“Wrecking” as a Soviet Criminal Charge

Under Soviet criminal law, “wrecking” was considered a serious state crime. The relevant provision was Article 58-7 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. Article 58-7 — Article 54-7 in the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR — provided for the death penalty, or for declaring the individual an enemy of the working people, with confiscation of property and deprivation of Soviet citizenship. In the presence of mitigating circumstances, the convicted person could be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of no less than three years, with confiscation of all or part of their property.

This article was actively used in the 1930s during the mass repressions. It provided punishment for actions allegedly aimed at undermining industry, transport, agriculture, and other sectors of the national economy.

Typical features of wrecking cases included accusations built on confessions obtained under pressure, the widespread use of collective responsibility, the frequent absence of real evidence of intentional harm, and the automatic interpretation of accidents and production problems as deliberate sabotage.

In practice, this article was often used to bring groundless charges against innocent people. The Shakhty Trial of 1928 and the Industrial Party Trial of 1930 were the first major show trials in which the charge of wrecking was used against the technical intelligentsia. In the Shakhty Trial, engineers and technicians in the Donbas coal industry were accused of allegedly sabotaging production. Of the 53 defendants, 11 were sentenced to death.

During the Great Terror of 1937–1938, the article became one of the main tools of repression. Its wording was extremely vague: “undermining state industry,” “obstructing its normal work,” “damaging equipment.” It is important to understand that virtually any production failure or accident could be made to fit these formulations.

A characteristic example is the case of Mordko Sheftelevich Kodysh, executed by the Chekists. Kodysh was head of fire protection at the Ukrainian office of Zagotzerno, the state grain procurement agency. His 1937 case refers to “connections with members of a wrecking organisation” and “wrecking and sabotage activity.” He was accused of having “brought fire protection into complete collapse,” resulting in 31 fires and losses of 32,675 rubles.

It is telling that the case contains formulations typical of the period: links with other “wreckers,” confessions obtained in prison, and formal documents in the form of an “expert commission report.” An additional aggravating factor was his past: he had emigrated to Manchuria in 1916.

After the Second World War, the article continued to be applied, though no longer on the same mass scale. Nevertheless, it remained a convenient tool for finding those “responsible” for economic problems. It was often used in combination with other articles on “counter-revolutionary crimes.”

For example, the charge of wrecking found particular use in the so-called “Doctors’ Plot.” Archival documents show how, after the publication of the article “Vile Spies and Murderers under the Mask of Professor-Doctors” in Pravda on 13 January 1953, “wreckers” in the healthcare system immediately began to be “found” across the Soviet Union.

Thus, an information report from Kyiv Oblast in 1952 cites a statement by nurse Elena Mikhailovna Kasilova, who claimed that “for two or three years now, people in Kyiv have been saying that some doctors are treating the population in a wrecking manner, infecting people with various diseases.” Such sentiments were actively supported by official propaganda and used to justify a new wave of repression against medical workers who were allegedly engaged in wrecking in hospitals, clinics, and sanatoriums.

The 1926 Criminal Code of the RSFSR ceased to be in force on 1 January 1961. The new 1960 edition also contained an article titled “Wrecking,” under number 69. This shows that even after the period of mass repression, the state preserved this instrument of control, although its use became more limited.

Modern criminal codes in post-Soviet countries do not contain such a specific article. Instead, they include more precisely defined offences related to causing real damage to the economy and infrastructure.

In the J-Doc digital archive, documents are organised under several key tags, including “Charges of Wrecking” and “Charges of Economic Crimes.” These sections contain numerous archival materials that show, through specific examples, how the charge of wrecking was applied in practice during different periods of Soviet history.

Freddy Rotman