CONFIDENTIAL
THE SOVIET UNION
י
Report by Eastern European and Soviet Department
Right No.
(i) Imprisonment without trial is rare
although procedural regulations on the period of pre-trial detention are sometimes violated in political cases. There is a long-established practice of committing trouble-makers to mental asylums. There are estimated to be 10,000-50,000 prisoners of conscience.
(ii) Torture is no longer used extensively
to extract confessions. But penal conditions are bad enough to contravene Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
(iii) Slavery as an institution does not exist
in the Soviet Union.
Rating suggested by Department
(iv) All the media are controlled by the ruling
Communist Party, which strives to impose total uniformity. An individual's expression of non-conformist opinion is severely hampered both by the law, which penalises "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" and "the dissemination of conscious fabrications discrediting the Soviet State and social order" (ie facts which embarrass the regime).
(v) The concept of an independent Judiciary
is totally alien to the Soviet regime. Nearly all presiding judges are Communist Party members subject to Party instructions. There is no recorded case recently of a Court passing a judgement which would in any way run counter to the Party expectations of it.
CONFIDENTIAL
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