Fight of Law Enforcement Agencies against Theft of Socialist Property in Cooperative Organizations and State Trade in the Late 1940-ies (based on materials of Sverdlovsk region)

The article is devoted to the subject insufficiently developed in the national historiography, especially in regard to its regional aspect. The study was conducted on materials of the State archive of the Sverdlovsk region, the Russian state archive of economics and the Centre of documentation of public organizations of Sverdlovsk region with the assistance of the scientific and publicistic literature. The relevance of the topic is determined by its known importance for the social sciences, especially history, sociology and law. Scientific novelty of the work is seen in the fact that the new materials discovered by the author in these archives are introduced into scientific usage. It is argued that the criminality is one of the most difficult and intractable problems of human society. It is stated that the history of the Soviet economy is the history of the functioning of a huge diversified economy in extremely inefficient use of available resources and, as a consequence, a severe shortage of most kinds of wealth. It is declared that Soviet Union “inherited” from tsarist Russia a fairly powerful and extensive system of economic cooperation, the leading role in which played two types of cooperation: consumer and commercial. It is emphasized that during the war and early post-war years the criminalization of trade sector reached its peak. It is noted that one of the serious consequences of the war for the Soviet Union was the surge of all forms of crime. It is proved that the Soviet government during all the years of its existence struggled with the embezzlement of socialist property, but failed to achieve any significant success. The conclusion is that in terms of planning and distribution-scarce economy there could not be a different result