Hooliganism in Russia has a long and fascinating history. In his authoritative book, Brian LaPierre concentrates on an especially notorious episode of that history: Khrushchev's Thaw. It is remarkable that a period normally associated with cultural and political liberalization saw millions of ordinary Soviet citizens turned into criminals. Although it publicly distanced itself from Stalinist methods of crime fighting, the Khrushchev administration maintained its predecessor's instinct for strict social control. In steering its subjects toward communism, this purportedly “civilizing” regime lashed out against all those who failed to fit in with its ideal for a disciplined, sober, and cultured community. They were stigmatized and prosecuted under antihooliganism laws, which criminalized eccentric or indecent behavior, drunkenness, and even quirky dress-sense.

In explaining the causes of hooliganism, LaPierre goes beyond the social disorganization theory and the moral-panic model. He places equal blame on the effects of postwar modernization, mass-media sensationalism, the cultural confusion brought about by de-Stalinization, and the difficulties of everyday life. Overcrowding, endemic scarcity, rudeness, and excessive alcohol consumption were among the common features of the Soviet urban fabric. Yet, according to LaPierre, hooliganism was not necessarily one of the most pronounced ones. What was perceived as an epidemic of petty hooliganism was in fact a self-inflicted malaise caused by a concerted campaign of cracking down on deviant behavior in the mid-1950s.

In order to stress the humane nature of the new legislation, the regime reduced the length of custodial sentences, but simultaneously cast a much wider judicial net over society, making further inroads into the private space of Soviet citizens. Gripped by a widespread fear of criminality, the latter did not seem to mind this degree of intrusion into their private lives. As living standards improved and expectations rose, Soviet people enthusiastically embraced the new legislation that promised to purge the streets and the homes of troublesome misfits. The hysteria, stirred up in the press, stimulated the population's impulse for self-cleansing, while the government encouraged violent vigilantism. Nevertheless, when the state, overwhelmed by the resulting avalanche of hooliganism cases and burdened by the economic cost to the penal system, decided to transfer to society the responsibility of reforming petty offenders, the public picked up the baton with much less vigor. Lack of time, understaffing, and organizational lethargy plagued the volunteer militia and comrades’ courts.

The discussion of the role of obshchestvennost’ (roughly translated as “the community”) forms an especially engaging part of the book, although the argument that treats the broad public volunteerism that originated in Khrushchev's anticrime campaigns as a novel development is contestable. The Stalinist government had already pushed social activism beyond its generational, gender, and hierarchical boundaries during the Second World War, not least because it relied increasingly on public volunteers to maintain order on the home front (although not, admittedly, on a similar scale).

By no means limited to the contemporary discussion of antisocial behavior, the book offers several useful excursions into the past. It might, however, have benefited greatly from a comparative analysis with other countries. Considering the importance of the Cold War competition and its indirect impact on domestic affairs, it seems one could draw a few interesting conclusions from how the notions of deviance and social otherness were understood and policed by the Soviet Union's friends and rivals.

These remarks, however, do not diminish the richness of analysis and research material presented in the book. This is an eye-opening and highly original study that challenges the traditional stereotypical view of Khrushchev's liberalization campaign and exposes its dark underside. It shows just how self-contradictory, counterproductive, and ultimately self-defeating the antihooligan legislation was. The author succeeds admirably in exposing the persistent tension inherent in Khrushchevism—the constant negotiation between liberalization and state control. Moreover, he has managed to strike a good balance between social history and its legal counterpart, and this volume's contribution to both branches is significant.

The book is also timely, since it draws a vivid picture of a paranoid state ready to attach labels and prosecute anyone who seems to disrupt the envisioned social order or morality. In this context, the stubborn intolerance toward any kind of deviation from the accepted norm exhibited by many Russians today becomes clearer. As the author takes us into “a golden age of Soviet moralism” (164), during which millions of ordinary Soviet citizens were stigmatized as social undesirables, he implicitly confirms the familiar line that every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.