The resumption of criminological research in the Soviet Union in the post-Stalinist period is usually dated back to the early 1960s. However, an analysis of archival sources suggests that the Research Department of the General Directorate of Corrective Labour Colonies of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs began to carry out both theoretical developments and field research into the causes of crime much earlier. In 1957–1958, its staff (with the active participation of the department's senior researcher, Professor E. G. Shirvindt, former organiser and first director of the State Institute for the Study of Crime and the Criminal, now the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation) carried out a mass sociological survey of prisoners in correctional labour camps in the Urals, raised the issue of the need to study the "budget" of crime, engaged in a project to establish a research institute under the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Thus, the activities of Research Department staff during this period made an invaluable contribution to the revival of domestic criminological science.