Agricultural Labour Colonies of Smolensk Governorate, 1918–1929

Since the second half of the XVIII century a new view of the punishment purpose in criminal law has been formed. According to the theory of the great Italian thinker and jurist C. Beccarria the purpose of punishment «is not to torture and torment a person, but to prevent the perpetrator from harming society again and to keep others from doing the same». This formulation of the definition gave a new impetus to the development of Russian penitentiary system. New methods have been actively used to correct the prisoner. Gradually, work becomes the main way to influence prisoners, its main task is to train prisoners to work and earn money in honest way, to give them an opportunity to acquire some professional skills, so that after serving their sentence they can more easily adapt to the life outside the correctional institution, thereby it reduces the number of recidivism. On November 22, 1918 the Central Punitive Department of the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the RSFSR issued a circular «On the Creation of Agricultural Labor Colonies». As a result, various colonies were created everywhere, including in Smolensk Governorate. In the article the author describes types of agricultural activities carried out by the colonists in the governorate, their work specifics, as well as the role of agricultural colonies in the domestic penitentiary system in the 1920s.