Remaking the 'Born' Murderer: The Case of Moscow Serial Killer Vasili Komarov and Lombrosian Legacies in Early Soviet Criminological Discourse.

CRIMINOLOGY; SERIAL murderers; HISTORY of crime; RUSSIAN Revolution, 1917-1921; SOVIET Union economic policy, 1917-1928

The 1917 revolutions and ensuing Russian Civil War (1918–22) resulted in a number of profound changes throughout the embryonic Soviet state. Greater ideological freedom and increased government support during the reconstructive period of the New Economic Policy (1921–8) led to the development of several professional organisations within the social sciences. One of the most prominent of these was a Moscow group which looked to develop theories regarding how the urban environment contributed negatively towards the continuation of crime following 1917. Criminologists from the group were particularly influenced by the nineteenth‐century writings of Enrico Ferri, a one‐time protégé of controversial Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso. Focusing on the social environment rather than the atavistic traits advocated by his mentor, Ferri's work was developed in a 1924 publication from the Moscow group which looked to understand violent crime in the new Soviet capital. Alongside collecting information from current inmates, this also included the well‐known case of a serial killer who had murdered over thirty people in his Moscow apartment during the early 1920s. Along with discussing the development of the Moscow organisation and the background of the criminologists involved, this article will seek to demonstrate how the Komarov case was adapted and adjusted to fit into the main thesis of their approach to crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]