Vagrancy as a Social and Criminological Problem and Combating Thereof in the USSR in the Early 1970s to the 1990s

The article attempts to analyze the effectiveness of the ‘complex’ system of combating vagrancy in the USSR, which, according to some researchers, was formed in the 1950s–1960s and allowed, according to their estimates, to minimize the scale of this negative dangerous phenomenon. The author emphasizes the importance of the state-legal measures taken to counter crime in general, including such dangerous phenomena as vagrancy and begging. Problems of an organizational, legal and socio-economic nature that are directly related to the fight against vagrancy in the country in the 1970s and early 1990s are singled out and consistently considered. An assessment is given of the role of local executive authorities designed to solve many problems of preventing such phenomena as drunkenness, evasion of alimony, parasitism, vagrancy, etc.