appearance, including the so—called portrait, tracological examinations related to all kinds of traces, fingerprinting - all this began to form back in the 19th century. All these funds were available to the tsarist police. And that's why God bless the founding fathers of the Soviet law enforcement agencies - for the fact that they still managed not to squander all these skills, all these skills. It is clear that after the revolution, all this was in some kind of crisis, but in the 1920s and 1930s, forensic support began to develop very well. And by the end of the 1930s, in general, quite a good experience had already been gained. Then there were no forensic units, then there were the so-called NTO, scientific and technical departments. In general, they had quite serious knowledge, skills, and, as it is now customary to say, competencies in conducting expert forensic support of criminal proceedings. Therefore, it would be wrong to think that the criminal investigation officers acted like blind kittens.
"Women have become very much in demand in expertise"
How much has the war affected the NTO? I understand that qualified specialists worked there, and you can't just send young people there.
— It is difficult to say how much the war has affected the NTO staff, there are no such statistics or they are very classified. But the fact that the cadres were taking care of it is for sure. Qualified personnel were not sent to the front just like that. In any field. Even if a person worked as an engineer at a factory, they weren't sent either. Qualified personnel were taken care of. Reservations were given and so on. Moreover, women also worked there. But don't forget that the criminal justice system was also working hard at the front. And a lot of people were mobilized to the front specifically to work in the field of justice. The military investigation, the military prosecutor's office, it all happened. And they worked in front-line conditions, investigated crimes on the front line, investigated the atrocities of the fascists. That's all it was. And a lot of cadres were mobilized for the war, that is, they were simply dressed up in the uniform of the military prosecutor's office, given military prosecutor's titles, and they went to work. Therefore, it is clear that the war has to some extent unsettled all systems.
A shot from the TV series "Rooks"
You mentioned women among the NTO staff. In the series "Rooks", for example, there is a female expert. How much did the number of women increase after the war due to the shortage of personnel?
— After the war, expertise began to have a feminine face in many ways. Just remember the TV series "Experts are investigating", where there is also a female forensic expert. I can't say for sure, but I assume that this trend started precisely from the war. And in general, women have taken root in this job, because expertise, unlike criminal investigation, requires more scrupulousness, more attentiveness, and more concentration. Diligence and attention to detail are needed there, and this is a feminine trait, so women in expertise have become very in demand. And now there are a lot of them in the examination too.
The series is about a war criminal who is actually being captured by a criminal investigation officer — how possible was that in real life? Was there any specialization at all during that period?
— Now, in the modern world, this division is quite formalized and even bureaucratic, then it was easier to treat it. Moreover, all law enforcement agencies carried out a single mission — to fight crime. And although the detection and detection of murders — and here we are dealing specifically with murders — was the responsibility of the criminal investigation department, state security officers were often involved in this work for a variety of reasons. Everything was pretty flexible. And in any case, the prosecutor's office was investigating such criminal cases.
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