Criminal Subculture in the Gulag: Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps, 1924–53 9781788311892, 9781350142756, 9781350142732

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
A note on translation and transliteration
Introduction: The world of the 49ers
Svoi vs. frayera
The evolution of the Stalinist Gulag
Criminal subculture in Gulag memoirs
Criminal subculture in the Gulag, 1924–53
1 Criminal subculture before the Gulag
Vanka Kain
Sonka ‘Golden Hand’
Fomka ‘Zhigan’ and the besprizorniki
Kostia and Murka
Conclusion
2 Etap : The shaping of prisoner relations
Na etap (‘during prisoner transportation’)
Conclusion
3 Hierarchies: Arrival, socialisation and the prisoner code
Hierarchies
Sexual order of the Gulag
Initiation
Socialisation
The prisoner code
Conclusion
4 Communication: Tattoos and slang
Tattoos
Slang
Conclusion
5 Gambling: Card playing and the structuring of prisoner society
Kartzhnaya igra (‘the card game’)
Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov (‘Card Games of the Criminals’)
Igrat’ na pyatovo (‘to play the fifth’)
Card playing and the Gulag’s forced sexual order
Conclusion
6 Punishment and conflict: Urka courts and the ‘bitches’ war’
Ritual
Punishment
Suchya voina (‘bitches’ war’)
Conclusion
Epilogue: Cult of the urka
Criminal subculture after the Gulag
Conclusions
Glossary of commonly used terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

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Library of Modern Russia Advisory Board: Jeffrey Brooks, Professor at Johns Hopkins University, USA Michael David-Fox, Professor at Georgetown University, USA Lucien Frary, Associate Professor at Rider University, USA James Harris, Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK Robert Hornsby, Lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK Ekaterina Pravilova, Professor of History at Princeton University, USA Geoffrey Swain, Emeritus Professor of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow, UK Vera Tolz-Zilitinkevic, Sir William Mather Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester, UK Vladislav Zubok, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, UK Building on Bloomsbury Academic’s established record of publishing Russian studies titles, the Library of Modern Russia will showcase the work of emerging and established writers who are setting new agendas in the field. At a time when potentially dangerous misconceptions and misunderstandings about Russia abound, titles in the series will shed fresh light and nuance on Russian history. Volumes will take the idea of ‘Russia’ in its broadest cultural sense and cover the entirety of the multi-ethnic lands that made up imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Ranging in chronological scope from the Romanovs to today, the books will: ● ●

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Re-consider Russia’s history from a variety of inter-disciplinary perspectives. Explore Russia in its various international contexts, rather than as exceptional or in isolation. Examine the complex, divisive and ever-shifting notions of ‘Russia’. Contribute to a deeper understanding of Russia’s rich social and cultural history. Critically re-assess the Soviet period and its legacy today. Interrogate the traditional periodisations of the post-Stalin Soviet Union. Unearth continuities, or otherwise, among the tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet periods.

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Re-appraise Russia’s complex relationship with Eastern Europe, both historically and today. Analyse the politics of history and memory in post-Soviet Russia. Promote new archival revelations and innovative research methodologies. Foster a community of scholars and readers devoted to a sharper understanding of the Russian experience, past and present.

Books in the series will join our list in being marketed globally, including at conferences – such as the BASEES and ASEEES conventions. Each will be subjected to a rigorous peer-review process and will be published in hardback and, simultaneously, as an e-book. We also anticipate a second release in paperback for the general reader and student markets. For more information, or to submit a proposal for inclusion in the series, please contact: Rhodri Mogford, Publisher, History (Rhodri.Mogford@bloomsbury. com). New and forthcoming: Fascism in Manchuria: The Soviet-China Encounter in the 1930s, Susanne Hohler The Idea of Russia: The Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev, Vladislav Zubok The Tsar’s Armenians: A Minority in Late Imperial Russia, Onur Onol Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev’s Hero City, Vicky Davis Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space, Cynthia Ruder Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease and the Environment under Romanovs and Soviets, John Davis Soviet Americana: A Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists, Sergei Zhuk Stalin’s Economic Advisors: The Varga Institute and the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy, Ken Roh Ideology and the Arts in the Soviet Union: The Establishment of Censorship and Control, Steven Richmond Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin, Alun Thomas The Russian State and the People: Power, Corruption and the Individual in Putin’s Russia, Geir Hønneland et al. (eds) iii

The Communist Party in the Russian Civil War: A Political History, Gayle Lonergan Criminal Subculture in the Gulag: Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps, Mark Vincent Power and Politics in Modern Chechnya: Ramzan Kadyrov and the New Digital Authoritarianism, Karena Avedissian Russian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land: Piety and Travel from the Middle Ages to the Revolution, Nikolaos Chrissidis The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution, Lara Douds, James Harris, and Peter Whitehead (eds) Writing History in Late Imperial Russia, Frances Nethercott Translating England into Russian, Elena Goodwin Gender and Survival in Soviet Russia, Ludmila Miklashevskaya, Elaine MacKinnon (transl. and ed.) Publishing in Tsarist Russia, Yukiko Tatsumi and Taro Tsurumi (eds) New Drama in Russian: Performance, Politics and Protest, Julie Curtis (ed.)

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Criminal Subculture in the Gulag Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps, 1924–53 Mark Vincent

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Mark Vincent, 2020 Mark Vincent has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Series design by Tjaša Krivec Cover image: Onion domes tattoo. © Alix Lambert All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permissions for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7883-1189-2 ePDF: 978-1-3501-4273-2 eBook: 978-1-3501-4274-9 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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To my parents, thank you for everything.

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Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements A note on translation and transliteration

Introduction: The world of the 49ers Svoi vs. frayera The evolution of the Stalinist Gulag Criminal subculture in Gulag memoirs Criminal subculture in the Gulag, 1924–53 1

2

3

4

xi xii xiv 1 3 6 11 16

Criminal subculture before the Gulag Vanka Kain Sonka ‘Golden Hand’ Fomka ‘Zhigan’ and the besprizorniki Kostia and Murka Conclusion

19

Etap: The shaping of prisoner relations Na etap (‘during prisoner transportation’) Conclusion

39

Hierarchies: Arrival, socialisation and the prisoner code Hierarchies Sexual order of the Gulag Initiation Socialisation The prisoner code Conclusion

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Communication: Tattoos and slang Tattoos Slang Conclusion

85

21 26 30 33 37

42 52

57 69 73 77 80 82

86 98 106

ix

x

5

6

Contents

Gambling: Card playing and the structuring of prisoner society Kartzhnaya igra (‘the card game’) Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov (‘Card Games of the Criminals’) Igrat’ na pyatovo (‘to play the fifth’) Card playing and the Gulag’s forced sexual order Conclusion

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Punishment and conflict: Urka courts and the ‘bitches’ war’ Ritual Punishment Suchya voina (‘bitches’ war’) Conclusion

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111 115 119 124 126

132 135 139 149

Epilogue: Cult of the urka Criminal subculture after the Gulag Conclusions

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Glossary of commonly used terms Notes Bibliography Index

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154 158

167 199 213

Illustrations 1

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3 4 5

‘Greetings from the Vorkuta Camps! 1947–1963. In the USSR Labour is a matter of honour, prowess and glory! Shelyabozh, Eletsky, Izhma, Kozhma, Khalmer-South.’ ‘You little Soviet shit, you are still ass-licking and flogging away for the CPSU and being paid zero point fuck-all and do you want to be a cripple? Think about it!’ ‘Bitch.’ Judge tattoo. ‘1872 Sakhalin.’

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97 125 134 161

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Acknowledgements No words on this page can fully express the gratitude which I owe to the following people. Firstly, my PhD supervisor, mentor and friend, Matthias Neumann, for his unwavering support, patience and dedication right from the outset of this project. To this day your guidance remains entirely indispensable and I am extremely proud to be the first of your students to see their work published. I have no doubt whatsoever that you will have many, many more. In particular, my Russian teacher and friend, Veronika Bowker, is deserving of extremely special thanks. She has not only dedicated a huge amount of her time to the development of my language skills but has also demonstrated a remarkable knowledge and understanding of blatnye pesni. I only know how to swear quite as well in Russian because of you. Fellow Gulag scholars: Steven Barnes, Alan Barenberg, Wilson Bell, Jeff Hardy, Miriam Dobson, Julie Draskoczy, Asif Siddiqi and, in particular, Daniel Healey and Judith Pallot. I am incredibly grateful to them not only for providing me with invaluable contacts, feedback and sources, but also for their kindness in dedicating considerable time to my personal development. It is impossible to express how important their advice and insights have been solely through the citations in this book. Please take the time to discover, as I have, all of their wonderful work. A number of other academics have helped me in numerous different ways, from agreeing to present on panels with me, to meeting for coffee in the British Library. I have regularly been humbled by the enthusiasm and support which they have granted me and my work. Thanks especially to Sarah Badcock, Sarah Young, Svetlana Stephenson, Elena Katz, Gavin Slade, Felicitas Fischer von Weikerstahl and Andrea Gullotta. Several other friends and colleagues have regularly shown an interest in this project and provided extremely thoughtful comments and suggestions over the last several years. The support of Alistair Dickins, Siobhan Hearne, Jon Waterlow and George Gilbert, in particular, has been extremely valuable. Special thanks also go to Jon Sicotte and Tom Rowley for their friendship and support during my research trips to Moscow. Future visits to shady areas of Kitay Gorod will not be the same without you. xii

Acknowledgements

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My great friend, Kate Ferguson, continues to be an inspiration and a source of incredible guidance. Samuel Foster and Chris Jones for their companionship and patience whilst travelling down this long, winding road together. It is absolutely without question that this book would not have happened without the support and encouragement of Cathie Carmichael who had the unenviable task of tempering some of my early ideas and projects. It is the conversations in your office that continue to define who I am as a scholar. Thank you to my hometown friends Richard Etteridge, Tim Reynolds, Matt Clarke and Simon Morris for providing me with heavy metal-related distractions and tomfoolery on the mean streets of Cambridge. Thank you to my sister Vicki, her husband Adam, and, in particular, my nephews, Tommy and Dylan, who continue to provide me with endless fun and laughter every time I see them. My grandfathers, John and Alan, who sadly passed away at different stages of this project. I miss you both very much. Alongside my parents, this book is dedicated to Lucy Johnson and Henry Malthouse. I will never forget the love and sacrifices that made this all possible.

A note on translation and transliteration To make the book as accessible as possible for the general reader I have used a simplified translation, omitting soft signs and formatting all name endings into the more familiar (-y) rather than (-ii). In order to ensure continuity, this system continues in the footnotes. The transliteration of Ukrainian names and places follows the standard set out by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. A few well-known personal and place names, including Odessa, have been left in their better-known forms in order to make them recognisable to English-language readers. All translations are my own unless stated otherwise.

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Introduction: The world of the 49ers

By the summer of 1926, a slender, curiously beguiling prisoner named Boris Glubokovsky had already become an important figure at the showpiece labour camp that had spread across the Solovetsky archipelago in the White Sea. Dressed in the apparent inmate fashion of an all-black ensemble complete with a slightly jaunty cap, the 32-year-old prisoner had used his theatrical expertise to embrace the various cultural-educational activities initiated by the fledgling Soviet regime as they sought to re-educate their incarcerated subjects. Prior to his arrest, Glubokovsky had gained himself a favourable reputation amongst the Russian Empire’s cultural elite before the revolutionary events of 1917 saw him tour across the shifting expanses of the civil war-afflicted state. Resettling back home in Moscow as the conflict ended, Glubokovsky joined exclusive cliques occupied by iconic literary figures such as the poets Sergei Esenin and Aleksei Ganin.1 It was his friendship with Ganin, in particular, which led inadvertently to Glubokovsky’s arrest in November 1924 as they were both alleged to be part of a conspiratorial circle named ‘Order of the Russian Fascists’. While he avoided the fate of execution suffered by Ganin and five other members of the suggested cabal, Glubokovsky’s ten-year sentence saw him sent to the sprawling Solovki labour camp. After his arrival on the penal archipelago Glubokovsky helped stage a number of plays while contributing regularly to the prisoner newspapers, considered to be of sufficient quality that they were sold by street vendors in Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkiv. Printing with the same typographic machine as the prisoner press, Glubokovsky collated various extracts from a number of his newspaper articles into a short publication, available to buyers from the same outlets as the prisoner press, that placed a specific article of the RSFSR 1922 Criminal Code at centre stage. The author implored in his introduction that his choice of title was a hugely significant one.2 Glubokovsky’s publication, 49, drew its name from the particular article of the criminal code which gave the courts the right to sentence

1

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Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

any individual who was deemed to be ‘socially dangerous’ due to any suspected crimes or connection with the wider ‘criminal milieu’ (prestupnaia sreda). Arrest under this article meant that you faced banishment from the most important Soviet cities, including Moscow and Leningrad.3 Developing this article of the criminal code, as prisoners evidently had, from its original judicial status, Glubokovsky confirmed how his use of this number referred to the broad mass of criminal recidivists imprisoned on Solovki.4 Glubokovsky and others would refer to this group of prisoners as ‘49ers’ (sorokadeviatniki), a term eerily reminiscent of another group of inmates who were also labelled with their respective criminal-code article. Political prisoners such as the memoirists Eugenia Ginzburg and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn became widely known as ‘58ers’ after being sentenced for their alleged counter-revolutionary activities.5 While Gulag historiography has, quite rightly, commemorated the experience of political prisoners, extremely little has been written on the 49ers. Who, then, were the 49ers? Generally speaking, they were a group of mostly adult males who had any prior history or link, real or suspected, with the criminal world outside the camps. As this definition suggests, and as will be shown throughout the book, this represented an extremely broad church. Many 49ers were described as being illiterate, although some were noted for their surprising depth of ‘alternative’ or even more traditional forms of knowledge. The limited evidence available suggests that the more authoritative 49ers hailed from large cities and associated with crimes more commonly committed there, such as bank robbery. With prisoners from various nationalities often congregating together separately in their own social groups, 49ers appear mainly appear to have been ethnic Russians, a suggestion further supported by the number of derogatory racist tattoos and slang terms. As with local street gangs, 49ers would arrange themselves in a seemingly ad hoc manner. This was designated at times by the geographical area they came from or the crimes they specialised in, but more likely simply through chance and which camp they found themselves incarcerated in at any particular time. While providing members with an element of comfort and security, these rudimentary groups also looked to continue their nefarious activities if the opportunity presented itself inside the camp system. Unfortunately for other prisoners, it often would. 49ers would often attempt to inhabit key territorial areas within the prisoner world, such as the highest bed bunks during penal transportation or after arrival in the more permanent surroundings of the communal barracks. Often demarcating this area as being off-limits to other prisoners through screens or rags, groups would take part in a number of communal activities such as eating,

The World of the 49ers

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drinking, playing cards, singing and telling jokes or stories. Activities would mainly be directed by one leader, usually the most physically intimidating of the group, who would frequently delegate important but sometimes extremely dangerous jobs to lackeys who clearly conceptualised their role as being more in the guise of a loyal lieutenant. These inmates would also in turn take advantage of even lower-ranked and often younger individuals, who were either keen to advance through the group or pressured into carrying out tasks through fear and intimidation. While female criminal recidivists, supposedly separated into a different area of the camp and even a different island at Solovki, were often considered exempt from participation, they could be included in a limited manner that often took advantage of their sexuality. Similar to other carceral groups, the code that the 49ers lived by was a fairly rudimentary one which set down crucial terms about informing or working for the authorities. As Glubokovsky himself would acknowledge, these suki (‘bitches’) were held in even lower esteem than camp officials, with brutal punishment rituals in place to highlight the consequences of anyone found betraying this rule.6

Svoi vs. frayera Boris Glubokovsky was, of course, neither the first nor the last prisoner to recall the actions of criminal recidivists inside the walls of Russian and Soviet penality. Long before the 1917 revolutions and subsequent initiation of the RSFSR Criminal Code which led unintentionally to the rise of the 49ers, plenty of ink had already been spilled on describing the rungs of prisoner hierarchy during the final years of tsarism. Observers and former inmates alike recalled how prisoners named ‘Ivans’ dominated inmate society at locations such as the foreboding Sakhalin Island, the imperial Russian version of Alcatraz. Below Ivans there were also numerous other carceral identities for recidivists who became prolific as card sharks or prisoner merchants, or the had the innate ability to stir up animosity amongst other inmates. While, as we will see later, late imperial penal hierarchy had a slightly more easy-to-define order, following the revolutionary events of 1917 inmates began to refer to anyone suspected of having a criminal background by using a number of simple overarching labels, as seen in the use of 49ers. Like groups of other self-styled ‘outsiders’, such as motorcycle gangs, a number of these terms appear to have been subsequently adopted by the recidivists themselves as a way of both identifying their own kin and demarcating themselves as set apart from the rules of ordinary society.7

4

Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

Alongside the overarching term 49ers, Glubokovsky’s book also recalled how large groups of recidivists were referred to as shpana, a term that appears to have originated from late imperial prisons and identified inmates as being natives of the carceral environment. Although he described shpana as ‘small headed fools’, Glubokovsky stated that they were not simply representatives of the criminal world but, in fact, acted as their spokesperson.8 Glubokovsky also noted how a number of low-level crimes fell within this category, including pickpocketing, burglary and various forms of counterfeiting (farmazonshschiki/kukol’niki). His inclusion of seduction or robbery during sex (khipesnitsi) also strongly suggests that, although men could also commit this erotic-led crime, female recidivists were included in this wider mass. Prisoners who managed to escape during transportation to the Solovki camp can help to clarify the popular use of shpana and the continued propensity to group criminals into one amorphous mass.9 This is similar to how the term ‘unfortunates’ (neschastnye) was used to refer to peasant inmates in both late imperial penality and, for a brief period, in the camps of the 1920s.10 Glubokovsky’s recollections of how penal society on Solovki was divided highlights how, although the language was slowly changing, the traditional animosity that existed between prisoners from different backgrounds remained unaffected by the revolutionary upheavals of 1917. As Sarah Badcock has shown, while formal directives about keeping prisoners separate toward the end of tsarist rule were not always enforced in practice, the isolation of different groups eroded more and more in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s.11 Glubokovsky’s analysis positioned the terms 49ers and shpana alongside another interchangeable label, svoi (‘our own’). Used in other social contexts outside penality, the use of ‘our own’ included a range of entry criteria which either allowed prisoners to self-categorise or ascribed this identity to others.12 Conversely, those from a more traditionally educated background were referred to as frayera, a pejorative term for an ‘outsider’ (sometimes ‘sucker’ or a potential ‘mark’ during criminal activity). Both of these labels were directed from the eyes of the criminal world looking out and imply clear boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. It would also appear that, although the term was originally intended to be disparaging toward them, political prisoners found themselves adopting the word ‘outsiders’ in order to refer to themselves, in the same way as later Gulag inmates would with Article  58. Nevertheless, the persistence of this ‘our own’ vs. ‘outsider’ divide on Solovki had such repercussions upon inmate social life that it led to bitter complaints from those who found themselves unfairly confined within one particular group.13

The World of the 49ers

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An even more explicit account of this division between prisoners could be found in an article from one of the Solovki prisoner newspapers. Deriving its title directly from the two terms svoi and frayera, the piece – attributed to ‘B. Borisov’ (not necessarily an indication of their actual name) – began by evocatively describing a work brigade inside the main Solovki Kremlin, which the author metaphorically divided in half according to this binary.14 Clarifying that this was the ‘our own’ vs. ‘outsider’ binary with their title, Borisov implored that the latter was anyone who could be stolen from, with the former representing their unremorseful assailants. Rather than remaining detached or even seeing their victims as being a class enemy, Borisov argued that ‘outsiders’ (the group which they evidently belonged to) helped provide ‘our own’ with their means of existence. Borisov’s commentary, which remarkably appeared to suggest that criminal prisoners should consider themselves somewhat fortunate that ‘outsiders’ offered themselves so readily, also lamented the fact that their group lacked the strict structure of the opposing faction.15 This assessment regarding the potential cohesiveness of ‘outsiders’ is not entirely without merit as, during the immediate post-revolutionary period, the Bolsheviks were known to incarcerate political opponents (who formed the bulk of the ‘outsiders’) from right across the ideological spectrum.16 Elaborating on their analysis further, Borisov recalled how the background of 49ers could be extremely varied, with their only link being participation in criminal activities. Deploying similar metaphors to state propaganda during the launching of the New Economic Policy (NEP) around the same time, Borisov suggested that more profitable financial swindlers represented the criminal ‘aristocrats’, who were followed by a ‘large bourgeoise’ consisting of burglars and counterfeiters which led down to a sedimentary layer formed by small-time burglars and pickpockets.17 Whilst stating that ‘hypocritical traditions’ abound within criminal society, Borisov implored that high-profile, professionalised acts such as armed robbery could not be compared with the ‘wild, feral and senseless’ situational offences that often took place in the notorious urban yamy (slums). Other than their lofty positioning of financial crime, Borisov’s assessment of this criminal hierarchy reflects many contemporary views that some offences traditionally carry more esteem than others. As Ben Crewe has shown in his work on UK prisons, the same typologies that exist in wider criminal society are often found replicated within prison walls, or in this case behind the barbed wire of forced labour camps.18 As we will see, the prominence of bank robbers in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s would be matched by the professional identity

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of many high-ranking criminals during the development of the Gulag behemoth over the following decades.

The evolution of the Stalinist Gulag Even at this early stage of the book it becomes imperative to define the chronological shifts that took place in the punitive system during the period 1924–53. Doing so will help us not only to trace some of the more finite linguistic changes, but also to understand the changing contours of the camp system and wider inmate population. The writings of Glubokovsky and Borisov, like many others to be discussed in this book, emerged in prisoner newspapers and memoirs from the aforementioned Solovki camp in the White Sea. Following the revolutions of February and October 1917, the new Bolshevik regime looked to transform a disparate conglomeration of katorga (hard labour) and exile locations left behind by the tsarist regime. Their new penal arrangement encompassed a network of penal sites largely operated by the secret police, at this point known as OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate). At the centre of this was the instigation of a labour camp on the Solovetsky archipelago, traditionally a place of religious pilgrimage, which had been seized by the Red Army during the civil war. From late May 1923, the Solovki camp became a showpiece of hard labour and prisoner re-education (perevospitanie) with articles appearing in the international press alongside receiving visits from foreign dignitaries.19 Despite its exemption from formal corrective labour codes, and run as an entirely separate entity by OPGPU, there were a number of other similar institutions such as those in Vyatka and Gomel (present-day Belarus). Nevertheless, Solovki remained the biggest and most important to the regime, growing from around 3,000 prisoners to 65,000 between 1923 and 1930.20 As the following decade began, the inmate population on Solovki peaked at 71,800 in January 1931 with the site now spreading its carceral links onto the Karelian mainland.21 This expansion of the Solovki camp provides us with a microcosm as to how the First Five-Year Plan (1928–32) produced a shift in the distribution of penal labour to assist various economic projects deemed highly important. Many Solovki prisoners were subsequently sent to assist the building of the priority infrastructure project linking the White and Baltic Seas, with the number of prisoners committed to the canal’s development reaching 108,000 during the winter of 1932–33.22 Conditions on the work site were considered to be particularly appalling, with an estimated 25,000 prisoners thought to have

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died during the entire period of construction, although excavations remain controversial and ongoing.23 Despite the widely circulated reports of torture at the Solovki camp and the horrors that befell many of those attached to building of the White Sea–Baltic Canal at the beginning of the 1930s, the Soviet penal system averaged around 190,000 inmates, not a particularly substantial increase from the late tsarist figures on the eve of the First World War.24 This scale of penal labour was, however, something that would change drastically throughout the course of the following decade. Following the formal initiation of ‘GULAG’ (Main Administration of Camps) as an official institution reporting directly to the security services, the prisoner population would begin to take an unprecedented leap to around 1 million by the mid-1930s. This would effectively double to 2 million following the mass arrests and deportations of 1937–38, a period widely recalled as the Great Terror. Although mortality rates continue to be deceptive and difficult to fully define, during the 1930s around half a million prisoners (or 5 per cent of inmates) are thought to have died each year.25 In addition to this, the camp system had a ‘revolving door’, with around 20 per cent of all prisoners released annually.26 As many have suggested, the desire to exclude ever-finer classifications of ‘antiSoviet elements’ during the Great Terror was therefore merged with nationaleconomic objectives by a powerful central state hell-bent on developing its resource frontier and shrugging off its perceived historic backwardness.27 This pattern of mass arrest followed by regular release and the twin economic policies of industrialisation and collectivisation merged together to produce both supply and demand for potential forced labourers.28 This period of Gulag expansion now saw the carceral system become fully mobile, creating a vast network of differing institutions stretching from the dusty Kazak desert-steppe to the farthest reaches of icy Siberian tundra. Following the Nazi invasion of 22 June 1941, spectacularly breaking the terms of the temporary alliance forged by Molotov and Ribbentrop, the punitive system adapted again to fit Soviet needs during the Second World War. In particular, around a million inmates were released to fight on the front lines, a decision that saw the overall prisoner population dropping from 2.3 million at the time of Operation Barbarossa to around 1.2 million by the summer of 1944.29 With political prisoners largely excluded from release, the recruitment of criminal recidivists into military ranks would have huge repercussions on prisoner society following the end of the conflict and their return to the camp system. While mobilisation of Gulag resources contributed heavily toward Allied victory, albeit at a staggering cost to human life, the immediate post-war period saw another

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upward spike in prisoner numbers as large numbers of war veterans were incarcerated as suspected traitors. Coupled with the passing of severe anti-theft laws, this saw the Gulag population peak at just over 2.5 million on 1 January 1950.30 Despite escalating levels of prisoner-on-prisoner violence during this time, morality rates appear to have deflated to under 1 per cent of all prisoners, with the overall population also declining slightly on the eve of Stalin’s death in early March 1953.31 This figure would again be significantly altered by the amnesties instigated by Lavrenty Beria, head of the security services, in the immediate aftermath of the dictator’s passing. Alongside the specific chronology and changing prisoner populations of the period, it is also important to recognise the array of detention institutions that developed alongside the bureaucratic reorganisation and growth of the Gulag during the 1930s. The fact that some continue to treat the system as one single, undifferentiated institution is clear testament to Solzhenitsyn’s refashioning of the once-innocuous acronym to form the rhyming title of his genre-defining tome Arkhipelag Gulag. While use of the overarching term ‘Gulag’ to describe the entirety of the carceral experience highlights the brutality of Soviet punitive policies and its wider societal effects, it fails to fully encapsulate the complexities of the penal system and its place within the larger state apparatus. During the period 1924–53, prisoners were held in various different settings, which ranged from isolated scientific research camps to much larger corrective labour camps and colonies that could represent just one part of a penal complex extending, at times, over an extremely large area. Indeed, as Kate Brown persuasively argues, the Soviet system of penality should be viewed as part of a continuum of disciplinary practice and incarcerated space throughout the entire Empire. In Brown’s analysis, this also includes the policy of priority ‘regime’ cities, such as those that Article 49 was fashioned in order to help enforce.32 Nonetheless, during the period 1924–53, most prisoners travelling through what is commonly referred to as the ‘Gulag’ were firstly incarcerated at centrally located prisons such as Moscow’s Butyrka and Leningrad’s Kresty (‘Crosses’). With a history of overcrowding, squalor and regular inmate hunger strikes, these buildings became terrifying carceral symbols in their own right. It was here that individuals were held during arrest and judicial processing, including decisions as to whether or not they would be executed. As ample memoir evidence confirms, prisoners were subject to interrogation and torture before many were sent on to their next penal location through etap (prisoner transportation).33 Although no substantive study has yet been made of Soviet prisons, they retained a reasonably large number of inmates, such as those awaiting execution and individuals

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committed to specific isolation after carrying out extremely serious crimes or by causing continued problems at other punishment institutions. Largely exempt from the types of collective labour favoured elsewhere, by the early 1950s more than 150,000 inmates were held across roughly 200 prisons.34 Although the majority of this book will focus on other types of punitive institutions, such as corrective labour camps, Vladimir Petrov’s recollections of being switched between various central prisons in Leningrad suggest that, especially given their overcrowding, prisoners looked to continue similar behavioural rituals, such as card playing, to those practised in communal barracks elsewhere.35 Also characterised by a lack of staff and inmate overcrowding, as many Gulag penal institutions were, transit prisons became an integral part of the wider carceral arc. Linking together the various transport mechanisms that shuttled prisoners around the penal expanse, transit camps were especially noted for their unimpeached criminal activity. In the secret police camp system of the 1920s the most notorious of these transit prisons was found at Kem’ in the Autonomous Republic of Karelia. Containing prisoners bound for the Solovki camp, the Kem’ transit prison was noted in many reports as having persistent problems with theft and widespread sexual assault perpetrated by both guards and inmates. As the Gulag system began to develop more fully during the 1930s, inmates could face incarceration for several weeks in transit prisons found near the port of Nakhodka, to the east of Vladivostok, and Vanino, even further afield as the Sea of Japan turns ominously toward the depths of Siberia. Located inside the Strait of Tartary, linking the twin seas of Japan and Okhotsk, Vanino would even gain its own verse in the samizdat song ‘Magadan’ popularised by the poet Alexander Galich.36 Along with their experience of the more familiar corrective labour camp sites, memoirist renderings of barracks and bathhouses found at temporary transit camps often provide some of the most valuable and visceral insights into criminal subculture and, as a result, feature heavily throughout this book.37 As the title suggests, this book is mainly focused on the Gulag’s corrective labour camps which were, like many permanent hard labour sites of the late imperial period, generally located in the Soviet Union’s farthest geographical reaches and include many of the most notorious locations such as Kolyma, Vorkuta and Karaganda. Not only did they follow the pre-revolutionary practice of expelling unwanted elements to the peripheries, but corrective labour camps represent the direct descendants of Solovki and the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s. Often consisting of multiple different sections, corrective labour camps were often spread over an extremely wide area and could be incorporated

10

Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

into much larger penal regions.38 Control over inmate population within the corrective labour camps was regulated by different ‘zones’ which prisoners were transferred between. This policy again reflected how manipulation of physically bounded space (such as ‘regime cities’) also functioned outside the camps.39 The work of Steven Barnes has shown camp authorities looked at the potential value of Gulag prisoners based on their perceived redeemability and through the lens of a categorisation matrix containing all aspects of their biographical details.40 As prisoners progressed through the carceral arc, in accordance with their good behaviour and participation in cultural-educational activities, there were opportunities for advancement into more privileged camp zones.41 With corrective labour camps reserved for prisoners sentenced to more than three years’ imprisonment, not only did this mean that many political prisoners were sent to these sites, it would also attract the more serious individuals from the criminal underworld. Dwarfed by the imposing outer structure of watchtowers and barbed wire fences, illuminated by huge overhead lights, prisoners were housed inside ‘living zones’ with the only point of entry a guarded gate on one side of the compound. Within the living zones, prisoners were mainly housed in one-storey wooden barracks, although at times these could be constructed out of different materials and even have an additional storey. Prisoner barracks, sometimes called upon to house hundreds of inmates at a time, were often lined up in rows and surrounded by various other buildings, which included kitchens, dining rooms, bathhouses and laundry facilities. Theoretically, men, women and children should have been contained separately, yet in practice prisoners often travelled unopposed between these zones with the opportunities this represented for nefarious activities remaining a consistent problem for the camp authorities. Also contained within separate barbed wire, sometimes even fencing, were penalty isolators and punishment barracks alongside medical facilities and buildings that housed valuable supplies. Some of these items had the potential to be traded on the camp’s black market, thus necessitating their added protection. In other instances, stolen medical supplies could be used to add colour to recidivists’ tattoos, adding to the black which came from the burnt soles of their boots. One vitally important feature of life in Gulag corrective labour camps was utilisation of the collective (kollectiv) in order to achieve daily prisoner goals. Although this collectivist principle also underpinned the organisation of citizens outside penality, it manifest itself in the camps most prominently through the prisoner work brigade. In these brigades, a group of inmates under the leadership of one particular inmate (the brigadir) was set a daily production target. With the

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majority of work sites located away from the living zone, the brigadir then took over the responsibility of mobilising their fellow members to fulfil the daily work norms.42 As Laura Piacentini and Gavin Slade have shown, collective responsibility helped ensured that social control was extended to areas beyond the reach of camp authorities, particularly important given the staffing problems.43 Therefore, survival in the camps became almost entirely dependent on work duties as they – crucially – controlled access to inmate rations.44 In line with a policy that began at the Solovki camp, by 1939 the security services had standardised food rations in accordance with work-norm fulfilment.45 This placed criminal recidivists in an awkward position, given their traditional hostility towards working for institutional structures. What memoir evidence shows is that while taking on the role of brigade leaders (or other ‘soft-job’ positions) was indeed contradictory, this often formed one of their more practical strategies of survival. As will be demonstrated throughout, however, recidivists discovered plenty of ways to circumvent formal directives and secure extra food and clothing. Alongside the corrective labour camp, a large number of recidivists were also housed in post-Second World War institutions known as special camps. Following the reconstitution of the late imperial term katorga to refer to a particular division within regular corrective labour camps during the war, Gulag authorities extended the practice to create an entirely new set of independent camps following the conflict.46 Compared by former prisoners to a circle in Dante’s hell,47 special camps upheld the same aesthetic as corrective labour camps with watchtowers, barracks and different zones, but inmates generally had longer sentences and were faced with extremely brutal conditions and high mortality rates. Within the special camps, inmates sometimes found themselves handcuffed or locked in the barracks, with politicals and recidivists also separated on occasion. Of particular relevance from the special camps for this book is how the prisoner-on-prisoner violence that occurred between rival criminal groups in the aftermath of the Second World War was recorded in prisoner memoirs. As with Glubokovsky’s discussion of 49ers of the 1920s, however, this highlights the fact that a lack of written evidence from criminal recidivists means we have to lean heavily on the writings of politicals incarcerated alongside them.48

Criminal subculture in Gulag memoirs In order to reveal aspects of criminal subculture absent or otherwise obscured from archival documents, this book draws from the large corpus of survivor

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Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

memoirs from those incarcerated during the period 1924–53. While there are a handful of accounts from inmates of the 1920s from locations such as Solovki, the majority of memoirists were imprisoned from the following decade onwards following the initiation of ‘GULAG’ as an official body and the growth of the camp population toward the 2 million mark during the Great Terror. Recidivist criminals referred to as 49ers in prisoner newspapers from the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s can be found in these texts under descriptions such as vor (‘thief ’), blatnoi (‘criminal’) and chestnyagi (‘the honest’, meaning a traditional thief). Arguably the most frequent, however, remains the general term urka (‘criminal’), which was in popular use even before the 1917 revolutions.49 Featuring throughout prisoner memoirs, urka is also listed in former inmate Jacques Rossi’s dictionary of camp slang, where it is defined as being both a ‘powerful and audacious thief ’ and a ‘hardened professional criminal . . . including bitches’.50 Rossi, who was incarcerated from the late 1930s until the amnesties following Stalin’s death, indicates how the term was inclusive of those recidivists referred to as suki who took positions working for the camp authorities after returning from fighting in the Second World War. This group of prisoners would come to prominence when suchya voina (‘the bitches’ war’) erupted violently throughout the late Stalinist Gulag. Choosing to investigate the world of the 49ers and an expanded discussion of wider criminal subculture also helps avoid any potential confusion with the global notoriety of Russian organised crime. Since the 1990s, ‘thieves in law’ (vory v zakone) have been the focus of scholarly investigation of exceptional detail.51 As will be demonstrated throughout this book, there are important differences between being an individual criminal or even participation in a small, spontaneously formed gang formation and being united within this larger brotherhood. This approach is particularly important for the period 1924–53 as the ‘thieves in law’ are thought to have comprised around only 6–7 per cent of the total number of criminal recidivists when they were at their most prominent in the late Stalinist Gulag.52 The vory, who no doubt whatsoever developed from their history within the camp system and even before, became much more notorious during the fall of communism and ‘wild nineties’, when they were grouped under the larger label of ‘Russian Mafia’ (although always drawing from different nationalities). While their lofty position at the forefront of Russian crime has diminished recently in favour of the sharp suits and designer shoes of today’s ‘McMafia’, the legacy of vory v zakone in both scholarly and non-scholarly accounts remains beyond question.53 Whilst still situating the ‘thieves in law’ well within the boundaries of this book, and paying homage to the work of these

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important and ground-breaking scholars, this book represents a partial attempt to investigate the larger group of criminal recidivists imprisoned in the Stalinist labour camps. In attempting to reconstruct prisoner society, it is clear that the traditional inmate divide referred to in the 1920s as ‘our own’ vs. ‘outsiders’ continued throughout the development of the Stalinist Gulag and no doubt much further beyond. The continued resilience of this political/criminal binary remains one of the most important considerations when looking to investigate daily life in the camps. While, as we will see, mountainous first-hand evidence suggests that the hegemony of criminal groups profoundly affected the day-to-day operations of the camps, especially in the post-war period when they fought a prolonged and violent campaign against each other, minimal first-hand material has been left behind by recidivists themselves. As a result, we continue to rely on memoirs from those classified, rightly or wrongly, as being from amongst the intelligentsia. One effect of this reliance on ‘political’ inmates is that class-based notions of what Adi Kuntsman evocatively describes as ‘disgust’, some no doubt triggered by intensely traumatic experiences, have helped to create a chasm between the two socio-economic groups. This has subsequently meant that researchers continue to replicate memoir extracts regarding criminal recidivists without considering where these various behavioural rituals might come from, why some of their more violent acts happened in particular areas of the carceral arc (such as during prisoner transportation) and their resulting impact on both inmate society and Gulag authorities.54 That is not to say that these horrific incidents involving criminal recidivists did not take place and, as will be shown, researchers have plenty of examples to choose from, yet hegemony over other prisoners formed part of a wider and more intricate web of practices which had a historical lineage that can be traced back long before the emergence of the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s and subsequent development of the Gulag apparatus. Whatever crimes they committed before or even during their time in the camps, continuing to refer to this group amorphously not only applies negative and stigmatising labels to an entire group but remains hugely reductionist when seeking to create a wider picture of daily camp life.55 Even classification through one particular article of the Criminal Code, as in the case in the refashioning of 49, is certainly not without its own potential pitfalls, as individuals were often arrested as part of large police dragnets and sentenced without what we would normally consider to be due process or evidence. Future research which adheres to this strict dichotomy without looking to investigate its potential nuances, as difficult as this

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Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

might be, will continue to have a detrimental effect on how we perceive daily camp life. Furthermore, the adoption of similar methodologies opens up the possibility of studying other marginalised social groups such as the Gulag’s various nationalities, looking further into the extremely complex field of sexual relations between inmates, and compiling a more thorough investigation of camp employees.56 As will be discussed throughout, while some memoirists emphasised strong feelings of disgust, often recalling criminals in the guise of satanic beasts looking to desecrate the last remnants of anything considered civilised, not all depictions solely condemned the behaviour of recidivists. This difference in attitudes towards criminal inmates is perhaps best demonstrated in the two examples below, drawn from prisoners incarcerated in the same region within just a few years of each other. The first example is from Eugenia Ginzburg’s recollections of prisoner transportation on a ship which was bound for the port city of Magadan in the late 1930s, shortly after her arrest for alleged counter-revolutionary activity in Kazan. Heading ultimately, like Ginzburg, for the notorious Kolyma camp complex in Siberia, the second example is drawn from Janusz Bardach’s description of a transit camp near Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), following his 1942 arrest on the Belorussian front: They were the cream of the criminal world: murderers, sadist, adept at every kind of sexual perversion . . . Without wasting time they set about terrorising and bullying the ‘ladies’, delighted to find that ‘enemies of the people’ were creatures even more despised and outcast than themselves . . . they seized our bits of bread, snatched the last of our rags with our bundles, pushed us out of the places we had managed to find. . .57 The next morning he invited me to join the other urkas on one of the other bed boards. There were over twenty of them, all elaborately tattooed on their torsos, backs and arms. The emblems of naked women, striking snakes, soaring eagles, vodka bottles, machetes and playing cards identified these men as members of the underworld. Although I had difficulty understanding their jargon, they were more congenial than the military prisoners and I began to spend most of the days with them.58

Both of these descriptions remain of equal value, yet Gulag historiography and collective memory has undoubtedly been influenced mostly by the former. As will be discussed throughout, examples more akin to Ginzburg’s description have also fed into popular culture related to the camp system. In the case of the two above memoirists, however, their opinions would later be reversed when

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Bardach was stabbed from behind by a recidivist whilst Ginzburg found relations with the criminals to be much more congenial when she worked in a camp medical ward, even finding herself warming to their humour.59 As we will see later, Bardach was far from exceptional in his interactions with criminal prisoners and his own personal background hints at the problems with adhering to such a strict binary. Being born into a middle-class, reasonably affluent family would seemingly place him as a political prisoner, yet his rather unfortunate sentence for crashing a tank while serving in the Red Army blurs the lines somewhat. This seems to be even more the case when he is compared to a seemingly more straightforward case (although this is rarely true) of an arrest for alleged counterrevolutionary activities in one of the interwar urban centres, as in the case of Ginzburg or the poet Osip Mandelstam.60 Furthermore, Bardach’s oratorical skills became an important requirement in gaining the protection of a highranking criminal authority, which ultimately increased his chances of survival. Although he arguably had little agency over his new role, Bardach became a key part of the group’s communal activities and later spoke of the recidivists in a way that would seemingly be anathema to other memoirists. As this shows, applying such a rigid dichotomy remains intensely problematic when investigating the effect of criminal subculture on daily camp life. This notwithstanding, incidents of violent sexual assault and murder, such as those recalled later in Ginzburg’s extended work and by many other memoirists, were predominantly, although not always, perpetrated by those with a background of criminality. While these examples have been regularly replicated by writers when discussing the camps on a moral level, what this negates is the tangible role that they played in enforcing hierarchies of power and controlling the camps’ sexual order. Situating some of these depraved incidents of mass rape and murder within a broader discussion of criminal and penal subculture ultimately aids our understanding of why these horrific incidents happened in certain locations at specific times and how they were often also determined by other factors, such as a lack of surveillance and the unwillingness of the authorities to intercede. Condemning these barbaric and sadistic actions is a fundamental response of our shared humanity; explaining and trying to understand them inside a theoretical framework is much more difficult. It remains a great atrocity that the overwhelming majority of victims described in these pages at either the hands of criminal recidivists, camp authorities, or indeed those who perished as a result of the system as a whole, are destined to forever remain nameless, and this should never be forgotten.

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Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

Criminal subculture in the Gulag, 1924–53 This book seeks to achieve two principal goals. The first of these is to highlight the persistence of criminal subculture across the traditional historic boundary of 1917. Chapter 1 will address this directly by showing how representations of criminality changed from the traditional bandit tales of the eighteenth century to become ‘re-forged’ biographical narratives of the early Soviet era in which prisoners were celebrated for renouncing their former deviant ways and working towards their rehabilitation as ideal citizens. Whilst ideological attitudes towards crime and the criminal might have changed substantially following 1917, this chapter will highlight that behavioural rituals among recidivists continued to be circulated using the same tried and tested methods, such as the wide array of prisoner songs. The various examples discussed in this opening chapter will help to show that crucial tenets of the criminal and prisoner code, such as informing to the authorities, remained in place even as the societal backdrop shifted drastically. This chapter will, therefore, demonstrate that the rupture of the revolutionary and civil war years did not create the same seismic shift in prisoner society as it would in other areas of Russian society. The second principal goal of the book is to investigate criminal subculture using the large corpus of available memoirs and previously unused prisoner newspapers. In accordance with this, Chapter 2 will begin a journey through the carceral arc by specifically discussing the importance of prisoner transportation in helping create ample opportunities for criminal recidivists to assert their hegemony over other inmates. This chapter will revisit some of the harrowing experiences by memoirists as they were transferred from central prisons to more permanent surroundings across the Soviet Union. Looking in detail at these harsh, dislocating journeys which took memoirists away from their families and wider peer networks will demonstrate that criminal recidivists adapted to this process in a remarkably different manner. As will be argued, the significance of these journeys should not be understated, as the actions of recidivists on these various methods of transportation represented, for many political prisoners, their first interaction with those from the criminal underworld. By beginning their monopolisation of violence at this early stage of the punitive arc, criminal inmates were responsible for laying down important symbolic markers and rules that would continue later in other types of more permanent institution. The hostility and torment many memoirists faced during penal transportation meant that physically and psychologically, visually and sonically, these moments very much set the tone for what was to come later.

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Once prisoners had stepped out of the darkened holds of ships or train carriages and entered life in the communal barracks, Chapter 3 will analyse how recidivists looked to deal with their own particular ‘pains of imprisonment’ through a variety of initiation and socialisation rituals which, as with the previous chapter, significantly contrasted with the same period of adjustment for many future memoirists. Furthermore, this chapter will also demonstrate how steadfast allegiance to the criminal/prisoner code compares and contrasts with other penal and criminal groups, including both the ‘thieves in law’ and the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Chapter 4 develops these themes further to show how many behavioural rules were transmitted through forms of visual and verbal communication such as tattoos and slang. Although the ink displayed on the bodies of Russian criminals continues to hold a prominent place in both camp historiography and wider pop culture, the widespread dissemination of these visual sources has seemingly muddled folklore and historical fact. Alongside their aesthetic qualities, this chapter will look at the more practical role of tattooing within penal society, looking at other drawings by MVD (‘Ministry of Internal Affairs’) Major Danzig Baldaev, alongside the writings of prominent 1920s criminologists. Similarly, dictionaries of prisoner slang and linguistic observations noted by former inmates will also be consulted to show the diverse range and uses of informal jargon in refracting the microcosm of prisoner’s daily lives. Chapter 5 will continue to reconstruct the activities of recidivist inmates by illustrating not only how the symbolism of card playing retains a traditional symbiosis with the criminal underworld but also how gambling formed an important part of informal prisoner hierarchies and consequently the camps’ forced sexual order. Linking directly to some of the punishments for losing these highly contentious card games, Chapter 6 explores different types of rudimentary justice that took place among criminal inmates, showing how adherence to the prisoner code was often upheld and maintained through an ad hoc court system that presided over a wide variety of infractions and issued judgements drawn from an elaborate range of punishments. This final chapter also looks to detail the conflict that took place between criminal gangs in the post-Second World War Gulag. Commonly known as the ‘bitches’ war’, these brutal, muchmythologised events present an important moment which had a huge effect on the running of the camps leading up to Stalin’s death in 1953. In addition to this, the battle lines drawn during this campaign would also foreshadow the eventual ascendancy of the ‘thieves in law’ across the second half of the twentieth century. It is far from the parasitical gangsterism of the vory that we need to begin, however. Delving deep into the time of patriarchal slavery which gave rise to the

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eighteenth-century bandit leader Vanka Kain will allow us to see some of the important temporal traditions that would continue into the period 1924–53. For example, participation in Kain’s gang was seemingly dependent on providing an address in criminal slang and contributing to a communal fund, behavioural rituals that would also be used by some of the ad hoc formations that dominated prison society in the Stalinist labour camps. Similarly, the criminal gang led by the iconic nineteenth-century super-thief Sonka ‘Golden Hand’ would not only continually confound the authorities; her presence also obscures the impression of an almost entirely male-dominated criminal environment, as is particularly the case in regard to vory v zakone. Although their period of activity was long before the development of the Stalinist labour camps during the twentieth century, by inscribing their names deeply into Russian criminal lore both Vanka and Sonka would leave behind an important and lasting legacy in regard to many of the themes that will be discussed throughout this book.61

1

Criminal subculture before the Gulag

The twin nebulas of Ivan Osipov and Sheyndlya-Sura Solomoniak continue to shine bright amongst the Russian criminal cosmology. Better known by his alias ‘Vanka Kain’, Osipov – given his rugged and roguish physical appearance, along with his acrimonious and somewhat incendiary relationship towards state authorities – could have been crafted bespoke for a BBC television drama as he merged seamlessly from fearless leader of a gang of outlaws to a corrupt police super-informant. Taking advantage of an amnesty that followed Princess Elizabeth’s seizure of power in 1741, this alliance with the Investigators’ Bureau, however, merely provided Kain with legitimate cover to continue his nefarious acts with virtual immunity as he attempted to shake down and steal from anyone he decreed to be a potential suspect. Following a lengthy investigation into his continued criminal activities, Kain was finally apprehended and faced the full force of eighteenth-century criminal justice. Narrowly avoiding his original sentence of the death penality, Kain’s nostrils were ripped open, in keeping with the favoured punitive methods of the time, before he was flogged, branded and exiled to the icy plains of Rogervik in the Gulf of Finland.1 Unlike Vanka’s apparent self-appointed nom de guerre, Sheyndlya-Sura Solomoniak appears to have been anointed with the title of ‘Sonka  – Golden Hand’ by criminal peers as a result of her highly prolific and daring escapades. Alongside this vilification by her contemporaries, Sonka was depicted by the emerging mainstream press in the guise of a classic femme fatale who was able to seduce her own personal guard before stealing from carriage to carriage as she escaped along the Warsaw railroad.2 The gravity of this public attention towards Sonka would far from dissipate, however, even after she was finally captured and incarcerated on the notorious tsarist penal colony of Sakhalin Island. Remaining on the island even after the completion of her sentence, the arch-criminal would receive visits from the eminent literary icon Anton Chekhov and the popular journalist Vlas Doroshevich, who joyfully depicted her fall from grace. In addition to these reports, photographs that showed a shackled Sonka surrounded 19

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Criminal Subculture in the Gulag

by guards were sold to passengers passing by Sakhalin on steamer ships as rumours continued to swirl that the real-life criminal had absconded and replaced herself with a fake body double. Although their professional activities necessitated the need to extend their criminal networks and retain mobility, both carried strong associations with specific geographical locations, with Kain reportedly running roughshod over Moscow’s notorious Kitay Gorod (Chinatown) district and Sonka achieving nearmessianic status even amongst the maelstrom of criminality which characterised the fin-de-siècle port city of Odessa. Growing notoriety meant that Vanka and Sonka were soon granted membership in an exclusive cabal of marquee antiheroes, including the bandits Anton Krechet and Vasili Churkin, names instantly recognisable from folk stories and songs circulated throughout the Empire.3 Further canonisation also occurred within the emerging field of mass-produced literature, which had blossomed from short pamphlets into multi-page novels whose trashy ‘underworld’ themes reflected the cheap pulp on which they were produced. These sensationalist tropes were often further reinforced by provocative cover images and titles designed to titillate their prospective readership.4 Despite Kain’s period of notoriety coming before the birth of a more specific penal-writing genre, which boomed around Fyodor Dostoevsky’s seminal The House of the Dead, the bandit was not entirely omitted from nineteenth-century texts, which remained engrossed with the criminal cause célèbre. This continued fascination with notorious individuals would, of course, be endorsed further by the hawkish caricatures sketched of Sonka by Doroshevich and Chekhov. As ideologically barbed revolutions have a tendency of doing, the overthrow of the Provisional Government by the Bolsheviks in October 1917 led to profound shocks throughout the social body. One of these occurred in popular representations of criminality, as the notorious chthonic individuals who stole almost exclusively from the decadent and corrupt upper classes were replaced with characters now viewed as premium sites to be remoulded and integrated back into the Soviet collective. Criminal figures who followed Vanka and Sonka after 1917 were no longer afforded the ignominious ending of seeing out their remaining days isolated in remote penal colonies but were now sent to participate in large-scale construction projects before their assimilation back into mainstream society.5 Transition between the old and new worlds merely represented a simple set change, however, as prisoner and criminal ‘master plots’ remained almost entirely unaltered in the maintenance of key elements such as the traditional mantra of ‘honour among thieves’ and defiance in the face of authority. Prisoner songs, in particular, continued to be important carriers of

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inmate culture by helping to distribute a range of symbols which in turn looked to influence an individual’s decision-making process. In essence, these songs would suggest a range of behaviours that fell within the criminal/prisoner code alongside the suggested repercussions for breaking them. Although the stories surrounding Vanka and Sonka have by now been mythologised and rebranded in multiple ways for a number of different audiences, their afterlives continue to provide important insights into the nefarious world of Russian criminal subculture. This peculiar alchemy of real and fictionalised criminality shows how the legacies of past figures can continue to influence contemporary criminals in a manner which Diego Gambetta has wonderfully termed ‘(low) life imitating art’.6 Not only do the various incarnations of Vanka and Sonka remain haunting and powerful spectres in setting out ways in which future criminals should behave (and not behave), but their activities as part of a wider group show the development of penal hierarchies and behavioural rituals which continued into the Stalinist labour camps. Despite the clear ideological shift in the relationship between state and citizen following 1917, penal folkways continue to pay homage to the original king and queen of the Russian criminal underworld.

Vanka Kain Born in a small Rostov village named Bolgachinovo in 1722, young Ivan was transported away from his rural family at just ten years of age to the contrasting opulence of a Moscow manor house, where he began working as a domestic servant for the wealthy merchant Peter Filatiev, whose family represented the dominant land-owners in Osipov’s homeland.7 The popular story suggests that, after numerous failed escape attempts from Filatiev, during one of which he met his future mentor and close friend Peter Kamchatka in a downtrodden tavern, Kain was chained in the courtyard and guarded by a bear as punishment for his repeated indiscretions. This was where Vanka apparently remained until he was informed by a sympathetic female servant that someone in the Filatiev household had killed a soldier and stashed his body in a well as a way to cover up their crime. Kain allegedly then used this evidence against his master to emancipate himself, receiving a guarantee of his freedom in return. In reality, however, it appears that a mutual agreement was struck between Kain and his master, especially as Vanka continued to have business dealings with Filatiev and his servants throughout the following decades.8

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Despite the suggested illiteracy of the bandit, he was thought to have dictated a number of first-person accounts which were circulated mainly by hand. These stories often drew direct links of criminal heredity between Vanka and the French thief Louis Dominique Garthousen, better known by his alias ‘Cartouche’. This comparison seemed appropriate enough for the Frenchman’s name to be evoked in the title of one of Kain’s early first-person accounts, whilst a biography of Cartouche was deemed to be so complementary that it was translated and attached to the second printing of a late eighteenth-century book on Kain by the pioneering lubok (cheap and simple books) writer Matvei Komarov.9 It was in 1779 that Kain’s story was brought to a wider audience, as Komarov compiled and adapted around 60 previously disparate tales into a work commonly regarded as Russia’s first literary bestseller.10 Following Komarov’s critical and commercial success, numerous abridged copies of this work began to appear on the street in the form of cheap, unlicensed bootlegs, sometimes written anonymously and almost always published under slight variations of the same titles. Following this increased public and literary attention, Kain was deemed to be a figure of such historical importance that G. V. Esipov reconstructed parts of his biography for a nineteenth-century collection. Esipov’s treatment of his subject was remarkably different from Komarov’s more light-handed approach, as he pointed the finger at Kain for both his suggested participation in the killing of a border guard and his knowledge of the origins of a series of fires in Moscow in the spring of 1748 which had destroyed more than 2,000 buildings. Esipov also provided a detailed account of how in December 1744 Kain abused his policing jurisdiction to kidnap a group of pupils from a prestigious religious school and blackmail the parents into paying a ransom to ensure their safe return. Despite the school governors demanding an immediate enquiry, Kain was able to use his police connections to bribe the relevant legal clerks and ensure that the investigative process remained tied up in paperwork for the next four years.11 Suffice to say, these allegations were omitted from Kain’s other fictionalised accounts, which were all imbued with larger than life, comic-book style violence similar to the work of Frank Miller. Whilst retaining some elements of classic folklore stories regarding bandits such as Robin Hood, these accounts saw Vanka’s persona switch from unremorseful vigilante to an entirely reformed, law-abiding authority figure who reflected the Russian literary enthusiasm for British and American detective stories featuring Nat Pinkerton and Sherlock Holmes.12 As Kain became increasingly synonymous with a new wave of crime fiction, the mere use of his name now conjured up images of a shadowy, vigilantestyle bogeyman whose activities could be easily reshaped in order to fit both the

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moral and amoral. Later incarnations of Vanka, such as a ten-part anonymous serial in 1918, carried no discernible association whatsoever with the real-life figure and wider tributes to him included a late imperial wrestler who competed under his name, although it is unclear whether he represented a babyface or a heel (wrestling parlance for ‘good guy’ or ‘bad guy’).13 Allowing for some creative and commercial latitude, one explanation of the malleable nature of these stories is that Vanka’s real-life activities do not sit comfortably within the traditional social bandit motif advanced most famously by the historian Eric Hobsbawm.14 One of the most prominent examples of this can be seen through Kain’s decision to repent his previous wrongdoings and enter into a somewhat unhealthy alliance with the state. Despite his service to the authorities, Kain’s repeated abuses of his vaguely defined position, which consisted of unsanctioned interrogations and stealing from criminals he had helped to apprehend, led to his dramatic final curtain call. According to Komarov, this came after a police clerk had reported Kain for abducting and raping his wife. Vehemently denying this charge, when tortured under the cat-o-nine-tails Vanka loudly revealed highly suspect information about an apparent threat to the life of the monarch (the Russian equivalent of the French lèse-majesté). Claiming this in difficult situations had long been part of Kain’s mythologised modus operandi, including how he had reportedly emancipated himself from his master Filatiev.15 On this occasion, however, Kain’s desperate pronouncements were to no avail as he was transferred under armed guard to be subject to further torture before eventually pleading guilty to all the crimes he had committed while working for the Investigators’ Bureau. As one might expect, the historical record again differs here and instead suggests that, according to the official investigation, Kain was arrested not on the complaint of the police clerk but because of a soldier from the Kolomensky regiment whose 15-year-old daughter had been abducted and raped. Further sexualised motives to his crimes are also hinted at in Komarov’s account of Vanka’s marriage, which suggests that Kain convinced a criminal he had helped apprehend to ‘pin’ part of his counterfeiting operation on the daughter of a sergeant who had repeatedly spurned his advances. In reality, it appears that Kain’s romantic endeavours towards the widow of a soldier had been consistently refused but, during a night of mass arrests, the woman in question was detained and incarcerated for almost two years (significantly longer than the several days cited in Komarov’s account) before finally agreeing under duress to the forced marriage and later acquiescing to taking part in criminal activities alongside her inveterate husband.16

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Although any link with state structures usually represented anathema in criminal spheres, the extravagant nature of Kain’s persona continued to be refracted throughout penal subculture long after he had passed. Ethnographer Sergei Maksimov reported how some of Kain’s ‘dark phrases’ remained preserved by prisoners in the Siberian punitive institutions visited during his 1861 study. The sayings overheard by Maksimov were examples of well-known rhyming couplets repeatedly replicated within the pages of many publications related to him, including the idiom ‘Drink water like a goose, eat bread for a swine, let the devil work for you, but not I’. This was allegedly written on a note Kain nailed to his former owner Filatiev’s gate as he fled. Another popular Kain-ism, ‘The kite has flown beyond the sea and has not come back a swan’, appears to have derived from an old Russian saying similar to the Old Testament proverb that a person cannot change who they are.17 According to Maksimov, these expressions became insults to be used disparagingly by prisoners either during interrogations or hurled toward prison staff as they carried out their daily routine. This demonstrates how Kain’s notoriety had woven itself into the collective consciousness of the caste of ‘unfortunates’ (neschastnyie), the term often used disparagingly to describe peasant convicts of late imperial penality.18 Not only were Kain’s jocular phrases commonly replicated but some of the ritual practices of his gang, alongside their complex web of outward relationships, also provided a blueprint for later criminal formations. This included initiation rites, which were intended to display loyalty and demonstrate their induction into his gang, as new recruits were expected to pay a subscription and give an address in criminal argot. Imposition of specific entry criteria in this manner bears a resemblance to more familiar ‘crowing’ rituals of twentieth-century criminal groups. As Patricia Rawlinson has noted, Kain has often been heralded as an early inspiration for the ‘thieves in law’ in regard to his symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship with legitimate state structures.19 This legacy seemingly continues despite the fact that Kain had denounced his mentor and friend Peter Kamchatka, naming him alongside around 30 former criminal acquaintances on a sensational night of mass arrests immediately following Vanka’s pardon.20 Records show that Kain was later called back to the Department of Investigations to repeat his testimony before Kamchatka was sentenced to be flogged with a whip before transportation to punitive labour in Orenburg (near the Kazak border).21 In the world of the mafia, this would be akin to Kain breaking the trusted code of silence (omertà ) and becoming an informant (pentito). Even in its Russian context this was strictly against the main tenets of

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the prisoner/criminal code which, as we will later see, usually dictated extremely violent consequences. Kain’s particular bandit gang displayed similarities with another criminal enterprise with which he was sometimes temporarily aligned. This group was led by a well-known bandit named Mikhail Zaria (‘Daybreak’ or ‘Dawning’), referred to in Komarov’s account as being an ataman, a more commonly used word for tribal chieftain.22 Whilst the term ataman appears again sparingly in later prisoner memoirs from the Stalinist labour camps of the twentieth century, by then it had been rendered virtually obsolete and replaced with the use of the word pakhan (‘boss’). Similarly, the role and duties of the yesaul (‘lieutenant’), another frequently used term from Komarov’s account, almost directly replicates that of the sherstyorka (‘sixer’, lackey) in later Gulag hierarchies. Interestingly, Peter Kamchatka is only referred to as Zaria’s yesaul and in fact not Kain’s, suggesting that his relationship with Vanka was more complex and along the lines of a mentor and protégé at first, then latterly as a trusted companion (at least before Kain turned him in to the authorities). As with the story of Vanka’s ultimate betrayal, these indications of more of an equal status between the two were not at all reflected in the fictionalised accounts, which unequivocally portray Kamchatka as being firmly his number two. Even the names ‘Kamchatka’ and ‘Zaria’ also help to demonstrate the great importance placed on klichki (nicknames) within criminal society. While reasons for different klichki could sometimes be highly ambiguous, one of their more definite uses was to confer varying status, which in turn affected social relations with others.Whether bestowed upon you or adopted through choice (as with ‘Vanka’), such names could help create alternate, or even multiple, identities to replace original birth names and biographies. In the case of Peter, however, his nickname Kamchatka had no relation to the far eastern peninsula popularised by the singer Viktor Tsoi, but was adopted because he was a fugitive who had escaped from a sail-making factory. Similar use of nicknames can be seen again through Kain’s other accomplices, who were known as ‘the Wolf (Peter Wolf)’, ‘the Monk’ and ‘the Hat’ and were later captured alongside Kain during his final arrest.23 One important point to make here regarding nicknames is that, although found in numerous other social environments, klichki have long been considered a special feature of the criminal underworld.24 Through their use in initiation tests and rituals, nicknames indicated a transition to the criminal sphere and formed a key part of signalling to those both inside and outside of their immediate social group. Often borrowing terms from the animal kingdom,

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nicknames are used as a special source of pride and ‘honour’ in the same way as overall gang titles. Studies of Gulag slang demonstrate that klichki could be divided into a vast array of categories, often retaining an original patronymic or surname with an individual nickname ‘tagged on’ (as will be seen later). This could also include geographical names, often indicating the territorial authority of high-ranking individuals, psychological features, physical traits or other outward appearances, while further variations include animals, famous characters, objects, religion and age.25 While many of these nicknames lacked originality, they played an important role in terms of classification and were similar to the categories used by prisoners observed by Donald Clemmer in Chicago during the early twentieth century.26 As with the use of klichki, the behavioural norms and rituals of Kain and his gang would not only provide important cultural markers for later twentiethcentury mafia groups but represented a vital part of the prisoner code seen following the emergence of the Stalinist labour camps. Similar hierarchical structures, initiation rites, prolificacy in underworld slang and adherence to strict rules will be considered as this book progresses over the following chapters. In addition, Vanka’s relationships with fellow criminals – which saw him sometimes in temporary alliances and at other times vehemently opposing them – hint at the animosity that could grow between rival formations. As will be demonstrated in Chapter  6, this precarious balance between criminal gangs exploded in extremely violent fashion throughout the post-Second World War Gulag. Despite the apparent contradictions in the stories surrounding Vanka, such as his fluctuating relationship with formal state structures, Kain left an indelible mark on criminal subculture through both the organisation of his gang and the popular phraseology left behind following his imprisonment. While Kain can be considered the first in a rogue’s gallery of popular Russian criminal individuals, he would be followed by another nefarious icon who appeared shortly after.

Sonka ‘Golden Hand’ In the words of a popular whisky commercial, there is plenty of evidence Sonka lived but very little that she was born. Although suggesting any date is fraught with inconsistencies, it appears most likely that Sheyndlya-Sura Solomoniak first emerged in a rural town outside Warsaw during 1846.27 It would not be until several years later, however, that people would become familiar with the future Sonka ‘Golden Hand’. This notoriety came when Sonka took a role at the head of

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the gang known as the ‘Jacks-of-Hearts’, a position which – echoing the rise of Vanka Kain – was very much unlike most of her female criminal contemporaries. Their name reportedly originated from Ponson du Terrail’s 1858 Rocambole adventure novel The Club of the Jacks-of-Hearts, which had been translated and received enthusiastically by the Russian literary audience, with the symbolism of gambling once more providing great affinity with criminal practices.28 Sonka would also be described by the visiting journalist Vlas Doroshevich as ‘Rocambole in a skirt’ following their meeting on Sakhalin, while the fictional adventurer would fleetingly appear in the title of hard labour prisoner Petr Iakubovich’s chapter ‘A Story out of Rocambole’, which told how an attempted poisoning was firstly blamed on a criminal gang member before it transpired that the entire deed had been arranged by an ‘intellectual’ who had sought both to take out a rival and improve his standing with the other prisoners.29 Adding, like Vanka, to the mythology that surrounded her early life, Sonka reportedly used a variety of aliases, married several times and often contradicted newspaper reports by lying about her age. Despite her frequent apprehension, authorities were routinely unable to collect sufficient evidence and she ultimately walked free. Following several convictions to exile and hard labour in Siberia, Sonka’s continued escapes and recidivism resulted in her eventual transportation to the foreboding tsarist penal colony of Sakhalin Island in 1888. Unlike Vanka and her more folkloric bandit precursors, Sonka’s activities were now distributed more widely and effectively through an explosion in the popular press, as writers such as Doroshevich voyeuristically transported their audience directly into areas of the city usually designated as off-limits.30 The literate metropolitan elite could now rely upon newspapers to report the gruesome details of criminal cases, extending from intricately mapping the crime scene and giving detailed descriptions of corpses to recording how hundreds of observers flocked to attend court proceedings of the most infamous cases, viewing the judicial process as if it were ‘an adventure story by [the writer] Ponson du Terrail’.31 Observations of Sonka on Sakhalin by both Doroshevich and Chekhov are contemporaneous with newspaper reports that often fixated upon the physical appearance of female criminals. In both cases, however, they were a far cry from accounts of Sonka when younger, which portrayed her in the mould of a classic femme fatale famed as the creator of a seductive robbery technique known as ‘Guten Morgen’ (‘Good Morning’). Disguised in an elegant high-society style, Sonka would enter a hotel room solely occupied by a man during the middle of the night and begin searching for money or jewellery. If her sleeping target awoke, Sonka would then start to undress as if in her own bedroom. Acting

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confused and embarrassed for her ‘mistake’, she would appeal to both the man’s leniency and his erotic attraction towards her, often leaving with the stolen goods or money almost immediately after sex.32 In this sense, Sonka’s crimes were reported in a similar fashion to those of Maria Tarnovskia, the so-called ‘Diva of Death’, who was suggested to have manipulated two male lovers to kill her fiancé for his life insurance policy and whose trial in Venice in 1910 was also erotically framed for an enthralled newspaper audience.33 Both visitors to Sakhalin focused on Sonka’s physical appearance, with Chekhov referring to her as gaunt, ageing and far removed from the apparent sorcery of her younger years, when she was able to ‘bewitch her gaolers’ with her looks.34 Doroshevich’s heavily gendered depiction also described how her ‘knowingly coquettishly curled and dyed hair’ was intended to create a more alluring and youthful impression (as if that were something to be held against her).35 Although he had previously acknowledged the influence of Cesare Lombroso in his wider writings, Doroshevich’s description of Sonka departed from the Italian criminologist’s emphasis on masculine traits, which he argued could be seen in the physiognomic composition of female offenders.36 Although far from emancipated in how Sonka was depicted as being patriarchally bound to a male cohabitant, Doroshevich portrayed her in a partly entrepreneurial role as the patron of multiple properties including an inn and kvas shop, singing cafe, gambling den, fairground-style carousels and dance schools in an area of the island designated for recently released prisoners who were unable to return to the mainland.37 Chekhov further added to this by suggesting that a number of serious crimes had been committed during a brief period when Sonka had escaped by dressing as a soldier. These incidents included the alleged murder of a shopkeeper and the theft of around 56,000 roubles from a Jewish exile.38 The more violent nature of these suggested crimes, in particular the possible murder of the shopkeeper, positions Sonka even further away from her association with ‘dame’s craft’, the traditional assumption that theft was the easiest, safest and most practical way into the criminal world for women, during the early part of her criminal career.39 Likewise, the calculated, financial motive behind the highly profitable robbery distances Sonka again from the more ‘hysterical’ crimes of passion that were often attributed to female offenders. A number of well-known cases during the same period included the ‘Queen of Stylish Hairdos’, Elka Zaz, suggested ringleader of a group of Odessan women known as the vitrioleuses who had gained notoriety in newspapers of the late Empire for throwing acid at their duplicitous husbands and lovers.40

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Further ways in which the descriptions of Vanka and Sonka intersect include the focus on them as representing the archetypal social bandit advocated by Hobsbawm.41 This can be seen in the way the fictional Sonka, although eventually apprehended, was greeted with rabid applause at her trial and arrived on Sakhalin Island already with the respect and admiration of fellow prisoners who had heard or read about her activities. Support from her peers and this status as a ‘celebrity’ criminal, despite her incarceration, was an image cultivated not only in pulp novels but also in a series of silent films in 1914–15, as the medium of cinema became an even more visceral way to feed the imagination of those intrigued with the criminal world.42 It goes without saying, however, that these fictional representations widely exaggerated Vanka and Sonka’s reputation as champions and defenders of the lower classes. Both figures provided ample material for this construction, however, defying their rural peasant backgrounds to rise through the ranks of the underworld, and were often aided in these endeavours by other non-state actors who protected them from the authorities as they regarded them as taking an ‘honourable’ stand against the tyranny and corruption of traditional, conservative forces.43 This can be seen most powerfully in Komarov’s Vanka through his attitude towards both his vengeful master Filatiev, who physically punished him for his repeated thefts and escape attempts, and the priest who, after performing his wedding ceremony, was humiliated by being dragged through the street with his hands tied behind his back and two bottles of vodka swinging from a rope around his neck.44 Despite this, there is little evidence that either would take pity on their victims regardless of their background, with one widely circulated exception being when Sonka was reported to have discovered one of her ‘Good Morning’ targets on the verge of suicide after gambling away money intended to pay for the treatment of his sick sister.45 While incidents like these certainly added to their mythologies, ultimately neither she nor Vanka were known for sharing their spoils with anyone unrelated to their criminal gang, seemingly a precursor to later criminal communal funds (often referred to as obshchak) in the Stalinist labour camps. It is their attitudes, rituals and practices which again highlight Vanka and Sonka’s enduring legacy within criminal spheres, certainly much more than the endings of their fictionalised accounts, which invariably leave them abandoned and alone. For future criminals who saw themselves as the rightful heirs of Vanka and Sonka, however, the isolating finality of late tsarist prison and exile was about to come to an end, and in its place came an opportunity for them to turn from their old ways and become ideal citizens in the postrevolutionary Soviet world.

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Fomka ‘Zhigan’ and the besprizorniki The turmoil and social upheaval of the events of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War led to a clear change in criminological and judicial practice. Tighter state control over publications and burgeoning cinematic productions now represented shifting approaches that placed more emphasis on societal conditions and rapid urbanisation than Lombrosian-influenced forms of primitive atavism. In particular, this could be seen in the rising prominence of pedagogical theories, which attempted to shape prisoners’ attitudes through participation in cultural-educational activities and embodying the collective work principle. In keeping with the early Soviet zeitgeist, this provided the main impetus behind Anton Makarenko’s canonical 1933 text Pedagogical Poem, which described the foundation and early years of the Gorky Commune near Kharkiv.46 Publication of the text was preceded by Makarenko’s input towards Nikolai Ekk’s Road to Life (1931), the first Soviet speaking film, which gained international acclaim alongside its integral use of the widespread ‘cinefication campaign’, which saw thousands of projectors rolled out across the countryside in an attempt to improve education levels.47 This prominence was gained despite the fact that, similar to other films of the 1920s which had received criticism for their perceived glorification of criminality and over-emphasis on sexuality, Road to Life featured several songs banned during the NEP and Cultural Revolution. Added to this, the commune was frequently compared to the squalor of an urban slum, some of which, like the infamous Moscow neighbourhood of Khitrovka, were in the process of being cleaned up by the regime.48 The main group of protagonists in both film and screenplay represented a small snapshot of the estimated 4.5 million juveniles displaced by the famine and widespread social fragmentation of the revolutionary and civil war period.49 Gangs of youths, commonly referred to as besprizorniki (homeless children), usually consisting of up to a dozen members but occasionally larger, were frequently reported during the 1920s. Some of the societal problems these groups presented were portrayed in the opening scene of Ekk’s film, which opens with an adult criminal named Fomka ‘Zhigan’ (criminal slang, at least during this period, for an authoritative figure) wearing a flat cap and smoking a rolled-up cigarette as a well-known criminal song can be heard playing softly in the background. The camera then focuses on two other characters, firstly the younger figure of Mustafa, introduced as the leader of the besprizorniki, who can be seen dealing a pack of playing cards to a number of other children on the street. Slightly further away from them stands the beguiling figure of Lyolka ‘The Moll’,

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older and well dressed in a stylish coat with fur trim. As passengers arriving on a train begin to cause a stir of excitement around the station, Lyolka moves to stand alongside a prim-looking, middle-aged woman carrying two cases and drops a crumpled ruble note at her feet. With Lyolka drawing the woman’s attention to the note, claiming that it must have fallen out from her pocket, one of the suitcases disappears from where it had previously been placed. Mustafa is then shown running off with the stolen case, which is dropped briefly beside Fomka before Lyolka, evidently his accomplice, picks it up and departs on a different train whilst a group of people continue to gather around the distressed woman. Perhaps due to the assistance of secret police operatives who were involved in the operation of the Gorky Commune, both film and book demonstrated an overlap between besprizorniki and adult criminal gangs, as in this opening scene. Similar to their elder counterparts, who often provided an unhealthy inspiration for many of their practices, these youth gangs displayed remarkable uniformity in terms of their hierarchical structure and behavioural rituals despite the long geographic distances between regions across the Soviet Union.50 This imitation and emulation of adult criminal practices is further reflected by how the adult term shpana was used to indicate an experienced, streetwise youth gang member. As discussed in the introduction, this label was popularly used in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s to refer to anyone thought to be a criminal recidivist, displaying little distinction between the specific crimes they specialised in or had been convicted for. Adoption of a term frequently used in adult penal spheres by youth gangs on the street also shows how social norms and rules of behaviour were often transmitted down through older, more experienced figures who had worked their way up through the ranks of the group.51 At the very top of the hierarchy could be found at least one leader. This was a position usually assumed by the oldest and physically strongest member, who made the most important decisions, took centre stage in enforcing internal discipline and at times demanded payment (which could also take the form of money, cigarettes etc.) from other members. Other positions further down the chain of command were also indicated through the gang’s use of klichki, which often mocked traits regarded as being particularly juvenile along with applying diminutive forms of female names to boys, including some who worked as prostitutes.52 With a steady flow of new recruits, groups were able to either retain or fight for territorial control over specific locations, often areas with a reputation as ‘criminal spaces’ such as market places, train stations and slums. These were, of course, often the very same places which the educated public had had such an

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interest in vicariously exploring through newspaper reports during the explosion of the boulevard press the previous century. Other important rituals practised by youth gangs included marking status upon their body through tattoos, demonstrated by a study of juveniles in one Moscow Labour Home in 1924 which recorded around a third of the 146 occupants as having at least one image.53 Groups also often had their own specific slang, which mostly related to the landscape of their specific geographical environment (for example areas or items specific to the train station) but also contained a number of terms inherited from adult criminals. Knowledge of this lexicon was often deployed as an initiation rite for new recruits, alongside their ability to withstand more physical tests such as beatings from other gang members (a process known as ‘starring up’ in young offenders’ institutions and prisons in the UK). Similar to their adult counterparts, this sometimes included a number of physical and sexual acts, yet keeping entry barriers high in this way helped to ensure that new recruits were serious about their membership. In order to ward off potential traitors and to decide between the quality of their prospects, these tasks also revolved around signs and symbols which only genuine or serious candidates could replicate. These were again often lifted directly from the specific social and cultural context of their immediate street-level environment, such as train stations and slums.54 As with Vanka Kain’s group of bandits, observers also noted that 1920s street gangs shared a communal fund that was divided among all members equally or according to the weight of their contribution to activities on behalf of the collective.55 While occasional leadership challenges could arise from within, decisions made by senior figures were usually met with widespread obedience. In the absence of a leader, because of their arrest or other circumstances dictating their absence, group cohesiveness often started to erode until a new candidate emerged. Reports stated that dominant members retained their position of authority by appropriating the best food portions and sometimes sexually abusing lower-ranked members. Norms relating to internal group discipline were also virtually identical to adult criminal factions, with loyalty considered the most respected attribute and betrayal regarded as the most serious infraction. Cheating at cards or failing to pay off debts were also viewed as serious breaches of the code of conduct. According to Alan Ball, the most cohesive groups were ones in which disenfranchisement and separation from mainstream society had psychologically materialised in members. When this happened, group boundaries became fully hardened, as could be seen through animosity towards anyone considered to be an ‘outsider’ (either those representing authority structures or others not

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regarded as part of the gang).56 This virtual cloning of behavioural practices of adult gangs by youth groups, and the representations delivered to the wider public by Nikolai Ekk and Anton Makarenko, highlight one of the challenges faced by the new regime as it targeted deviant groups for ideological realignment before their proposed reintegration back into the Soviet body politic. As the government continued to develop these pedagogical practices, many of the similarities between youth gangs and adult criminal spheres would continue to be seen through further popular images that related directly to showpiece penal labour infrastructure projects during the early 1930s.

Kostia and Murka Building upon some of the pedagogical concepts advocated by Makarenko, the rehabilitative practice of prisoner ‘re-forging’ (perekovka) became increasingly prominent in representations of adult criminality. In particular, this theory developed at the enormous White Sea–Baltic Canal project of the early 1930s.57 It became the title of the most popular inmate newspaper: prisoners were encouraged to submit their own re-forged stories on the pages within. As Julie Draskozcy has shown, however, some of the submissions could highlight an inverse trajectory in which criminal mentors replicated the role of the camp vospitatel’ (education officer) in the way they led the protagonists towards a life of crime.58 This transformative process was also reflected in the collectively written propaganda text History of the Construction by a 120-strong literary delegation led by the returning playwright Maxim Gorky. As in the aforementioned prisoner publication, biographies of former male and female criminals were recalled by the writers’ brigade in order to distinguish former attitudes towards crime from the prisoners’ new outlook on life following a combination of hard labour and cultural-educational activities.59 More accessible to the wider population than this text, however, was Nikolai Podogin’s 1934 play The Aristocrats.60 Podogin’s play was based on his visit to Belomor as part of the Gorky-led writers’ brigade and featured a criminal recidivist named Kostia as its lead character. The Aristocrats was received extremely favourably and declared the best play of the entire 1934–35 season; it was later adapted for the screen in Evgeny Cherviakov’s 1936 film The Prisoners, using wider materials collected by Podogin during his trip.61 The play’s main character, Kostia ‘The Captain’, was part of an ensemble of prisoners that included, amongst others, an engineer arrested for being part of

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an alleged circle of dissidents, religious figures, former nobility and the families of kulaks (‘rich peasants’). Alongside this kaleidoscope of backgrounds, Kostia was also joined by female prisoners sentenced for crimes similar to his own. This included a recidivist simply named ‘Tattooed Girl’ and his estranged criminal and suggested romantic partner, Sonya, with whom who he is reunited in the play’s opening scene. During the early scenes, Kostia is seen verbally and physically intimidating other prisoners, stealing, showing off his martial arts moves and insisting that they stake the young office clerk Margarita Ivanova in a card game. At the same time, similar activities are taking place in the female barracks where ‘Tattooed Girl’ can be seen teaching a young thief how to strike a person on the head while Sonya discussed her sexual abuse in an orphanage at the age of 14. As the story proceeds, Kostia engages in black-market activities with a woman living slightly outside of the camp selling moonshine liquor, and is also shown entering the female barracks with little difficulty, replicating how the theoretically zoned space could easily be negotiated in real life. Rather predictably, despite Kostia’s initial resistance, along with the disagreements this causes with Sonya, he eventually leads a work brigade on a rock-blasting expedition and ends the play giving a tearful, propaganda-laden speech as the first steamer passes through the canal lock.62 Although the title of ‘aristocrats’ was both playful and contemporaneous with other penal humour that looked to ridicule the desperate situation inmates found themselves in, the play itself offered a much watered-down view of criminal subculture.63 This was especially the case when it reached a published format, as it was deemed that some of the songs were not appropriate.64 Despite this, Kostia had already become a stock figure in ‘official’ narratives of the canal project, appearing complete with his accordion on the front cover of the 1933 Belomor-themed issue of the magazine USSR in Construction.65 Aside from the play and the pages of official publications, the name Kostia also features regularly throughout the genre of blatnaya pesnya (‘criminal songs’), partly due to the success of an unrelated earlier ditty entitled ‘Kostia-the-Sailor’.66 Similar to the relationship between Kostia and Sonya in Podogin’s play, song variants featuring his name often paired him alongside a female accomplice named Murka. In fact, the legendary figure of Murka grew so much that her name eventually replaced the original title of the song ‘On the Way “to Work” – I Wanted to Drink’. In this instance, the euphemism ‘to work’ referred to someone on their way to carry out a crime and was regularly used in criminal and penal slang from the same period (and also beyond). Despite slightly different variations of the song, they all begin by describing gangs travelling towards the criminal hub of Odessa. The popularity

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of the tune lasted well into the period of the Stalinist labour camps, as recalled by camp employee Fyodor Mochulsky during his transportation to Pechorlag in 1940, when it was sung by the prisoners in the hold of his steamer ship.67 In all versions of the song, the main narrative arc remained the same in portraying Murka as cunning, brave and feared amongst her peers, with one version suggesting that her success could be measured by the quality of the leather shoes she was able to purchase from the state-run department store Torgsin. At the beginning of the song, Murka was not portrayed in a patriarchal role that saw her tied to a stronger male figure such as Vanka’s enslaved wife or Sonka with her co-habitant on Sakhalin Island, but was instead represented as the leader of a gang of professional bandits, making the song unique in the entire repertoire of criminal songs in describing the activities of a prolific female. During the course of the song, however, the balance of the gender roles tilts back on its axis as it is revealed that Murka had violated the criminal code and was killed as punishment.68 The original version of the song, which appeared before the revolutions of 1917, was not linked with any specific location, instead telling a more basic tale of adultery and immediate retribution. The variants that appeared after the revolutions, however, were more specifically embedded in the socio-political context of the new Soviet state. The development of these later versions also reflected a growth in female crime following the revolutions, something criminologists viewed as a wholly progressive trend as they were emancipated and participating in areas usually dominated by men.69 These later songs also described how, after a series of failures, the criminal gang became suspicious of Murka and discovered that she had indeed become an informant for the authorities. In the case of Moscow this was the Criminal Investigation Department (MUR) and in the Odessan version the local emergency committee, Gubcheka. Although the original adulterous version described how Murka was spotted dancing with a ‘young dandy’, later versions saw her now in a restaurant hiding a revolver under her long leather jacket. This was, of course, an enormous giveaway that she was an operative for the secret police. Following this deception, the gang decreed that Murka had put their entire enterprise at risk and broken the main tenet of the criminal/prisoner code. It was subsequently decided that she should, therefore, receive the most severe of punishments, as demonstrated in the song’s final stanza: Hello my Murka, hello, my dear Hello, my Murka, and adieu. You betrayed our malina (criminal den), And for that you get the bullet.70

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The relationship between male and female criminals, and how their traditional roles continued to be crystallised in penal folklore, continues to be seen in another popular song entitled ‘Music is Playing in the Moldavanka’.71 By the turn of the century the Odessan suburb of Moldavanka had developed an unsavoury reputation on account of its ‘dark alleys, filthy streets, crumbling buildings and violence’.72 While the song itself was based on an older prototype, association with the White Sea–Baltic Canal project dates the most popular version to its construction during the early 1930s.73 In most instances, the song begins with revelry in an Odessan beer hall as a local crime boss squanders his recent profits and berates the incompetence of those around him. Suddenly he fondly remembers the skilled pickpocket Kolka, who had been incarcerated at the canal site, and decides to enlist a female accomplice with the task of helping him escape. Murka arrives at the labour site to find that Kolka is wearing the patch of a ‘shock-worker’ and has no desire to return to his former life.74 As a result of his collusion with the authorities, therefore breaking one of the main commandments of the prisoner/ criminal code, the underworld boss orders that Kolka should be killed immediately. Despite Murka’s protestations, the song ends with a sombre silence hanging over the Moldavanka as it is revealed Kolka was murdered the same day by two fellow prisoners while travelling between prisoner barracks and the work site. Commentators have previously selected verses from the song to highlight elements of a re-forged story in the pickpocket Kolka’s biography and focus on the state-led social engineering drive to re-educate prisoners. However, the central locus of the song is the power imbalance in the relationship between low-ranking criminals, such as pickpockets and female accomplices, and those above them. Both ‘Music is Playing in the Moldavanka’ and ‘Murka’ (in its most popular forms) describe a straightforward but nevertheless ultimately deadly transgression of the criminal code, whereby the gang suffers the betrayal of one of its members. This is further apparent in two stanzas appended to a later version of the song which describe how the female accomplice was not only proud of the former pickpocket Kolka but had herself also been powerfully affected by the rehabilitative lesson of the canal project. After threatening to turn the gang in to the authorities if they punish Kolka, a decision is made to murder Murka alongside him: Then rose Murka, rose and said: ‘Don’t touch him or I will snitch. I realised the meaning of the canal, It is for this I am proud of Kolka.’

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Then three urki left the malina And put the ‘bitch’ Murka ‘under the fence’ [pod zabor]. ‘Die, snake, before you snitch, Die, Murka or I am not a thief.’75

As Donald Clemmer has shown in his work on penal institutions in the US, the fact that prisoner songs often retain the same core characteristics helps to demonstrate their strength, often meaning that they have the potential to affect prisoner behaviour more than a speech from the authorities (who they tend to ignore as much as they can). Not only do these songs help preserve prison traditions but they act as ‘carriers of culture’ that can control the thoughts and, consequently, attitudes of inmates. In the same sense as earlier folkloric stories, these songs help illustrate social processes in the penal and criminal environment and act as a means of illicit control by holding up informal traits held in esteem by the majority of inmates and setting up standards of behaviour.76 This is further exemplified in another song prominently featuring two professional criminals. Based on the plot of a poem describing a pair of Russian grenadiers captured in France during the Napoleonic Wars, ‘Two Urkas Left a Soviet Klichmana [penalty isolator]’ simply changed the soldiers to criminals and adjusted the societal context to suit the NEP period.77 The song was recalled by both Boris Glubokovsky and his fellow Solovki inmate Boris Shiryaev.78 Although their versions slightly changed, the core message remained although that their ‘criminal den’ had been compromised, the recidivists were willing to die before they gave themselves up to the authorities: My loyal comrade, my nice comrade! Bury my body at the ban [public place often inhabited by criminals].79 Let the feeble-hearted authorities laugh, I died a heroic criminal.80

Conclusion The continued popularity of these songs serves to highlight how loyalty and defiance, two of the most important components of the criminal/prisoner code, were preserved in inmate subculture. They also help show that, although the 1917 revolutions marked a clear shift in how popular representations were delivered to their audience, penal and criminal norms continued to be circulated by oral traditions. These folkways continued to communicate understanding of

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the authorities and the actions that should be taken against them not only across a vast number of different penal institutions but also throughout wider criminal society. While some aspects of these practices were intended to display the traditional hallmarks of violent masculinity, well-known ‘celebrity’ figures also provided iconic cultural markers for the writing of later prisoners. This hauntology can be seen through the continued use of Vanka’s phrases in the ethnographic writings of Maksimov. The activities of Sonka appeared in a memoir by the Gulag prisoner Mikhail Dyomin, where they were recalled by Margo ‘The Queen’. Margo was herself not only the strong matriarch of a Rostov malina but part of a wider group whose activities covered the entire North Caucasus.81 Komarov’s writings on Vanka Kain also provide one of the earliest compilations of criminal songs, with many included across the various different versions.82 One of these songs was later replicated by the former Solokvi prisoner Dmitry Likhachev and suggested the need for criminals to be braver and more audacious than anyone who had come before.83Although the iniquities of the celebrity criminals Sonka and Vanka are far removed from many of the nameless ‘unfortunates’ who inhabited the world of late imperial penality, they became important prototypes for the later creation of fictional legends such as Murka and Kostia. These elements of criminal subculture have been overlooked in previous scholarship in favour of focusing on either the ideologically driven re-forged narratives or the Jewish influences behind the origins of the song (especially given their association with Odessa). What stands out the most from the narrative is the prominence of principles widely accepted throughout the criminal world such as not reporting on fellow criminals, recognised even by those who break this rule, and defiance against the authorities, regardless of death being the only viable alternative to capture. As we will see, these would also be key components of the code between recidivists in the Stalinist labour camps. This shows that, while there is no doubt that Vanka and Sonka will continue to retain their lustre as the king and queen, they also help to set down important markers as to the concrete rules that governed the behaviour of those inside penality. It is to the development of the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s and subsequent Gulag apparatus that we must turn next, to see how the actions of criminal recidivists were recorded by memoirists and in prisoner newspapers. This will help highlight the importance of the transportation process in shaping penal hierarchies and defining power relations even before inmates arrived at forced labour camps.

2

Etap: The shaping of prisoner relations

Elena Glinka’s recollections of her transfer to the enormous Kolyma camp complex in the early 1950s are undoubtedly amongst the most harrowing in the entire canon of testimony by former Gulag prisoners. Without question, this is a result of Glinka’s intensely vivid depiction of a two-day sexual assault that took place whilst prisoners were contained outside the town hall in a tiny Siberian fishing village named Bugurchan. Glinka’s female prisoner brigade was in the process of being moved eastward towards the penal capital of Magadan during a time when the overall population of the Gulag was approaching its peak of around 2.5 million in the years leading up to Stalin’s death in 1953. Although the text itself is written in the third person, it has been widely recognised that Glinka, a prisoner for six years during the exact same period, placed herself into the story as the ‘student from Leningrad’ who was abducted and repeatedly raped during proceedings. Not only did the darkly unnerving euphemism ‘Kolyma Tram’ become the title of Glinka’s short essay but it would also enter the daily language of camp life, joining other phrases such as ‘in chorus’ in referring to incidents of gang rape.1 This not only demonstrates the abhorrent sado-masochism prevalent throughout Gulag slang but also provides a further indication of the power imbalances that existed between different groups of inmates. While wider memoir accounts regularly point, quite correctly, to mass groups of criminal recidivists as being both architects and initiators of mass sexual atrocities, in this instance the arrival of a diverse group of males from right across the rural district demonstrates that it was not only imprisoned social marginals who were able to abuse the power imbalance of the women’s carceral status. One of the many deeply concerning facets of Glinka’s account is the way seditious rumours circulated that female prisoners had been left under what was considered to be minimal surveillance or that which could otherwise be manipulated, showing how quickly information could spread across the largely unpopulated expanse. Glinka was clear that almost all the men who arrived had ‘prison pasts’ of some description, suggesting that they had previously acquired 39

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insights into inmate subculture and therefore understood the potential opportunites this situation presented for nefarious activity. According to Glinka, the ramshackle group that arrived included geologists, fishermen, fur trappers and the party supervisor of a group of miners. These were all roles of economic and social importance in the rural peninsula and a far cry from other memoir accounts which, as we will see, almost unequivocally stated the central involvement of criminal recidivists in incidents of sexual violence. The horrifying events described by Glinka were no doubt partly aided by the remoteness and lack of adequate facilities during their temporary layover in an isolated coastal pocket, extreme even in comparison with other temporary transit sites. Nevertheless, the arrival of the diverse male group reinforces observations made by Alan Barenberg and Wilson Bell, who have suggested how Gulag society was far from being a ‘closed’ universe and porous boundaries could often and easily be negotiated by non-prisoners from the surrounding areas.2 Traffic flowing into and within the camps most frequently occurred in the guise of black-market activity, as satirised in Podogin’s The Aristocrats through Kostia’s attempts to secure illicit moonshine.3 In Glinka’s example, however, it was prisoner folklore that provided the relevant currency to facilitate interaction between prisoners and non-prisoners, with the recently arrived men singing the lyrics to ‘Vladmir Tsentral’ (named after the infamous prison of the same name) in response to songs from amongst the female brigade. Glinka’s account also confirms observations made by other memoirists in describing regular fraternisation between guards and prisoners, who, on this occasion, exchanged handcrafted pouches for loose tea and tobacco which could be used to brew chifir, a strong tea with narcotic properties that was commonplace throughout the camp system. Alongside the exchange of material goods and transmission of oral penal folklore, Glinka’s account also offers an insight into how power relations functioned internally within the prisoner brigade, which consisted mainly of those arrested for workplace crimes and other minor transgressions. These prisoners, commonly referred to as bytovichki, were often incarcerated for committing what were known as ‘everyday life’ crimes. As Steven Barnes has shown, this disproportionately large group of prisoners did not fit comfortably into either side of the usual political/criminal divide and their crimes included such seemingly trivial misdemeanours as stealing minimal amounts of produce from a collective farm or repeatedly arriving late for work in a factory.4 It is interesting to note how Glinka considered that the experience of incarceration had turned these prisoners into the ‘genuine article’, and that they only embraced

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more hardened forms of criminality after their rejection from mainstream Soviet society. There also appears to be a further fracturing within Glinka’s recollections of the criminal recidivists, who were referred to using the slang term zhuchki (‘bugs’). This division was seemingly based on the length and type of prisoner sentences, with ‘short-term bugs’ described as being preoccupied with doing their time and avoiding any undue attention and only the ‘long-term bugs’ reacting to the attempts from the men to initiate contact. It is entirely plausible, and therefore worthy of consideration, that the prisoners in question may have openly characterised themselves as zhuchki or over time appropriated this infestation metaphor to represent their deviant identity, positioning themselves even more firmly against societal norms in the same sense as Howard Becker’s classical interpretation of outsiders.5 In this case, however, it would appear more likely that the term was first deployed in a pejorative manner towards them by other prisoners or camp staff. This reflects Adi Kuntsman’s suggestion that the demonisation of other inmates, most frequently those from a lower social background and with a real or assumed criminal background, was a regular feature of memoir accounts, which were often written by those from among the intelligentsia.6 Glinka’s additional use of the epithet ‘pitiful creatures’, a descripton of criminal recidivists also used by a number of other Gulag memoirists, would also serve to further highlight this point.7 What Glinka’s account of transportation demonstrates particularly sharply is that those who had prior first-hand knowledge of the punitive system and its processes, or who had acquired this information or speculation through peer networks, responded differently to the various stages of the carceral journey. The process of etap – which is how penal transportation continues to be referred to in both official bureaucratic language and prisoner slang  – is notable for demonstrating that certain groups of prisoners manipulated the lack of surveillance from the authorities to gain hegemony over others.8 Endemic structural deficiencies, such as abhorrent sanitary conditions, regular overcrowding and the lack of adequate nutrition, were often accompanied with the persistent threat of having food or clothing stolen by other inmates.9 Theft of property was commonly preceded or even accompanied by verbal intimidation, implying that physical harm would quickly follow if any resistance was made, techniques that were used to secure the least uncomfortable places on the floor or bed boards. At the most extreme end of the wide range of verbal and physical threats surrounding prisoners were sexual violence and serious physical assault, reports of which were circulated throughout the camp system and psychologically affected even those who had

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survived their journeys relatively unscathed. Although sexual violence did not take place on every vehicle and stage of penal transportation, these atrocities, of course, should not be forgotten, and have been embedded into Gulag historiography, where they remain powerful symbols of both the punitive system and the broader nature of the Stalinist regime. That these atrocities often happened in the liminal, temporary spaces of etap was no coincidence, as journeys were often dominated by criminal recidivists. Because these represented not only the most physically intimidating prisoners but also the most likely to manipulate the lack of surveillance for their own nefarious benefits, this should come as little surprise. However, the behavioural rituals demonstrated while locked away inside the murky, dark holds of steamer ships or crammed onto the foul-smelling floors and bunks of train wagons became especially important for developing prisoner hierarchies which would shape power relations and daily life in the Stalinist labour camps. It is in this sense that a chapter on the experience of prisoner transportation provides a vital prelude to the hegemony of criminal recidivists throughout the remainder of the book.

Na etap (‘during prisoner transportation’) Given the soaring numbers of incarcerations from the mid-1930s onwards, and the camps’ regular ‘revolving door’ policy, Gulag authorities were responsible for transferring millions of prisoners across the furthest geographical reaches of the Soviet Union.10 With each new construction project or resource drive throughout the 1930s, then the unfolding of war following Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet punitive apparatus became more adaptable to external events than its tsarist predecessor. While, as Judy Pallot has suggested, the overall system was far from being fixed in place, the growth of larger camp complexes such as Vorkutlag and Karlag brought with it the development of a network embedded within the main Gulag apparatus which had a degree of permanence.11 This is particularly the case with regard to showpiece institutions such as the Solovki camp in the 1920s and the Kolyma camp complex which grew the following decade, about both of which, like prisons such as Pentonville in the UK, enough was known or speculated in wider society for prisoners to have preconceived notions, wrongly or rightly, of what to expect even before they arrived. The development of transport links in a highly irregular manner, with those stationed on the ground struggling to cope with the influx of human flotsam that began to be sent to them, particularly during the purge years, meant that they

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were operated and maintained in a similarly ad hoc way as other areas of the Gulag system. The sterile bureaucratic documents regarding the transport system, as far as they do exist, often do not reflect the dystopian reality on the ground. Even though some of the more important transit stations, such as Kem’ and Vanino (which was so well known it had a prisoner song about it), can clearly be considered part of the more permanent penal exoskeleton, the various arteries that flowed to and from these points helped circulate prisoners to a wide range of detention institutions. As discussed in the introduction, this grew with the development of the system in the 1930s to include central prisons, corrective labour camps, corrective labour colonies, special settlements, scientific camps and, following the Second World War, special camps and the reinvention of former tsarist practices such as exile and katorga (hard labour). This quintessentially modern desire to categorise and dispatch prisoners, however, was fused with a continuation of tried and tested methods from late imperial exile and hard labour, as inmates reached their destination using a similar panoply of vehicles, with some even completing their journeys on foot as convicts had over a hundred years earlier. This can be seen in the account of the Gulag employee Fyodor Mochulsky, who recalls how, despite some inmates still being dressed in their normal civilian clothes in the freezing October temperatures, they were forced to walk for 18 days to Pechorlag after their steamer ship (also containing their winter clothing and food supplies) was stuck in ice on the Pechora River.12 With the authorities continuing to use the same types of vehicle to discipline their mobile subjects, many prisoners understood the transportation process through the recognition of deeply rooted historically and culturally specific symbols, such as the iconic wagons initiated by, and subsequently named after, the ruthless late imperial prime minister Pyotr Stolypin.13 Given the absence of verbal communication from the authorities, and with the lack sometimes even of windows to help speculate (as many still did) where they might be headed, prisoners relied on the audible language of confinement, such as dogs barking and armed guards shouting orders, to try to make sense of the symbolic rituals that now marked them as being disenfranchised.14 While the most extreme horrors of transportation, such as Glinka’s account, have become important and lasting metonyms, scholarly works have retained a tendency to separate journeys undertaken by prisoners from how social relations developed upon arrival in the camps. Rather than only tentatively explaining transportation as one of the ‘excesses’ of the penal system, Pallot, Piacentini and Moran have argued that it formed a vital component of a much larger process which began during arrest and interrogation. Regularly withholding the moment

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and location of departure from prisoners, sometimes only slowly revealing this information during the multiple stages of the journey itself, the method of taking long and arduous indirect routes (such as circumnavigating Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Okhotsk) and extending the entire process even further by forcing inmates to undertake long stays in (sometimes temporary) transit stations with vastly inadequate welfare facilities meant that most prisoners had little time to construct and sustain agency before their arrival in more permanent surroundings. Regardless of their differing background, 49ers faced many of the same disciplining sensibilities and ‘pains of imprisonment’ as other prisoners, such as the physical and psychological dislocation of long journeys away from family or other types of support networks, often for the first time, and the fear and uncertainty of what awaited them upon arrival. Regardless of class, gender, ethnicity or which article of the criminal code inmates were sentenced under, there remained a large degree of (mis)fortune dictating who you travelled alongside and whether you could avoid some of the blatant violations perpetrated by officials (who, at times, tried to justify their actions by arguing that some of these breaches were a response to contain the behaviour of the inmates) on these journeys. The process of transportation is of vital importance for this study of criminal subculture, as it often marks the point at which recidivists are depicted by memoirists for the first time, having often been held separately during the arrest and integration process. As will be explored in later chapters, these initial meetings would become crucial for some in developing coping strategies and expanding their peer networks in ways that would be vital in determining whether or not they survived the camp system.15 Although transportation processes in the Stalinist Gulag were markedly different from what had come before 1917 in the sense that inmates from different backgrounds were now usually mixed together at an early stage of the punitive arc rather than being separated throughout the entire journey, the spectacle of catching a glimpse of criminal inmates was described by those who had experienced late imperial penality. The political prisoner Petr Iakubovich recalled how, although he was kept apart from other prisoners during his voyage down the Kama River in western Siberia, a tiny opening in the tarpaulin sheet allowed him a peek into the ‘mysterious world’ that was occupied by ‘modernday Stenka Razins’ (the leader of a notorious Cossack uprising in the seventeenth century). As he peered in at their half-shaven heads, one of the late imperial methods of demarcating incarcerated status, a prisoner wise to this voyeurism attempted to poke at his eye, leading Iakubovich to ponder his ‘first

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disappointment’ with the ‘inexplicable cruelty’ of his fellow convicts.16 While better-known accounts of late imperial penality, mostly written by journalists and ethnographers rather than former prisoners, contain similar descriptions to those given by Iakubovich, Sarah Badcock’s rigorous examination of eastern Siberian penality highlights that, although things may have differed in other regions, the division between political and criminal in that region was systematically eroded after the attempted revolution in 1905 and they now were incarcerated side by side as a matter of course.17 Despite the differing treatment given to prisoners incarcerated for political crimes, which often gave an eerie, almost tranquil feel to retrospective depictions of their voyages, a continuity of penal symbols persisted across the 1917 boundary and into the formation of the Gulag apparatus. This is most prominently the case in regard to use of the notorious Stolypin wagons, ordinary train carriages that had been adapted to house prisoners. These wagons could be attached to passenger trains or linked together to create a long, snaking vehicle of their own. Inside the carriage, prisoners were expected to rest on tiers of bed bunks behind a cage-like steel netting that ran down the middle of the carriage from floor to ceiling so that guards could walk down the middle and keep an eye on them. The aesthetic of this layout led Solzhenitsyn, using similar metaphors to Glinka, to describe the wagons as being menageries that contained ‘wild’ and ‘pitiful’ creatures. Solzhenitsyn further suggested that while Gulag authorities were not ‘often responsible’ for the deliberate transfusion of criminals and politicals in a provocative manner, a shortage of vehicles meant that this happened regardless. Furthermore, Solzhenitsyn would also compare the situation faced in the wagons by politicals to how Jesus had been crucified between two thieves after being deceived by Pontius Pilate.18 The biblical imagery here is again particularly important in showing how Solzhenitsyn clearly saw political prisoners as religious martyrs, compared to those from a criminal background whose plight was undeserving of sympathy. Solzhenitsyn also stated how the highly coveted upper bunks were available to be won through fighting or had already been ‘reserved’ for authoritative criminals, showing again the importance of securing the most comfortable positions in order to enhance control over local territory and improve one’s chances of survival. The difference in the situation facing female convicts, drawn from the experience of V. A. Korneyeva’s transportation to the camps, also featured in Solzhenitsyn’s landmark opus The Gulag Archipelago. During Korneyeva’s journey, a group of younger female prisoners reportedly arrested for dating ‘foreigners’ were able to convince the guards to move a handful of older women

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sentenced for their religious beliefs into one of the wagon’s more spacious punishment cells. Although, on this occasion, Solzhenitsyn suggested that it was the ‘attractive appearance’ rather than the moral aspects of their argument which appealed most to the guards, it gives some indication of how the manipulation of agency and use of sexuality could make the experience of penal transportation a fraction less inhospitable or offer a brief respite from some of its many dangers.19 Similar strategies were also apparent in Margarete Buber-Neumann’s recollections of her transfer from Moscow’s central prison Butyrka to a train station in 1939. Recalling the intense smell and claustrophobia, Buber-Neumann also used a similar metaphor in describing how male and female prisoners were housed together in the wagon as if they were animals in a ‘pet shop’. Before she even entered the vehicle, Buber-Neumann was told by a more experienced prisoner named Nadia not to introduce herself as a political but as a ‘prostitute or thief ’, as other prisoners would be more likely to make room for her on the bunks. This demonstrates a subtle but crucial distinction with regard to how male and female sexual roles were looked at differently in prisoner society (see the later discussion of male prostitution), and also how inmates were able to navigate their way through Gulag society by editing their biographies to create new carceral identities.20 The following day, Buber-Neumann and her new acquaintances were all herded onto a Stolypin wagon which would take them to a temporary transit prison before they discovered on the following train, while surrounded by ‘brutal types’ using foul language and rumoured to have syphilis, that they were headed to the Karlag camp complex in Kazakhstan. Benefiting from advice given by those who already had first-hand knowledge of etap was also apparent in the experience of Dmitry Likhachev, imprisoned on Solovki in the late 1920s for being part of an alleged counter-revolutionary group named ‘the Space Academy of Sciences’ (Kosmicheskaia akademiia nauk).21 Detained for six months in Leningrad’s central Shpalernaya prison, Likhachev was first transferred by Stolypin wagon to the Kem’ transit camp deep in the autonomous Karelian Republic.22 Unlike Solzhenitsyn and many others, Likhachev described his particular wagon as being ‘relatively comfortable’ and recalled minimal signs of dislocation by stating that the primary concern between him and his cellmates, who had developed a close bond during their time together in Shpalernaya, was whether they would be separated upon arrival at the labour camp. After they had arrived on the banks of the White Sea for the crossing, however, apprehension about the next phase of the journey began to heighten, as prisoners were ordered out of the wagons and a violent kick from an armed guard drew blood from Likhachev’s face.

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The vicious nature of this violation was central to Likhachev’s immediate understanding of the difference, in the words of the authorities which boomed around the archipelago, between Soviet and Solovki power (the suggested independence from central authority in Moscow). Another departure from the formal procedures they had become accustomed to at Shpalernaya soon occurred, as Likhachev and his compadres were forced to remain standing upright in the barracks all night, as the bunks had already been occupied by the 49ers. Within this group, Likhachev would also describe the presence of a number of younger inmates who were seemingly suffering from disease and malnutrition. Referring to them as vshivki (‘lice’), Likhachev further recalled how camp authorities no longer recognised these prisoners as having formal status.23 In more practical terms, this meant that they were unable to fulfil work duties and therefore receive rations, being forced to live on scraps and the understandably infrequent charity of other inmates. The plight facing vshivki on Solovki in the late 1920s is reminiscent of how some later Gulag inmates became widely referred to as dohodyagi (‘goners’), who often faced early release in an attempt to camouflage camp mortality rates.24 On the following morning of Likhachev’s journey, as convicts descended into the hold of the cargo ship Gleb Boyki, named after a secret police officer, he would follow the advice of a recidivist named Ovchishnikov and climb aboard the vessel at a late stage. This advice from the burglar, which allowed Likhachev to remain on a raised platform rather than deep down in the depths of the hold, arguably saved his life, as a number of dead bodies were seen being removed after the ship had docked as a result of severe overcrowding.25 Likhachev later reminisced about how he had been ‘saved’ by Ovchishnikov, who was being sent to Solovki for a second time after making a daring escape to reconcile with his ‘Maria’ in Leningrad. In this instance, it appears that ‘Maria’ did not necessarily refer directly to the given name of Ovchishnikov’s partner but was one of the commonly used fictional constructs to depict an idealised female accomplice or lover. Similar symbols, often taking the form of cats, also became seemingly ubiquitous throughout criminal tattoos.26 Likhachev’s description of the precarious nature of the journey from the transit point at Kem’ in the 1920s was also described by his fellow inmate Glubokovsky, who spectrally depicted how ‘no-one could have foreseen how vicious and violent life (could be) while crossing the waters in the bowels of the Gleb Bokii’.27 An article from the February–March 1930 edition of the camp newspaper Solovetsky Island also offers further insights into the collective behaviour of 49ers during the voyage.28 Written by an author referred to solely by the initials

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‘I. K.’, the piece was entitled ‘During Penal Transportation’ (‘Na Etap’) and raised a number of problems which some inmates had in protecting their belongings after boarding the ship. The author drew from their own personal experience of being forced to shuffle nervously through a crowd of ‘curious’ recidivists towards the perceived sanctuary of the waiting room. Corroborating wider memoirs which also recalled the various imitation techniques used by the 49ers, I. K. suggested that their own personal, and very obvious, vulnerability provoked a lively response from the crowd. Rubbing their hands together with apparent glee while arranging themselves into two rows, the 49ers forced the target of their hostility to walk through what was essentially a modified version of a medieval gauntlet. According to I. K., all new prisoners were forced to undergo this humiliating and threatening ritual, known amongst inmates as the ‘gate of shpana’.29 Recalling their own individual feeling of helplessness, I. K. admitted that they had been completely unprepared for this situation and, like other inexperienced prisoners, resorted to hastily clinging onto their possessions and focusing on surviving the ordeal relatively unscathed. In I. K.’s case, this was achieved by walking at a more frantic pace, a decision that originally seemed to aggravate the situation, as it provoked excited responses from the 49ers who saw that their intimidating tactics were having the desired effect. Nevertheless, and as we will see was the case throughout later Gulag society, especially in the post-Second World War camps after the percentage of inmates with military experience had increased, I. K. stated that the sheer physical size of some prisoners could prove to be effective in warding off potential threats and that spontaneous groups would form around the more ‘athletic’ prisoners. This would in turn provide a degree of collective security for the more uninitiated inmates as the 49ers were now forced to estimate the power of resistance of their newly protected targets before often reluctantly stepping aside, although they would still (of course) continue to direct verbal threats towards them.30 Although the subject is not discussed by Glubokovsky or in the article by I. K., both of whom had to pass official camp censors, one Solovki escapee, Emelian Solovev, described darker incidents that occurred during transportation to the archipelago, as he recalled how guards forced female prisoners recently released from isolation to drink vodka before sexually assaulting them.31 While these accounts prove almost impossible to verify, many other memoirists provided similar details of sexual abuse towards prisoners. Similar themes to Glinka and Solovev continued in Elinor Lipper’s description of her journey to Kolyma as one of 500 female prisoners out of an estimated 7,000 who were packed into the

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freighter Dalstroi in the late 1930s. Recalling how a number of prisoners attempted to take their own lives as the boat passed through the Strait of Tartary, Lipper also described how male recidivists broke through the dividing wall into the female hold. As they proceeded to sexually assault the women with no retribution from the authorities, the group also fatally stabbed a number of male prisoners who attempted to take a stand against their behaviour. The only form of retaliation appeared to come from amongst the group, when one of the assailants stabbed another for ‘appropriating’ a female inmate apparently marked for him. Lipper observed these scenes while packed tightly together on the hold floor, when she and a number of other women were bombarded with fish heads, entrails and vomit from male prisoners on the planks above. From this position, Lipper was also able to observe the guards taking food rations as bribes, both to allow the criminals to continue their unabated murderous activities and also to have female inmates earmarked for themselves.32 Even prisoners who were not witness to these barbaric scenes remained psychologically impacted by them through stories that circulated throughout the camp system. Ginzburg described her own journey on board the Dzhurma to Magadan in August 1939 as being ‘one of the more uneventful ones’, suggesting that this was very much a rarity. However, she did recall that it was noteworthy for providing her first meeting with the ‘real, hardened’ female recidivists with whom she would serve out her time in Kolyma. As this group of recidivists piled down the gangways and ladders into the hold, Ginzburg recalled their activities in the manner of a ‘mongrel horde’ whose semi-naked, tattooed bodies represented ‘the dregs of the criminal world’, with the memoirist describing them as murderous, sadistic perverts.33 Convinced that she had been abandoned to a crowd of psychiatric patients, Ginzburg described the lack of surveillance from the guards and used further animal metaphors to describe her fellow passengers as ‘wild beasts’ whose only law was that of the jungle. In this instance, and similarly to I. K.’s article on the journey to Solovki during the 1920s, Ginzburg was rescued by a physically imposing prisoner. It later transpired that her protector Anya was a starosta (an elected prisoner ‘elder’), who used a combination of verbal threats and actual violence to command the attention of the attackers, striking one in the face and forcing the others into returning the food and clothes they had stolen.34 Ginzburg would also describe the spread of ‘ominous rumours’ that haunted voyages on the Dzhurma, including tales of high winds, floods, fires, guards opening fire at mutinous prisoners and her own disgust that the dead had been thrown overboard without even having their bodies shrouded in sacks. One of

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Ginzburg’s fellow prisoners, who travelled on the same vessel only two weeks later, described how a fire gave several ‘male criminals’ the opportunity to manipulate the situation and try to escape from the ship. After the potential escapees were hosed down and contained in a corner of the hold, authorities allegedly then ‘forgot about’ both the prisoners and the running hoses, leaving the water to reach boiling point and scald them alive.35 Unsurprisingly, no deaths were confirmed in official documents yet this account is partially corroborated by newspaper reports which suggested that, in late August 1939, Dzhurma had been guided into Nagaevo by the flagship of the Gulag fleet Felix Dzerzhinsky (named after the notorious head of the secret services) with the fire still ablaze.36 Descriptions of criminal recidivists in this apocalyptic fashion can be found amongst Karlo Stanjer’s recollections of his transfer in 1939 from Solovki (which during his time had been stripped considerably from its previous size in the 1920s and was used mainly to incarcerate a small number of political prisoners) to a camp near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. Despite his ship the Budyonny, this time named after a famous Russian military commander, carrying an estimated 4,000 prisoners, the toilet barrels were not emptied for several days until the protesting convicts were finally given permission to tip them into the sea in the same fashion as the lifeless corpses who were thrown overboard. As the ship docked in Murmansk, Stanjer described the onset of a ‘new plague’ as a further 300 ‘criminal convicts’ were loaded into the ship’s hold, which was already stretched well beyond its capacity. According to Stanjer, the sheer psychological and physical fatigue of the journey so far meant that the politicals were unable to form any resistance against the new arrivals, some of whom were armed with makeshift knives. With Stanjer suggesting that the guards stationed outside the hold deliberately looked away in tacit and cowardly compliance, a mounting challenge from amongst the other prisoners alongside a lack of goods to steal meant that the attack appeared to have stuttered to a halt. Stanjer would later discover that some ‘experienced burglars’ amongst the group had in fact prised their way into a storage room beneath the wooden floor where they helped themselves to milk, cookies and chocolate.37 This argument regarding the role of the authorities as perpetrators is made by a number of memoirists but, for obvious reasons, is extremely difficult to trace in documentary evidence. Beyond sifting through case-by-case disciplinary proceedings, it is hard to quantify what Pallot, in a more contemporary context, describes as prison guards’ ‘established rules of behaviour’ which would tell us more about their attitudes toward prisoners.38 Certainly, the testimony of Fyodor Mochulsky, a specialist assigned to a camp near Vorkuta, can give us a partial insight into the etap process through the eyes

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of a camp employee. Mochulsky’s memoir suggested that his journey to Pechorlag in 1940 was the first time that he been ‘up close’ with prisoners and he described how he had to be accompanied by an armed guard in order to go to the bathroom, which was located on the top deck and a significant distance away from where inmates were secured in the hold. Despite being monitored closely, Mochulsky witnessed one successful escape as an inmate managed to wriggle his way through the toilet opening and drop down into the river below. Managing to dodge the bullets fired at him by his panicked escort, who now faced the threat of disciplinary proceedings and possible arrest himself, the prisoner managed to swim ashore with the captain refusing to turn the ship around (also faced with the possible consequences of not arriving on time).39 While Mochulsky evokes the distress caused by the threat of formal procedures hanging over the heads of camp staff, who sometimes found themselves incarcerated amongst their former charges, other accounts suggest a distinct lack of disciplinary mechanisms for these serious violations. Janusz Bardach witnessed mass sexual violence while heading towards Magadan during the Second World War, recalling the agitation as it become clear that a sinister plan was being concocted using a makeshift route through the food storage room, which had already been broken into twice during the voyage. Although the masculinity of one senior recidivist named Igor was called into question for his refusal to take part, the memoirist reported that a number of other criminals used this passageway to force a hole into the section housing their female counterparts. After the group reached the point where they had sexually assaulted and killed all the women they intended to (a figure Bardach lost count of), their attention then turned towards younger men, who were subsequently added to the pile of dead bodies. With hundreds of prisoners looking on, the delayed response of the guards was to blast the assailants with freezing cold water, as a number of other prisoners, including Igor, frantically tried to cover the hole back in. Although confirming that a large number of corpses were removed by the guards in the aftermath of the attack, Bardach suggested that a pact of silence saw no one willing to report those responsible.40 The examples considered in this chapter are also corroborated by further accounts which, similar to Ginzburg’s discussion of how ‘ominous rumours’ spread throughout the camps, demonstrate that even when the more extreme incidents of sexual violence did not occur, the threat itself represented a consistent issue. Michael Solomon recalled how, during his journey to Magadan on board the giant cruiser Sovlatvia in late summer of 1949, the year after his arrest in Bucharest, armed guards were forced to intervene as a group of ‘ruffians’

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tried unsuccessfully to enter the female hold. In this case, however, Solomon reported that a number of these would-be assailants were killed by guards and the attack was prevented.41 Solomon also reinforced features from other memoir writers, in particular revealing how gossip circulated amongst the prisoners regarding both their potential destination and the arrival of notorious camp employees, in his case General Derevenko, the post-war head of Kolyma. Rumours of particularly bad journeys along the same route were also discussed, with an estimated 5,000 prisoners rumoured to be shipwrecked somewhere in the Arctic Ocean. In great detail, Solomon recalled traversing a route that began in Moscow and took the Trans-Siberian railway through the Urals to Vanino before sailing around the Sea of Okhotsk to eventually arrive in Magadan. This involved a 28-day train journey accompanied by constant checks (which involved running across the cattle compartment while guards ‘counted’ while beating the prisoners with mallets) before 5,000 inmates were escorted onto the ship for a six-day voyage. This again highlights the not only the voluminous dangers that seemingly lined the route but some of the enormous distances covered as the prisoners experienced what Solzhenitsyn would describe as a ‘world in perpetual motion’.42

Conclusion Given the manner in which the chapter started, it seems fitting that the final word on etap should come from another of Glinka’s autobiographical accounts. Depicting events that took place on the steamer ship Minsk in 1951, her work ‘The Hold’ contains similarities to I. K.’s descriptions of the intimidating ‘gate of shpana’ as Glinka described how every prisoner who did not belong to the ‘criminal world’ was greeted at the bottom of the ladder by an extremely unwanted welcoming committee who were ready to work them over. Glinka was met by the leader of the gang, a lesbian nicknamed ‘Strelka’, who sliced away the fur collar from inside her coat before moving on to the next unfortunate inmate. Amongst this commotion, as Strelka’s gang proceeded to steal more fur collars to adorn their own necks, Glinka recalled how little attention was being paid to a loud noise coming from the bulkhead. With the volume and frequency of the din increasing, a number of guards went to evaluate the issue before returning to the top deck, thereby abandoning the prisoners to face the situation alone. Showing her awareness and experience of the surroundings, perhaps also aided by the stories of mass rape that had been circulated, Strelka ordered her gang to lift her

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into the air in an attempt to reach the hatch and escape to safety. In doing so Strelka was thwarted by an armed guard blocking her path at the very moment the attack reached a violent crescendo: The crash of the broken wall deafened the panic-stricken crowd of women at the ladder. Through the newly made gap with jagged metal edges, bare-chested men in dark, wide pants in short boots, with turbans made of dirty towels, rushed into the hold. Their backs glittered with sweat and were covered with tattoos.43

Glinka now described how the ‘locusts’ and ‘dregs of the criminal world’ dragged women toward the bed bunks which had been smashed to pieces and hastily arranged on top of each other in a pile. As the entire hold seemingly fled towards the hatch, Strelka was shot by the guard, falling back dead into the arms of her gang, while Glinka managed to scramble past them onto the deck by grabbing hold of the gun barrel and forcing it away. From her aerial vantage point, Glinka now described how the male recidivists continued to enter the hold, paying scant attention to whether the female prisoners were young, old, political or criminal. According to the account, all the women were left unprotected from the same fate as card games determined whether they would live or die, with the brutal sentences carried out by the recidivists with makeshift knives and razor blades. While the actions of prisoners on board the Minsk, Dzhurma and a number of other vessels should never be forgotten or exonerated, the fate of Strelka, while she was clearly no angel herself, shows that all prisoners faced not only ‘living death’ in the Agamben sense but a much more severe consequence.44 That attitudes towards the perceived status of some prisoners were so low that their bodies were open to be desecrated and degraded in this manner shows inmates were reduced to what Etkind describes as ‘tortured life’.45 Even if memoirists were able to survive the incidents of sexual violence that claimed the lives of many, it is extremely unlikely that they would not have experienced some form of post-trauma, either during the preceding years or when recalling the events potentially decades later. Even on a journey in which she freely admitted to being spared some of the worst horrors, Ginzburg fainted and was immediately taken to the sick bay, whilst Bardach awoke already on a ship after he was stabbed whilst waiting to board at Nakhodka.46 Despite their numerous potential fragilities, recollections of memoirists remain the best researchers have to go on in reconstructing the various parts of the Gulag’s transportation process. Given the sensitivities needed in discussing these events, we must continue to treat the etap process with incredible care and caution. While not every criminal recidivist, such as Bardach’s Igor, perpetrated acts of sexual violence,

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proportionately they appear to have represented an extremely large majority. While smaller gang formations were sometimes involved in these events, they were often part of a larger collective which was driven by an opportunistic bloodlust. Clearly, you did not have to be part of a criminal group to take part in these atrocities, but if you were, there remained a masculinised expectation that you would participate without objection. This degrading attitude towards women would often form one of the key components in the criminal code that will be further discussed in the following chapter. What we have also seen is that even from this early stage of the carceral process, high-ranking criminal recidivists sought to assert their authority by occupying the most comfortable places, using physical and verbal abuse toward others. This territorial hegemony and monopoly over inmate-led violence would form an important part of the Gulag semiotic code, which would continue through the penal arc as prisoners entered an environment more akin to our common understanding of the corrective labour camp: one that was seemingly confined within barracks, watchtowers and barbed wire.

3

Hierarchies: Arrival, socialisation and the prisoner code

The American Alexander Dolgun’s account from Kuibyshev transit camp in 1949, as the Gulag began to reach its zenith in terms of overall prisoner population, describes how his arriving cohort was greeted by a senior camp official who looked to separate different imates by calling out for chestnyagy (‘the unconverted’), another term for hardened criminal recidivists. In Dolgun’s estimation, the 30 or 40 prisoners who stepped forward could be identified not only through their tattoos but by the fact that they looked relatively healthy and had clothes that at least appeared to be in reasonable condition.1 Dolgun’s visceral recollections of how the arrival process worked in Kuibyshev give us a glimpse of how inmates were typically subject to further ‘disciplining’ sensibilities once they had arrived in more permanent surroundings and required the allocation of sleeping arrangements. As they arrived at transit camps and corrective labour camps, this often included numerous headcounts and being deloused and dressed in prisoner attire before being assigned to their work brigades and barracks. Descriptions of this profoundly dehumanising experience, which rendered inmates even closer towards Agamben’s conceptualisation of ‘bare life’, are evocatively recounted by many survivors, many of whom arrived at the camps wearing the same clothes as when they were arrested.2 Alongside these more formal methods, Dolgun’s account suggested that prisoners could also be greeted in a more ad hoc manner which was often at the whim of camp authorities on the ground. As noted by the American, this included inmates being separated through the visual identification of their tattoos, with Mikhail Dyomin also reinforcing suggestions made by Dolgun by recalling how his guards in Kharkiv separated prisoners into ‘Roosters’ (prisoners who had tattoos) and ‘Lobsters’ (those who did not).3 These names were reportedly taken from a popular brand of sweets, although the term ‘Rooster’ continues to be used in contemporary Russian prisons to describe marginal individuals who are 55

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excluded from inmate social life. Suffice to say, this more recent reinvention of the term comes with significantly different consequences for inmates who are labelled in this manner.4 Despite some of the problems with Dyomin’s semiautobiographical account, in particular the fact that he became wrongly assigned due to an ace of clubs tattoo on his shoulder (a reminder to himself not to gamble rather than any indication of a criminal past), this method of dividing prisoners would appear to have been another of the local initiatives rather than a directive from the centre.5 What Dolgun and Dyomin’s accounts both indicate is that, as one might expect, camp authorities were only too aware of historical divisions that existed between inmates and, whatever the orders from their superiors, adapted their own techniques on the ground.6 With etap acting as its own coercive power, as seen in the harrowing images of the previous chapter, it is not out of the question to assume that many prisoners arrived at more permanent sites already both mentally and physically ‘broken’. As highlighted by Donald Clemmer, alongside the dislocating emotions during transportation, new prisoners often described feelings of being ‘swallowed up’ as they entered their new environment. This feeling and loss of identity has been shown to be especially prevalent amongst individuals who have no previous experience of the criminal or inmate worlds and have been involved in more public environments where anonymity is categorically shunned.7 Although they were not exempt from the ‘pains of imprisonment’ faced by political prisoners, as we saw in Chapter 2, indivisible groups of recidivists had already been formed at an early stage of the carceral journey. These could be formed by all kinds of ‘professional’ or geographic links and undoubtedly helped aid the process of arrival into a new setting. In this context, and indeed throughout the book, the conceptualisation of criminal formations is based on Clemmer’s definition of ‘primary prisoner groups’, with his suggested prerequisites being possession of a common interest to create solidarity and mutual understanding. As we will see, Clemmer’s analysis, which also focuses on competition within the group and forms of resistance to any perceived outsiders, can undeniably be seen in the criminal gangs that dominated prisoner life in the Gulag.8 As during transportation, criminal groups dominated penal hierarchies from the moment they arrived in the more permanent surroundings of transit and corrective camps, showing remarkable similarity with street gangs and organised crime groupings in how they functioned and their unwavering obedience to a code that helped define the rules of everyday life. While it was possible for some prisoners to remain ‘ungrouped’ and, therefore, outside of these rudimentary formations, a hierarchy of crime influenced by professional activities prior to

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incarceration also influenced prisoner relations inside of the barbed wire. Although interesting comparisons can be made among the different camps of internment, prisoner hierarchies in the Gulag were influenced more by temporal features that had existed in late imperial punishment. Whilst the images of jangling shackles, half-shaven heads and raw convict brands of the previous centuries quickly disappeared following the 1917 revolutions, some subtle but nevertheless important legacies of prisoner subcultural practices remained in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s and beyond.

Hierarchies At this point in the book it largely goes without saying that 49ers did not have a high opinion of those from a socio-economic background that was different from theirs. This could be seen in their firmly held belief that recidivists alone were the one true lyudi (‘people’) and the continued contemptuous use of frayery to describe a ‘sucker’ or mark.9 As briefly noted in the introduction, survivor testimony and ethnographic reflections of the late imperial penal system highlight that similar divisions existed between criminals, politicals and the larger mass of newly arrived or short-term inmates who were commonly referred to as shpanku (‘the mare’).10 Among the recidivists, the highest rank was occupied by inmates known as ‘Ivans’, who had apparently earned this status through their propensity to endure the brutal and lacerating methods of corporal punishment. In his dispatches from Sakhalin, Vlas Doroshevich stated that a prisoner was only able to become an Ivan after receiving 2,000 lashes of the knout (four centimetres of stiff rawhide that was attached to a leather whip), with even beatings from the birch rod omitted from this total.11 It is important to note here the importance of physical endurance and how status was displayed vividly upon the body in a similar fashion to later tattoos and other bodily modifications. Although they represented only a small percentage of inmates, Ivans dominated prisoner subculture and retained this position through their ability to torment and torture others.12 Doroshevich further recalled how Ivans were renowned for only protecting their own group and had become the ‘judge, jury and executioner’ of penal society, pronouncing and executing indisputable sentences on other prisoners.13 Governing ruthlessly in their own interest and shunning that of the prison collective, the excessive violence of the Ivans meant that they were reportedly feared by even the penal authorities. Like other high-ranking criminal prisoners

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from the later camps of the Gulag, the dress sense of the Ivans alone set them apart from other inmates as they favoured a fashion of peaked hats, widecollared shirts and unbuttoned pea-jackets.14 As the way of earning their title might suggest, Ivans were entirely products of the punitive environment, although this reputation may have also extended outside penality. Despite their seemingly untouchable status during the period of Doroshevich’s visit, the failed 1905 revolution and the incarceration of large numbers of soldiers and sailors would create a considerable challenge to their physical hegemony.15 Doroshevich’s account of Sakhalin Island identified further categories ranking below Ivans, including prisoners known as ‘Snorters’ who reportedly thrived on creating problems for both prison authorities and their fellow inmates. With their name apparently coming from a penchant to disparage everything around them, these prisoners  – Doroshevich suggested  – lacked the ‘courage’ to take a stand against the Ivans. Instead, they apparently sought to assert their authority over prisoners in an even lowlier position than themselves. It would appear that inexperienced prisoners often mistook the Snorters (and were, of course, never corrected) for being Ivans, even handing over money or other items in exchange for personal protection.16 Roughly level in the carceral hierarchy with Snorters, although the comparison would have apparently caused them great offence, were a group known as ‘Throats’, who also offered protection for other prisoners. Doroshevich stated that this would usually happen in the case of card disputes, in which Throats would have little issue providing lies as long as they were suitably compensated.17 This reputation of siding with the highest bidder did not exactly endear Throats to the rest of penal society, who regularly insulted them with suggestions that they would sell out even their mother or closest friends. On a similar level with Snorters and Throats were other inmates, often shortterm offenders, referred to as ‘Twisters’. This group also looked to take advantage of inexperienced inmates, sometimes by making suggestions that they switch identities with other prisoners in order to pay back card losses or dupe them into taking on the role of a ‘patsy’ in prisoner escape plans. The financial life of the pre-1917 penal environment, as far as it did exist, was often controlled by a group known as ‘Asmodeys’, who not only kept a close eye on their own money, including hiding it from other prisoners, but also provided loans at extortionate repayment rates. In doing so Asmodeys joined other prison moneylenders known as ‘Mothers’ (if they were Tatar) and ‘Fathers’ (if they were Russian).18 Many of these debts and subsequent loans arose from the seemingly ubiquitous nature of gambling, which will be covered in much more detail later on. As we

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will see in the following chapters, specific terms such as ‘Players’ were reserved for the more experienced card players. Doroshevich also recalled how the term shpanku was used to refer to the majority of inmates, a result, he suggested, of their perceived sheep-like mentality and lack of independent thought.19 Found in a lowly position in Sakhalin prisoner society were zhigany (‘whipping boys’), inmates who had violated important components of the inmate code, such as being unable to pay back debts within the agreed time period. As a result, they were now at the mercy of whoever they owed the debt to and at times ordered to complete menial chores such as cleaning the bunks and making tea. While many of the duties of zhigany were extremely unpleasant, there were inmates on an even lower rung who were known as kham (‘bitch’). The equivalent of the identical term in US (and wider) prison slang, they were widely understood to be open to sexual and physical violations from other prisoners.20 Although it is important to state that carceral identities are often much less fixed in reality, with inmates sometimes able to take on multiple roles and move through the ranks with greater fluidity, Doroshevich’s writings allow us to, at the very least, gain an insight into how things functioned on Sakhalin Island. Whilst also corroborating Doroshevich, Anton Oleinik adds to this already complicated picture by suggesting that the most diverse group of prerevolutionary prisoners were ‘thieves’, who could be divided into more than 25 sub-categories depending on their particular set of specialist skills or the location in which they worked (train stations, market stalls etc.). This is supported by the work of Federico Varese and Mark Galeotti, who show that late twentiethcentury organised crime groups known as ‘thieves in law’ followed a tradition inspired in part by the pre-revolutionary underworld.21 As Galeotti suggests, although we are hampered by limited reliable information about their activities, the criminal artel (traditional work association) appears to be one of a number of groups which appeared from the late imperial urban slums.22 As befitting the rural tradition from which their members originated, these groups would contain their own rules and rituals, retaining a tendency to work within a specific criminal profession, or at least ones interlinked in the same nefarious activities. Omitted also so far from this discussion is the place of criminal women in late imperial penality. Bar the celebrity status of inmates such Sonka ‘Golden Hand’, the majority of scholarly attention has paid homage to the revolutionary ‘romanticism’ of prisoners such as Maria Spiridonova and Vera Kaplan.23 The presence of these incarcerated political activists has seemingly taken the attention away from the majority of female inmates, who remained a much

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smaller number than men. Criminal women who are discussed in memoir evidence are usually referred to in contemptuous language that often focuses on their foul language, lack of hygiene and, above all, their seemingly uncontrollable sexual desires. As Sarah Badcock has shown, opinions displayed towards prerevolutionary criminal women go even further than those towards male recidivists and carve an explicit distinction between victims and whores. The ‘victims’ in this case, of course, are prisoners like Spiridonova and Kaplan.24 While images of the female heterosexual prostitute continued to remain widespread after 1917 revolution, writings on the topic would change to reflect new Soviet attitudes towards the emancipation of women. Despite this, and an end to the pre-revolutionary ‘yellow ticket’ system of regulation, prostitutes were still seemingly incarcerated in large numbers. The main difference was that they would now be discussed in prisoner newspapers of the 1920s as being some of the most prominent examples of how former deviants were transformed into productive communist citizens.25 Changing attitudes towards prostitution demonstrate the beginnings of a new punitive approach which saw the Soviet regime look to rehabilitate prisoners incarcerated in camps such as Solovki through a combination of forced labour and cultural-educational activities. Although the definition of political prisoner remained in flux throughout the 1920s, the historical class-based divide between inmates continued to be fixed in place. As discussed in the introduction, this dichotomy can be found in both prisoner memoirs and the pages of camp newspapers through the terms svoi and frayera. Despite the promulgation of this binary by many of the contributors, who hailed mostly from the intelligentsia, these articles contain valuable insights into the hierarchical structure of the Secret Police Camps. This is apparent in the September 1923 issue of the Viatka publication Behind the Iron Bars. The author, K. E. Utomsky, was a former noble who was arrested as a potential opponent of the Bolshevik regime. Utmosky openly identified himself as a zhigan, which remained, as in Doroshevich’s prerevolutionary reports, one of the lowest ranks in prisoner society. Describing his fellow inmates, Utomsky stated that much was known already about so-called nalyoty (‘raiders’, bank robbers), who represented the highest echelons of prisoner society. Utomsky clarified that raiders were united in a ‘special corporation’ that strictly guarded their particular code and ruled over a chain of other ‘more subtle’ exploiters and neschastnye (the ‘unfortunates’).26 Interestingly, the use of the term ‘unfortunates’ by Utomsky in 1923 represents an overlap with descriptions of late imperial penality.27 Nonetheless, nalyoty, who do not appear in discussions of prisoner society before the revolution, were glorified in prisoner

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songs from 1920s. This was seen most prominently in the rhyming refrain of ‘We are Pilots-Nalyoty’: We are pilots-nalyoty, Night-time burglars, Our motto – the winged ace.28 We are pilots-nalyoty, Night-time burglars, We are a horrible union. We can get everywhere, We burn everywhere, And everywhere is now right here!29

In an article that recalled the prose of Doroshevich’s descriptions of penal society on Sakhalin Island, Utomsky proceeded to list the various ranks found below nalyoty. Immediately beneath, Utomsky stated, were informants, defined as anyone who benefited through securing the goodwill and trust of low-level officials. This was achieved, the author claimed, by providing the authorities with regular updates regarding the activities of other inmates. Utomsky was quick to point out the irony, in that informants often tricked guards by providing them with false information and in general promoted the interests of the prisoners over that of the institution (a slight concession perhaps to the inmate code, which forbade any co-operation). Found as a subsection of informants were prison koti (‘cats’), who were described as small-time criminals who had a desire to stand out amongst other inmates.30 Recalling their fondness for riding breeches, Utomsky described them as ‘dandies’ who always appeared to be heading somewhere in a hurry. Utomsky’s sketches of koti display similarities to the journalist Vlas Doroshevich’s observations of Twisters on Sakhalin. Referring to them as hard labour’s toreador (bullfighter), Doroshevich stated that these prisoners were renowned for their cunning, wit and treachery. Despite their occasional double-crossing of other inmates, Twisters were viewed with a particular fondness as they acted as intermediary in dealings between the authorities and prisoner merchants.31 Utomsky’s depictions of koti differed from Doroshevich’s pre-1917 remarks regarding Twisters, however, as he lamented their ‘pathetic morals, harmful activities, and persistent interference in the lives of other prisoners’.32 Found directly below the category of informants were a group of ‘demonically large and beautiful’ prisoners referred to as shpana. According to Utomsky, prison society ‘leaned toward’ shpana by allowing them to tax items from other

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inmates. These ‘care packages’ were compared to the tsarist practice of tribute (essentially bribery), with almost no-one objecting to this firmly established and universally observed custom. Although remaining intimidated by those ranked above them, Utomsky recalled how shpana formed a group of prison ‘pariahs’ who guarded over their own laws and customs. While their ranks included other specialist roles such as ‘pimps’, shpana were described as being, first and foremost, card masters.33 As discussed in the introduction, while shpana is referred to in accounts from either side of the traditional 1917 divide, its etymology remains ambiguous. In a 1908 dictionary, V. F. Trakhtenberg defines the term as being the ‘indigenous prison population’, associating their behaviour directly with a shared experience of penality.34 This would also fit with a 1925 article on swearing from the Gomel inmate publication Voice of the Prisoner which blamed the issue entirely on shpana.35 Both phonetically and in regard to how it was used, the term also displays a remarkable similarity to any variations which indicated a herd-like mentality. Apparent in the writings of Doroshevich, and many others, these labels were regularly used to describe prisoners as one indivisible group with little variation in their actions.36 In prisoner memoirs from inmates who escaped Solovki roughly around the same time as Utomsky’s article, shpana is used to refer to criminal prisoners as one amorphous group, with no distinction between any of sub-groups such as nalyoty (bank robbers). One example of this is the 1926 memoir by Sozerko Malsagoff, a Chechen prisoner who was successfully able to flee from the Kem’ transit point.37 Malsagoff dedicated a chapter of his work to the ‘criminal activity’ he witnessed, including fighting, theft from other prisoners, card games played for money and negotiations with guards in order to exchange stolen items for alcohol. Like Utomsky’s article from the prisoner press, Malsagoff also recalled the unwritten code that bound shpana together, describing how they would ruthlessly apply punishment to any ‘traitors’ in their midst. Another participant in the same group escape, Iuri Bezsonov, also described the activities of ‘real criminals’ at the transit point, recalling how they were a disciplined body with laws of their own, and displayed a stubborn refusal to work for the authorities.38 As we will see over the following chapters, the descriptions of Bezsonov and Malsagoff resonate with those found in memoirs from those incarcerated following the development of the Gulag in the 1930s. These accounts would similarly depict an unwritten code in regard to hostility toward authority structures and the use of particularly brutal punishments for anyone found to be colluding with the camp regime. Although taking it on its own remains problematic, Utomsky’s article allows us to develop the basic model shown above, representing prisoner hierarchy at

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the Viatka Labour Camp in a similar way to Doroshevich’s prisoner society on Sakhalin Island. Dmitry Likhachev’s observations of Solovki can help corroborate this somewhat murky picture of the 1920s Secret Police Camps. Likhachev suggested that differences between high-ranking criminal prisoners were subtle enough for them to be divided into a dukhovym (brass), described as a highranking criminal, and a zhigan, who he considered to be ‘genuine and brave’ and therefore a hero to the lowly placed shpana.39 Likhachev’s description clearly regarded zhigany as being authoritative criminal prisoners, displaying a marked difference from other definitions, which describe them as ‘whipping boys’ and place them on a lowly rung in carceral society. Likhachev’s knowledge of the world of the 49ers through his work for the Solovki criminological cabinet, discussed further in later chapters, makes his insights more than worthwhile of consideration. His various writings are also detailed enough to recall a number of low-level shpana groups, such as the vshivki (‘lice’) of the previous chapter and so-called veselie nishie (‘jolly beggars’, described as being young shpana), some of whose behaviour when playing cards will be discussed in more detail later. Development of the more familiar Gulag penal apparatus throughout the 1930s, coupled with the change in impetus of the camp journals to become more straightforward propaganda devices, means that we have to rely almost exclusively on retrospectively written memoir sources to continue our reconstruction of criminal hierarchies. The same amorphous mass of criminal inmates referred to in prisoner newspapers of the 1920s as svoi, shpana or 49ers now became discussed in survivor memoirs as urki, vory, blatnye or chestnyagy. According to the former prisoner Jacques Rossi, the term ‘coloured’ was also used to describe a high-ranking prisoner group while also being, at times, a way to describe the entirety of the criminal world.40 Within these broad overarching categories, and although some individual prisoners could remain non-affiliated, smaller groups started to form, containing their own hierarchical structure which included a leader, lackeys and lower-ranked members who would perform largely unwanted tasks with the aspiration to advance through the gang. The near-universality of these internal group hierarchies can be reconstructed using memoir accounts which come mainly from Gulag prisoners who were incarcerated in large corrective labour camps or post-war special camps. These rudimentary gangs were often aligned by factors such as pre-prison acquaintances, criminal specialisation and, following their wartime activity or non-activity, marked by their hostility toward suki.41 The establishment of groups in this way is confirmed by Michael Solomon, who recalled how each had its own unwritten laws and rituals, and further clarified by Varlam Shalamov, who

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suggested that coveted spots on the bunks were taken by gangs who were prominent during ‘that moment (in time)’, suggesting that the group’s life expectancy could be a short one.42 During his post-war imprisonment in Magadan, Solomon suggests that there was a group known as the ‘Red Caps’ whose origins could be traced back to the 1917 revolutions and were influenced by the Ukrainian guerrilla leader Nestor Makhno 43 During the prisoner-on-prisoner conflict in the post-Second World War Gulag, a group of suki formed under the title ‘Makhnovists’, yet Jacques Rossi points out that in no way did they share the same ideology. In fact, Makhno’s name appears to have circulated in criminal circles in a similar sense to bandits such as Stenka Razin or Vanka Kain.44 Rossi adds to this by suggesting that further groups known as ‘Brewers’ and ‘Little Red Cap’ both appeared in the 1940s, with the name for the latter, made up of former military personnel, coming from the red band that adorned their garrison cap.45 These names, of course, contained similar features to both individual criminal klichki and earlier gang names such as Sonka’s ‘Jacks-of-Hearts’ and notorious bandit groups of the 1920s who went under various monikers including the ‘Black Mask Gang’ and the ‘Band of Forest Devils’.46 Janusz Bardach managed to get close enough to a criminal formation in the Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) transit prison to describe an ‘established hierarchy’ who would stay close to each other and eat together while they played cards and told jokes. Despite this comradery, however, as with juvenile street gangs there was often one clear leader, usually referred to as the pakhan. Soon after his arrival, Bardach was approached by a pakhan nicknamed ‘Pockmarked’ who had overheard him speaking in his native Polish on the way back from an inmate headcount. Bardach’s recollections help further clarify the origins of Pockmarked’s self-explanatory klichka, describing not only the pitted marks on his face but also other notable features such as a scar that ran across his forehead. The memoirist also focused on the leader’s physicality, recalling the force of his hand when it landed on his shoulder and also that, when Pockmarked took off his shirt, it revealed his muscular arms, back and chest. According to Bardach, these areas were ‘covered’ in tattoos, although the only one he would specifically mention was a ring of snakes that began around Pockmarked’s neck before uncoiling down through the centre line of his chest as if it were ‘a mink stole’.47 When he later found out that Bardach was leaving the transit prison, Pockmarked informed him that he could use his name if he ran into any trouble. In order to verify this, the pakhan revealed that Bardach would have to know his criminal profession, a bank robber with a penchant for safe-cracking. Not only does Pockmarked’s position in the hierarchy of crime reflect that of the nalyoty of the 1920s Secret Police Camps

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but it also demonstrates how the mere mention of his name was, in his own words, a ‘ticket to security in the urka world’.48 Using the name of a criminal authority to guarantee safe passage or other forms of access was similarly displayed around half a century earlier, as Vlas Doroshevich managed to sit down with dangerous prisoners on Sakhalin Island as a result of a ‘letter of recommendation’ written by the murderer Pazulsky whom he had earlier interviewed.49 Alexander Dolgun also encountered a pakhan shortly after his arrival at the Kubyshev transit prison, as discussed in the example at the beginning of this chapter. Dolgun’s feet had hardly touched the cell floor before he was confronted by a number of prisoners who were intent on stealing his clothes. The ensuing physical altercation, however, was broken up by the booming voice of a man speaking with ‘great authority’ from the back of the room. Immediately the assailants ceased, and another prisoner informed Dolgun that ‘the pakhan calls you. You better go see him’. After being led to the back of the barracks, traditionally the area taken over by the 49ers, the memoirist gave a brief outline of the man demanding his counsel: Pakhan is underworld slang for ‘the chief ’. In rank and authority, this guy has the status of a robber king. In the mafia he would be like a godfather, but I do not want to use that word because there is a godfather in the labour camps and that is an entirely different thing. Besides a pakhan can arise anywhere and does not have to be linked to a particular family. He is a man widely respected in the underworld for his skill and experience and authority. To meet such a distinguished, high-class urka is a very rare event.50

Dolgun’s reference to the ‘mafia’ suggests that he may have been aware of the existence of vory v zakone and the timing of his incarceration in the late 1940s would further support this. Another possibility is that Dolgun had knowledge of other organised crime groups that existed elsewhere (or even learned about them after his release). In the extract, the mafia and Gulag are not explicitly linked, even being kept deliberately apart by the memoirist. On this occasion there is simply not enough evidence to say for certain. What Dolgun’s account does indicate is that, although the ‘chief ’ and ‘godfather’ had similar names, this was merely to identify them as the most senior figure. Other memoir writers suggested that gang leaders could also be referred to as ataman (the same term as the bandit Vanka Kain’s acquaintance Mikhail Zaria from the opening chapter) and other common words whose only specific connotation was that it implied an authoritative position such as golova (‘head’) or vozhd’ (‘leader’) – interestingly, the title often used to refer to Stalin.51

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What Dolgun’s assessment also confirms is that there were clear differences between the ‘mafia’ and more hastily assembled criminal formations, supported by his conviction that a pakhan was able to arise anywhere. The group leader on this occasion was once again a bank robber, this time nicknamed ‘Valentin the Intelligent’, with whom Dolgun would soon become more closely acquainted.52 Recalling that Valentin was over six feet tall and physically ‘impressive in every way’, Dolgun focused on his broad shoulders and tried to estimate the force contained within his large hands. The pakhan this time was dressed in a pair of good-quality black leather boots tucked into blue trousers which matched his suit jacket and was accompanied by a pink shirt, stripy tie and a red handkerchief in the breast pocket. It is not too churlish to suggest that Valentin must have looked quite a sight amongst the well-worn valenki (boots) and filthy woollen vatniks (padded coats) of the other prisoners, yet this, of course, was an entirely deliberate way of displaying his status. According to Dolgun, Valentin was a ‘civilized and intelligent criminal’ who not only commanded the absolute respect of those around him but was also alert and intuitive to his surroundings. Before he was orphaned at around ten years old, both of Valentin’s parents had been professors, hence his nickname of ‘the Intelligent’. Soon after their initial exchange, Dolgun gained his own klichka as he was anointed with the title ‘Sasha the American’ and was introduced to Valentin’s deputy, who was similarly nicknamed ‘Sashka the Trump’. This was likely a reference to the winning hard in a card game or his ability to get one over on those around him (perhaps a combination of both). Dolgun’s description of Sashka depicted him as not being as physically imposing as the pakhan, suggesting that he was shorter and acted as a ‘grand vizier’ (prime minister of the Ottoman sultan) between Valentin and other prisoners, who were not permitted to speak to him directly. Dolgun later qualified that one of Sashka’s roles was to provide confidential reports about the movement of people and goods, intelligence about camp developments, or disputes for the pakhan to pass judgement. Ranked directly below Sashka were further subordinates known as shestyorka (‘sixers’, lackeys), whose name came from the lowest card in a standard Russian 36-card deck. The shestyorki in Dolgun’s account, where they are described as ‘deputies’, were mainly involved in stacking firewood to brew chefir although, like more senior figures and in accordance with the prisoner code, they also refused to perform work duties for the authorities.53 The role of the shestyorka was further explained by Victor Herman after he awoke for the first time in a new cell during his incarceration at a camp near Gorky (present-day Nizhny Novgorod):

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Some men slept, some walked around or sat in groups talking or laughing, and one group was playing cards, another feature I was to find typical of criminal prisoners. Cards were also central to their central order, such as it was – not only was it their favourite pastime  – a pastime I would see pursued for human stakes – a nose, ears, an arm, a life – but it was also the basis of ranking among them. Based on the Russian deck of thirty-six cards, the sixes, the Shesterki, were the lowest, the servants, and they were graded up to the sevens and the eights, for example, they being the Vosymerki . . .54

In this instance it would appear that other positions, known as the sevens and eights, were added above shestyorka, showing again the influence of card playing but also that a degree of flexibility existed for prisoners in creating different roles across the camp system. Although Herman stated that, in his experience, shestyorka formed the lowest stratum, other memoirists, including Alexander Dolgun, recalled a group lower than this, known as shobla yobla (‘rabble’). This term appears to have similar etymology to that of shpana in describing the flotsam of criminal society. In Dolgun’s estimation, shobla yobla were the ‘lowest of the urki’ and involved in such activities as working in tandem to steal from newly arrived prisoners. This would happen as one partner occupied their ‘mark’ with conversation while the other shobla yobla deftly opened their luggage sacks using a broken razor blade held between their toes.55 As this set of specialist skills would imply, shobla yobla included other identities such as pickpockets, ‘jackals’ (‘scavengers’) and ‘hotheads’, who represented those more likely to steal using more simplistic, but nevertheless just as effective, forms of aggression.56 These positions were by no means fixed, however, and mobility was potentially possible in either direction regardless of class background or which articles of the criminal code inmates were sentenced under. Dolgun recalled the story of a man in the bed next to him in the medical ward who was known as ‘Baron Laszlo something’ (as he couldn’t remember the final part of his name) and who was ‘semi-coloured’. As Dolgun explained, this meant he was heavily involved in the black market and for this reason although ‘really a political’ he was treated like a criminal recidivist by the camp authorities.57 Similarly, Jansusz Bardach’s work brigadier in Kolyma was a former financial manager in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) who had been imprisoned for allegedly siphoning millions of roubles. These criminal activities had helped facilitate his transformation into a respected gang leader ‘complete with tattoos and obscene language’. 58 If this status as a criminal recidivist could not be confirmed, however, prisoners were likely to face relegation through Gulag society. This was the case for an inmate nicknamed ‘Boris the Careerist’ who was described in the memoir of General Gorbatov.

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Although Boris claimed to be a ‘big-time criminal’ with six murders and five robberies under his belt, it later transpired that he was only a ‘small-time thief ’, leading to a demotion and the addition of his new ironic klichka.59 This again shows how Gulag identities could be created or manipulated, either by the individual in question or others around them, using a variety of linguistic and symbolic devices to disseminate these messages throughout prisoner society. This projection of criminal signals was similarly apparent in areas of the camp containing juveniles, a comparable situation to that we saw in Chapter 1 with the activities of street gangs and besprizorniki of the 1920s, who often looked to emulate the activities of adults. While Gulag regulations stated that juveniles should be confined separately from adult prisoners, this policy was almost impossible to enforce in some camps and simply shunned in favour of more practical initiatives on the ground at others.60 In the instances where isolation was upheld, juvenile barracks, set apart and surrounded by barbed wire in the same fashion as other camp ‘zones’, were often designated no-go areas for older prisoners and Gulag staff alike.61 Adult prisoners who were interned alongside juveniles were often appalled by their behaviour, focusing on their abhorrent language and lack of morality.62 Solzhenitsyn dedicated a chapter of The Gulag Archipelago to ‘the Kids’, in which he distanced them from the earlier besprizorniki. This chapter described their transition into adult criminal spheres, focusing in particular on their sexual activities and colourful boasting whilst also noting how they retained a capacity for concentrated action in both defence and attack. According to Solzhenitsyn, this made ‘the Kids’ stronger and freed them from formal camp restrictions, recalling how ‘thieves’ and juveniles held sway in a penalty camp near Novosibirsk, with junior members imitating the violent techniques of elder prisoners.63 This link between youth and adulthood is reinforced in Gavin Slade’s work on organised crime in post-communist Georgia, which highlights the important role punitive institutions play in recruiting new members to the criminal sphere and how maintaining this influx is the most basic element to ensure continued survival. Slade describes how flexible supplies of human resources are necessary to form resilience, and trust networks that fail to reach this standard are unlikely to last more than a single generation.64 Given the number of incarcerations during the period, and despite the Gulag’s ‘revolving door’ policy, prospective candidates looking to take the step up and prove their loyalty (with the prospective benefits this would bring) do not appear to have been in short supply. While female criminal society has no equivalent history to that of the male caste system, contemporary penological observations suggest that this is

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traditionally constructed ‘informally’ along horizontal rather than vertical lines, with length of sentence and multiple sentences remaining the main enhancers of status.65Although female recidivists, referred to by names such as vorovka, blatnaia, blatniachka and vorovaika, did not follow the same hierarchical structure as the men, they retained common behavioural norms and rituals, including their own court proceedings, tattoos, use of slang and card playing. For example, Eugenia Ginzburg recalled that the ‘real criminals’ she was incarcerated alongside at Magadan would tell ‘life stories’ in a similar fashion to the oral tales described by male memoirists. These included claims that their father had been a judge or military general, and rather predictably often added the twin themes of romance and crime. Often more educated prisoners were called upon to tell the others ‘the story of some book’ or recite poetry. 66 Margaret Buber-Neumann would describe one particular female criminal in the punishment compound in Karaganda, named Raiza, as a prima donna and describe how her needs were attended to by other prisoners.67 This brief snapshot suggests how, unlike the men, female prisoner hierarchy was shaped more by dominant individuals (such as Mikhail Dyomin’s Margo ‘The Queen’ from Chapter  1) rather than larger group formations.

Sexual order of the Gulag Existing work on Russian criminal gangs has recorded a highly masculinised hierarchy that emphasises the primary function of women as subordinates.68 Federico Varese describes how women ‘had no place’ in the hierarchy of vory v zakone while Valery Chalidze states that, while not viewed as contemptuously as prostitutes or individuals outside the criminal sphere, the wife of a thief remained ‘the property of her husband’.69 Although these rules were certainly true for the organised crime fraternities, a characteristic shared with other similar groups, females from the broader mass of 49ers often played important roles as accomplices, as indicated in the song ‘Music is Playing in the Moldavanka’ in the opening chapter. Alongside this, the consistently higher status afforded for female heterosexual prostitutes than male homosexual prostitutes in Gulag society, a situation aided by the consistent negotiation of borders between theoretically different camp zones, suggests that the criminal hierarchy of two sexes should be considered as intertwined rather than separate. Although Gulag camps and colonies were meant to be homosocial spaces, in practice this was far from the case.While authorities routinely complained about

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illicit sexual activities, they also unwittingly helped to create conditions that made contact possible through a spatial organisation facilitating inmate interaction.70 In many of the larger corrective labour camps, male and female prisoners were divided into separate sections; however, areas which were designated as ‘female-only’ were known to frequently house male prisoners alongside receiving other visitors such as civilian employees and camp personnel.71 As Wilson Bell has warned, however, viewing all relationships in the camps as forcibly initiated by the men removes any agency from the women involved.72 Buber-Neumann’s consistent refusal to submit to the proposition of another prisoner, despite his ‘good connections’, shortly after arriving at Karlag demonstrates that some women could exercise a degree of sexual autonomy. Instead, they would choose to use relationships with men to rework traditional power dynamics and look to limit the harshness and isolation of Gulag life.73 Although these rules were remarkably different from those of a free society, sex could provide a form of resistance and was part of the complex web of negotiated relationships throughout the camp system.74 Ginzburg further described the moral dilemma faced by female prisoners in Kolyma, a number of whom became intimate with criminal recidivists and, almost unanimously, described the ensuing sexual relations with shame and reservation. One prominent exception to this is Valentina Ievleva-Pavlenko, who recalled a number of admirers and lovers, including a thief nicknamed ‘Tolik the Hand’, in a very different manner.75 From consulting the huge corpus of memoirs it becomes clear that prisoners used sexual barter for an array of different reasons: for some becoming ‘camp wives’ (in which the ‘husband’ would protect the ‘wife’ in exchange for sexual favours) was a way of avoiding hunger and horrific conditions, while for others it was about a more human need to satisfy love and desire. Conversely, some women avoided any form of relations altogether as, according to Ginzburg, it was ‘too easy to slip into prostitution’.76 As this quote suggests, while sexual barter is often seen as a gateway to prostitution it remains important to draw a line between the two.77 These varying degrees of agency and coercion can also be seen in relations between homosexual prisoners. While emphasising the importance of change over time in regard to shifting prison systems, wider conceptualities of sexuality, and the ever-changing nature of prisoner demographics, Daniel Healey’s work demonstrates how the Gulag’s specific economic and moral objectives often facilitated inmate same-sex relations. The structured hierarchy of violent and consensual homosexual relations, inherited from tsarist penality, continued in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s and then expanded following the growth of

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the Gulag system in line with the First Five-Year Plan.78Although reports of same-sex relations in tsarist penality were rare, one of the few references can be found in Doroshevich’s dispatches, in which he demonstrates how the aforementioned term kham (‘bitch’) was used to indicate a sexual subordinate: There is no further drop. ‘Kham’ in essence, simply signifies in the prison language a man who is another man’s lover. ‘Zakhamnichat’ means to take it and not give it. A man who’s left without even a semblance of the conscience of a throat, suborn or a piper [terms for other categories of prisoners] is called a kham. They befoul the prisoners’ environment. The kham is a traitor; for lack of a bread ration, for a small respite, he’ll inform on escape preparations and reveal where fugitives have hidden. This type is encouraged by the wardens, because only through them can they know what goes on in prison.79

A number of Varlam Shalamov’s sketches of Kolyma further demonstrated how male prisoners would sometimes take on traditional feminine roles and that prisoners often responded as if they saw nothing unusual, shameful or offensive in this.80 Shalamov also discussed how ‘moral decay’ could also be seen in the Gulag’s medical facilities, where the young ‘wives’ of 49ers were admitted with syphilis, adding that ‘almost all the professional criminals were homosexuals. When no women were at hand, they seduced and infected other men – most frequently by threatening them with a knife, less frequently in exchange for “rags” or bread’.81 Like Shalamov, Eugenia Ginzburg also paired homosexuality and criminality, famously describing how professional criminals were ‘beyond the bounds of humanity’.82 The work of both Adi Kuntsman and Daniel Healey demonstrates how memoirists often positioned sexual activities between criminal prisoners beyond the border of the civilised world, in contrast with the more discreet nature of relations that took place between other prisoners.83 Although homosexual relations in the Gulag were clearly far from confined to those of a criminal background, memoirists often used these examples to provide the most visceral examples, helping to create a division which has rarely been challenged since.84 Healey and Kuntsman both agree that female same-sex relations in the camps appeared to be less violent than those between male inmates, although some memoirists recalled young women being sexually assaulted and ‘claimed’ by tougher, more experienced criminal recidivists. Lesbian relations have been viewed as based along gendered divisions where the more passive took on a ‘feminine’ role with long hair, kerchiefs and skirts, while ‘studs’ (kobly, sometimes translated as ‘dogs’), with cropped hair and tattoos, played a more dominant, masculinised role.85 Although more recent studies of

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female correctional institutions in contemporary Russia show the motivations of lesbian relationships to be extremely complex, and make a clear distinction between those that fulfil solely sexual needs and others which constitute ‘real feelings’ of love and intimacy, they continue to describe traditional male roles in female bodies.86 Despite the brevity of the comments on prison homosexuality in studies of the vory, same-sex relations played an important role in enforcing criminal hierarchies of power.87 Although the previous examples of ‘negotiated power’ suggest a slight degree of agency in the biographies of some female memoirists, incidents describing male criminal recidivists remained defined by an aggressive hegemonic masculinity along the active/passive axis. Even if their opinions towards women were not built into behavioural rules as explicitly as with the vory v zakone, the symbiosis between masculinity and criminality has been identified as a common feature of criminal subcultures across the globe.88 James Messershmidt’s definition, which states that hegemonic masculinities are formed through unequal and hierarchical relationships (including how femininities are constructed in male bodies), seems particularly apt in the Gulag, given how male criminal recidivists viewed their female inmates and judged the active/passive boundary.89 This is complemented by work on Russian street gangs which shows how ‘aggressive hegemonic masculinity’ is characterised by an extreme sexism displayed not only in relationships with the opposite sex, but also through microscopic practices that include sexist expressions in everyday discourse.90 In regard to how this worked in the carceral environment of the Gulag, it can be observed through the multiplicity of derogatory names towards women in dictionaries of camp slang.91 Furthermore, researchers Salagaev and Shashkin hypothesise that gang masculinity is constructed not only through these expressions, but also by sexual violence performed as a group.92 This can be seen in some of the Gulag’s most notorious examples of gang rape, such as Elinor Lipper and Elena Glinka’s descriptions of etap in the previous chapter.93 Many memoirists confirm that the threat of sexual assault continued to be a regular concern of camp life, as evocatively described by Tamara Petkevich.94 Similarly, Janusz Bardach’s memoir title and signature episode came from an account of male gang rape at a transit camp near Burepolom (present-day Nizhny Novgorod oblast’).95 It is important to note here that there were also limited accounts of female prisoners sexually assaulting men, such as a report from Novosibirsk that refers to a group of male inmates who had been sent into the women’s zone on official business.96 As it remains partially obscured in official documents through the euphemisms

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such as sozhitel’stvo (‘co-habitation’), and the unwillingness of memoirists to discuss same-sex relations at all, this remains an extremely difficult topic for researchers to generalise over.97 However, the continued dominance of 49ers in shaping prisoner sexual and social hierarchies, often set in place during etap, remains the key observation as we begin to look at how inmates were initiated into daily life.

Initiation All across the globe, initiation rituals have been shown to play an important role in the introduction of adolescents and inexperienced prisoners into various penal societies.98 In his study of a Polish prison during late communism, Marek Kaminski recalled how apparent ‘games’ involving riddles, jokes, tests and beatings were in fact rationally motivated and designed to acclimatise newcomers to prison society, verify any previously attained statuses, and help assign all prisoners to separate castes.99 In late tsarist penal slang the term for tricking or deceiving another prisoner was boroda (beard), which originated from the popular expression ‘to hang a beard’, after the suggested inclination of criminals to steal from elderly religious figures by nailing or sticking their beards to tables with candle wax.100 Within the late imperial penal system boroda practically manifested itself through a variety of tests used to trick new inmates into accumulating debts with more experienced prisoners (often through playing cards). Sometimes this would result in arranged prisoner ‘marriages’, complete with elaborate ceremonies, in which new arrivals would switch places with convicts sentenced to longer terms and, at times, even included the transformation of their physical features.101 One further late imperial initiation ritual involved a fabricated altercation over a handkerchief worn by a comical figure known as ‘Uncle Sarai’ (referred to by Vlas Doroshevich as a ‘simple’ or ‘gullible’ prisoner). As bets were taken to the denomination of a coin hanging on the end of Uncle Sarai’s handkerchief; the original one kopeck coin was quickly changed to that of a different value. As they played these games, novices were often aware that they had been tricked, yet faced the threat of physical beating from other prisoners if they failed to hand over the money. The main point here was that if they had consented to play (not exactly a given) then the outcome was considered fair. Another popular boroda scenario involved a crucifix being torn from one of the prisoners during a faked dispute. After taking numerous bets from inmates as to whether the prisoner in

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question was ‘unbaptised’ (i.e. not wearing their crucifix any more), with experienced prisoners encouraging new arrivals to wager money on the outcome, it transpired that the first individual had originally worn two crosses and was therefore left with one still dangling around their neck. Again, despite regular protestations regarding how the whole event had been manufactured, the outcome would inevitably end with payment being made in one way or another.102 Just as initiation rituals had marked entry into Vanka Kain’s bandit organisation and the youth gangs of the 1920s, groups of vory v zakone also had their own specific induction ceremonies, known as ‘crowning’ when they emerged around the time of the Second World War.103 Despite the examples provided in Varese’s work, there is no evidence of formal initiations amongst the wider mass of recidivist inmates. Instead, a number of sociological theories can be used to explain the importance of physical fighting as both an initiation and a test of group boundaries. The ritualistic significance of fighting has proven to be especially prevalent in institutions with unstable populations and high turnover rates as individuals move on and, therefore, leave opportunities for upward mobility.104 According to Randall Collins, the other important features required are high ritual densities, strong boundaries and key moral and symbolic differences between insiders and outsiders.105 These features would seem to fit prisoner composition in the Gulag down to a tee and show how, unlike Bordieuian notions of symbolic violence, actual physical conflict has a core referent which can be studied using micro-social observations. In his study of contemporary Russian penality, Anton Oleinik recalls how daily conflicts are often referred to using the popular expression bespredel (‘without limits’), stating how the lack of means for managing conflicts in the penal environment forces inmates to either engage in the spiral of violence or ‘close their eyes’ to it, at the cost of potential marginalisation.106 Situations of bespredel highlight the value of physical force between prisoners, virtually unimportant in most other social situations. According to Oleinik’s study, the only rule respected in bespredel is that ‘might means right’ and more than half of the prisoners he interviewed would fight for their own safety rather than take an alternative course of action.107 Moreover, Oleinik’s study also demonstrates how high knowledge of how to ‘defend yourself ’ is ranked in inmate subculture, a norm that can also be observed in the numerous examples of multiple Gulag memoirists arriving in new locations.108 For example, Victor Herman was able to earn the respect of a high-ranking prisoner in a camp near Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) through his fighting ability. The criminal authority, described in this

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instance as an ataman, confused Herman for an urka (or ‘wolfblood’) after observing an encounter with several recidivists attempting to assault him shortly after he had arrived in a new cell: ‘Hey, fighter! I want to talk with you. It is the Ataman who wants you, fighter! Come here!’ I turned around very slowly. ‘You calling me?’ I said. ‘Yes. Please’, the man in the corner answered, smiling. ‘You, fighter. Please!’ I walked over to him – and as I went I could tell the others had stopped what they were doing and were watching me as I went. I stood under his berth, and he leaned himself around to address me confidently. ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘Are you a person? Are you an Urka?’ ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘An Urka, a person. Please, fighter, are you a wolfblood? Are you one of us?’109

In a manner reminiscent of accounts from the Solovki prisoner press, and notions of ‘our own’ and ‘outsiders’, Herman explained how the ataman divided the world between criminals and everyone else. Subsequently, Herman began to pick up penal slang and was invited to join the group leader on his bunk, gaining extra food and bedding as he was called upon to protect against any challenge to his authority. The ataman also explained to Herman a further ritual that demonstrated group boundaries and involved a clean white towel placed at the cell’s main entrance. This towel was understood as being for recidivists only to step on and functioned as an initiation test for everyone entering. Without realising its purpose, Herman had carefully stepped around the towel and therefore avoided the physical beating that was applied to anyone who stepped on it unknowingly.110 Further examples regarding the use of physical force as an initiation were also described by Alexander Dolgun, who defended himself against three members of the shobla yobla (‘rabble’) almost immediately after he arrived at a transit prison. This was broken up by the pakhan Valentin the Intelligent, who ordered the lower-ranked prisoners to back down, stating ‘That man is a dukharik!’ Dolgun would explain that this was not only the word for ‘soul’ but also meant the same as ‘having guts’.111 It is important to note here that, in these examples, both memoirists were male and at a good level of physical fitness. This is particularly the case for Herman, a former boxer and part of a parachute display team before his arrest and incarceration. Nevertheless, it shows again that the ability to defend themselves physically clearly became an important part of the survival toolkit for many Gulag prisoners.

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While the ability to administer physical force could play an important role in many dangerous situations, it was not the only option available for Gulag prisoners. Another important survival technique can be seen through the use of ‘conversational devices’ of violence. As Svetlana Stephenson has shown in her work on Russian youth gangs, mastery of the skills of verbal manipulation and intimidation can mean that physical violence is not always necessary.112 As her study shows, ownership of local territory can be maintained by verbal interactions that demonstrate who is in control of the situation.113 Memoir accounts from the Gulag demonstrate how mastery of these conversational devices represented an important part of avoiding physical violence. This is shown in Janusz Bardach’s altercation with a group of recidivist prisoners on board a ship transporting prisoners to Kolyma in which he adopted criminal slang to convince his wouldbe assailants that he was not, in his own words, a ‘mama’s boy’.114 Similar verbal techniques also allowed some prisoners to come to the aid of others. This was perhaps best demonstrated just a few years earlier when Vladimir Petrov was spared from fighting over the wooden planks which he and a fellow prisoner had occupied in a train heading for Vladivostok by a loud string of obscenities coming from an unknown prisoner sitting beside him, which promptly sent his would-be assailants scampering back into the darkness of the carriage.115 Although prisoners who fought while outnumbered or engaged in conflicts with visibly stronger opponents often gained the respect of other prisoners, refusal could see them transformed into a daily victim of violence. The presentation of oneself as being willing to use violence in these cases often struck a balance between what was actually needed and simply showing signs of bravado. As Randall Collins shows, many potentially violent situations have a strong aspect of staging, in terms of gaining both dominance over the situation and situational respect (i.e. not backing down but nevertheless avoiding conflict). Therefore, merely displaying any knowledge or prior experience of fighting can sometimes provide a display of an individual’s capacity to defend oneself, which serves to deter violence.116 In female sections of the camps, marginalisation often took on similar forms as with the men, although there appear to be proportionally fewer examples of physical violence in women’s survivor memoirs. The use of this pretence is demonstrated by the American prisoner Margaret Werner after she had arrived at Gorky transit prison. Werner found herself to be the only ‘political’ in her cell, with the remainder of the prisoners, numbering around 20, consisting of ‘so-called Blatnoi’ who were convicted of a range of crimes such as burglary and murder. Describing their language as being abominable, Werner recalled how she was able to adapt to these new surroundings:

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I decided to speak as they did to establish common ground and mutual rapport. I would adopt their aggressiveness and severity. I had to become one of them – a Blatnoi. I had to change my attitude, my habits, the way I walked, my very thought patterns. I needed a whole new mind-set. This was strictly on-the-job training. I had to reinvent myself for the survival of the fittest in a mental as well as physical tough-woman competition. And my new stance of power and clout proved to be an invaluable tactic, because not one of the other women in the cell dared to assault, rob, or otherwise harm me. My act was my suit of armour.117

In an environment where strong communal reputations are at stake, these acts can be perceived not only as ways of making instrumental gains or instant gratification but also as honourable displays, with prisoners gaining agency by constructing themselves as elite prize fighters.118 As seen in Svetlana Stephenson’s work on Russian youth gangs, these elevated positions are grounded in repetitively enacted performances and specific honour codes, becoming a way of confirming reputation and status within group hierarchies. The importance of these honour codes in the Gulag is further displayed by Janusz Bardach’s account of being sent to the penalty isolator after a heated argument and brawl with a fellow convict nicknamed ‘Little Hand’ (evidently a pickpocket). Bardach later lamented that he should have ‘struck back the first few times he hit and pushed me’, as this ‘was one of the codes of camp life’, suggesting that prisoners were often forced to fight each other one on one as a way to settle their disputes. Describing how ‘Little Hand’ was physically bigger, and would have probably given him a beating, Bardach revealed that even defeat would have meant that he established himself amongst the recidivists and therefore gained their respect.119 Carceral identities between many prisoners in the Gulag were, therefore, enforced through the ability to exercise violence and display toughness, bravery and fearlessness. In a society defined, often by the prisoners themselves, as one of honour and respect, fighting often took on a ritualised character and became a key factor in negotiating movement through Gulag society. Some of these same characteristics could also be seen through the manner in which 49ers conducted their own rules of socialisation.

Socialisation After gaining at least the partial attention and respect of criminal authorities, memoirists were sometimes invited to take part in daily rituals. Bardach became the personal guest of Pockmarked after impressing him with his storytelling

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abilities. Stating that group members would not usually ‘break bread’ with outsiders and that meals were an important daily ritual, Bardach added that he had been informed that allowing someone to eat from the same bowl, or sharing a piece of bread, was seen as a rite of initiation into the group.120 Alexander Dolgun reinforces Bardach’s account by describing his inclusion in mealtime rituals after also agreeing to become a storyteller. In this instance, Dolgun was given smoked sausage and soup by the pakhan Valentin while he recovered from a lengthy transport. After he woke, Dolgun was included in a small circle of recidivists (excluding shobla yobla) in passing around a mug of chefir before being informed that his storytelling duties would duly commence.121 In these two instances, Dolgun recalled the plot of the film 13 Rue Madeline (1946) while Bardach told stories of his youth in Poland and lifted further examples from the Wild West novels of the German writer Karl May. However, these accounts were far from isolated, as many other memoirists, including the former Spartak Moscow footballer Nikolai Starostin, recalled how their performances as orators aided the expansion of their individual survival network.122 Given its exceptional scarcity, food and drink played a central role in some of the well-developed rituals and systems of mutual care that were used to signify group boundaries, strengthen morale and demonstrate the importance of protecting each other.123 Moreover, Karlo Stanjer would recall how deprivation of food became an important part of the array of punishment rituals that could be implemented for stealing from other gang members.124 What this evidence shows is that the rudimentary prison gangs clearly had their own notion of reciprocal support. This has been a fairly common observation when looking at other ‘total institutions’ where, as Erving Goffman suggests, some inmates develop ‘a tendency to support one another under all circumstances’.125 Notions of reciprocal support during internment can be further seen amongst captured soldiers in prisoner-of-war camps, where food eaten together was viewed as a simple but nevertheless profound source of sociability, as groups guarded everything they could for their own members.126 In the Russian criminal context, evidence of reciprocal support can be seen in earlier formations such as Vanka Kain’s bandit group, the travelling criminal artel’, and communal funds between late imperial prisoners.127Although they are absent from discussions in the prisoner press from the camps of the 1920s, forms of mutual aid re-emerged during the following decade as some inmates transferred a percentage of their own food and money given by friends and relatives to prisoners who had no outside assistance.128 While there is little evidence over the next two decades of communal funds existing anywhere other

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than in centrally located prisons, Anton Oleinik suggests that the term obshchak reappeared towards the beginning of the 1950s to describe an illicit tax imposed by members of criminal gangs.129 Alongside its use to indicate a communal fund, prisoners appropriated the term kolhoz (collective farm) to describe the ritual of eating together.130 During the 1960s, kolhoz seems to have been abandoned in favour of new alternatives but the importance of mealtimes remained in place, with the prison expression ‘eating bread with someone’ holding a meaning close to the verb ‘to trust’.131 Trading or sharing of food and drinks, a rare and therefore important commodity behind the barbed wire, encouraged prisoners to open up to one another, particularly in case of chefir and black-market alcohol. While the issue of trust between groups of prisoners remains an intensely divisive topic amongst contemporary penologists, survivor accounts suggest that daily life in the Gulag was imbued with a hostile atmosphere that encouraged suspicion.132 It is for this reason that Shalamov speculated that the‘commandments’ for all new prisoners in the 1930s were three simple imperatives not to believe, be afraid or ask.133 Although the de facto absence of the public and private border should have, theoretically, facilitated mutual interaction between Gulag prisoners, the historical encouragement of denunciations against other inmates (which had similarly been the case in tsarist penal camps) ensured that the development of trust was down to its bare bones.134 The division of camp life into separate zones and the ‘collective principle’ helped to shape Gulag prisoner society in specific ways.135 While life in the barracks allowed small social groups, such as criminal gangs, to form, the regularity of (at best) disciplinary proceedings and transfer also ensured that they remained inherently unstable and often ephemeral. These low levels of trust ensured that prisoners were continually suspicious of each other, as is shown by the hostility towards Dolgun by the shobla yobla (‘rabble’) who were not included in the chefir ritual (especially as he was a recent arrival). Therefore, while recidivists retained much of the same hierarchical structures as criminal groups outside the zone, with all members being subordinate to the pakhan, entry into daily rituals was not solely reserved for those with criminal experience but was open to anyone who could simply make daily lives more comfortable or indeed entertaining. In this sense, we should not be surprised to see memoirists taking small roles in group activities alongside the 49ers, even if this only appears to be a sip of chefir in exchange for a story, as an indefinite fragmentation of social life, reflecting the struggle for subsistence in the camps, ensured interaction between prisoners of radically diverse backgrounds.136 Yet, historically, and given their activities outside of the camps, recidivists were

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more likely to have presupposed notions of loyalty and reciprocal support. They also found unity under common factors such as being honest (as long as they were an ‘honest’ thief), avoiding conflict, not undermining each other’s authority, sharing everything and not overly insulting other members.137 The origins of this prisoner code can be seen across time and space: it emanates from a number of general principles that continue to bond inmates together around the globe.

The prisoner code It has long been established amongst criminologists and prison experts that gangs are often guided by their own particular set of rules which controls even the most intricate details of their daily lives. Former prisoners and researchers alike both refer broadly to the same basic code, despite differences in names, regardless of the location and characteristics of the institution.138 Donald Clemmer has described how inmates in the United States referred to an oral code that was learnt solely by word of mouth and through experience, suggesting that it ‘is not particular to our prison, but exists in all prisons as well as in the culture of the underworld’.139 More recently, Williams and Fish have added to this by showing how the convict code provides ‘the legal environment’ of the penal system. Their analysis highlights that this prisoner code consistently approves any kind of abuse against the penal administrators, who represent the society that rejected and imprisoned them.140 In Russian criminal and prison folklore, this code is most commonly referred to, both inside and outside of penality, as vorovskoi zakon (‘thieves’ law’).141 Basic components of vorovskoi zakon can be seen through the recollections of Gulag memoirists who describe how norms governing everyday situations, such as how to play cards and behave with other prisoners, were circulated throughout the camps. This association with the more detailed vory v zakone informal code known as ponyatiya (‘understandings’) remains extremely problematic, however. According to Varese, the first written evidence of ponyatiya appears as part of a report sent to the Procurator General of the USSR in July 1955.142 Based seemingly on Italian organised crime groups, whose roots could be traced back to unification in 1860, criminal folklore dictates how the ‘within the law’ part of their name came from a monk-like adherence to their ponyatiya.143 Despite their enlarged reputation, suggesting a much higher number of participants than was the case in reality, the vory are thought to have been less than 10 per cent of

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criminal inmates during the zenith of the Stalinist Gulag following the Second World War.144 In his study of Georgian organised crime, Gavin Slade has described how ‘thieves in law’ have assimilated many aspects of wider urka subculture and vice versa.145 Therefore, the unwritten prisoner code during this period of 1924–53 was a lot more straightforward than the detailed ‘understandings’ of the vory v zakone.146 The code that united prisoners during the period covered by this book is, therefore, best understood as an unwritten set of norms which roughly guided individuals along the divide between who was considered to be ‘our own’ and virtually everyone else. This meant that the code affected not only relationships between different categories of prisoners in varying ways, but also those between recidivists and the camp authorities. Although individual groups could and would add more detailed minutiae, more often than not in relation to card games, this code was informed by two inflexible basic tenets: firstly, hostility toward any forms of authority and secondly, not informing on fellow members (both, of course, overlapping in their overarching ideal). The simplicity of these two main principles meant that the prisoner code was widely understood even amongst those who declined to follow it. The first tenet, hostility towards the authorities, often manifested itself through a systematic refusal to work for the camp regime. Throughout the camp system this became known as otrisalovka, which also included instances of self-mutilation.147 Like groups of radical Christians who refused to obey orders from the largely anti-religious regime, negation of work duties formed an important component of the prisoner code, again serving to undermine the efforts of the authorities to control their incarcerated population. Karlo Stanjer helps provide us with an insight into this universal prohibition against working, detailing how prisoners who had followed this principle were confined to the disciplinary barracks during his incarceration in Norilsk during the late 1930s.148 In practice, however, this threat of neglecting work duties was not always carried out, even by members of vory v zakone who were often the most dogmatic in sticking to their ‘understandings’.149 By the time of the 1960s, when Sergei Dovlatov was a camp guard, this element of the code seemed to have all but disappeared. In his later novel The Zone, Dovlatov described an interaction between the recidivist prisoner Kuptsov and a camp guard who informed him that ‘Your Code has outlived its time. All the Code men have cracked.’150 The collapse of the code which the camp guard was referring to here was the eventual outcome of the prisoner-on-prisoner violence during the Second World War when the suki were seen to have triumphed over the vory, who had not only

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remained in the camp during the conflict but found the continued co-operation with the regime of the opposing group on their return completely abhorrent. This second interlinking principle of hostility towards informers did not emerge following the actions of suki in the immediate aftermath of victory in the Second World War, however, but can be seen in an article from the Solovki prisoner press of the 1920s. The piece was written by a prisoner under the name G. A. Boduhin who described in his opening scene the interrogation of a young shpana (‘habitual prisoner’) by the camp authorities. The author described how the inmate fervently protested that frayery had become informants and were providing information to the camp guards.151 In the case of this article, Boduhin found it of ‘significant value’ that the inmate was so young, suggesting that the divide between svoi and frayery had not existed before the 1917 revolution (which of course it had). Rather than being based on the temporal relationship between inmates in Russia, however, this prohibition against supplying information was more akin to the time-honoured criminal tradition of not ‘being a snitch’ or ‘ratting each other out’. Most famously, this tenet would again take on much greater significance during suchya voina and can be seen in Lev Kopelev’s account of a prisoner nicknamed ‘Karapet the Bomber’ who implored that ‘a thief cannot squeal on another thief to a “viper” [the term for camp authorities]’.152

Conclusion Prisoner society in the Gulag was, therefore, not just defined by individual group hierarchies (although this certainly fed into it) but also by how recidivist gangs interacted with other prisoner categories. Involved in this complex web of relationships were pridurki (soft-job workers), whose assignments to medical or various administrative posts sometimes saw them separated into their own barracks.153 Given their service in aiding the running of the camps, as recalled by several memoirists, this often exposed pridurki to direct animosity from criminal gangs whose worldview was formed in opposition to any authority structures. Suffice to say, political prisoners continued to be viewed as ‘outsiders’ as the classbased divisions from late tsarist penality and the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s continued or, if anything, increased, due to the rising population and deteriorating conditions. The relationship between them and criminal inmates remained much the same as had been represented in the article by Borisov, the prisoner at Solovki who suggested in 1925 that frayery were not enemies to be hated but provided recidivists with the very means of their survival.154

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Likewise, the bulk of Gulag inmates, known as muzhiki (‘peasants’) and bytoviki (‘everyday lifers’), continued to be seen as naive and open to exploitation. As a result, they were often forced by recidivists to complete work duties that had been formally allocated to them.155 Similarly, the camp system’s various different nationalities continued to group together both in an attempt to continue some of their cultural traditions and for added security, lest they too fall victims to the dominance of the criminal gangs.156 Underneath these groups came various lower-ranked prisoners, including the so-called ‘goners’ who were so weakened by starvation and other forms of illness that they were unable to complete work duties and therefore obtain rations.157 As in multiple other prisoner societies, the lowest rung was reserved for sex offenders and homosexuals, who would be referred to as ‘untouchables’ (also ‘degraded ones’ or ‘cockerels’) and often forbidden from eating out of common bowls and banned from communal spaces. These prisoners were also understood as being available sexually to criminal prisoners whose perceived normality was seen to be preserved by the gendered active/passive divide.158 These prisoners could also be subjected to humiliating forced tattoos, which projected this status throughout Gulag society. Along with defining relations with female prisoners and the camp authorities, the prisoner code further strengthened the divide between those who could be considered ‘our own’ and other inmates. This hegemony would be further reinforced by the widespread use of tattoos and slang, which sent strong symbols throughout Gulag society.

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4

Communication: Tattoos and slang

Of all the Gulag’s famous chronicles it is undoubtedly Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago that creates one of the most vivid depictions of the proclivity of tattooing among prisoners. Solzhenitsyn recalls how recidivists ‘surrendered their bronze skin’ in order to satisfy a variety of artistic, erotic and even moral needs.1 Like a religious pendant hanging around one’s neck, portraits of Lenin and Stalin inked, according to Solzhenitsyn, ‘next to their hearts’ provide some of the most iconic and lasting images in the entire collection of Russian criminal tattoos. These images are further referenced in songs by Vladimir Vysotsky and proudly displayed by prisoners in Alix Lambert’s landmark documentary The Mark of Cain (2001). Commentators have long argued that prisoners had portraits of the two leaders inked on them to avoid being executed by prison guards, pointing to how European sailors would have the image of Christ’s crucifixion tattooed upon their backs to avoid floggings.2 Despite this religious precedent, however, guards refusing to shoot at the prisoners appears to be an unlikely scenario. However, this does show how the platform that mainstream media has afforded the Russian criminal tattoo industry has often resulted in the conflation of folklore and historical fact. Seemingly omnipresent in memoir accounts, tattoos are now commonly viewed as being a natural component of Gulag social life and therefore not subjected to proper historical study. The continued dominance of a solitary source, the drawings of former camp employee Danzig Baldaev, has led to discussions of their explicit nature taking precedence over the more practical role tattoos played during the period 1924–53.3 Forms of visual and verbal communication, seen most predominantly in tattoos and slang, were often developed from nineteenth-century criminal traditions and played a number of key roles in prisoner society. Upon arrival in the camps, prisoners were greeted with a multiplicity of signs and signals from the authorities. This famously included brass bands playing upon arrival, and slogans hung over entrance gates which adopted the wider language of the Soviet state in helping to reinforce the Gulag’s re-educative mission. These strong 85

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ideological visuals extended to prisoner publications, stengazety (wall newspapers) and explicit outdoor propaganda displays which indicated that failure to fulfil individual work quotas could lead to starvation and ultimately death.4 Prisoners responded to this in kind, developing their own informal methods that were not entirely divorced from official categories. One clear demonstration of how the production of formal and informal images could intersect can be seen in the experience of the American prisoner Thomas Sgovio. Arrested outside the US Embassy in 1938, Sgovio was able to expand his survival network at Kolyma by becoming a ‘barrack artist’, tattooing his fellow inmates with a variety of images ranging from ‘I love my mother’ to vodka bottles, the ace of spades and naked women. These artistic talents were soon noticed by camp authorities, who immediately transferred Sgovio and appointed him in a new role creating their own propaganda displays.5 Criminal slang became another subject of public interest in the 1990s, but discussions have mainly been limited to publications of dictionaries or the briefest of references by memoirists to the vulgar language used by recidivists.6 Although an understanding of the scale and variety of terms remains important in showing how criminal subculture spread throughout the institutions of the Gulag and beyond, a closer reading of some of these texts can help provide access to the prisoner’s perspective. This includes the varying levels of secrecy attached to some terms (which were more hidden than others) and the use of language in stigmatising inmates and assigning them to particular places in the hierarchy. A more detailed look at visual and verbal communication during the period 1924–53 shows that fascination with tattoos and slang did not arise with the fall of communism and its aftermath: studies were undertaken by the criminological bureaus and articles were published in prisoner newspapers of the 1920s. Moreover, consideration of how these visual and verbal devices worked as twin ‘carriers of culture’ demonstrates how they were linked with other prisoner rituals, while at the same time helping to solidify prisoner hierarchies and boundaries.7

Tattoos Although the collection of images drawn by Danzig Baldaev is not without its problems, mainly in terms of dating the drawings accurately, the variety of images displayed in the three-volume collection helps to challenge previous historiography, which has regarded recidivists as ‘easily identifiable and easily

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descripted’.8 While contemporary media and non-academic publications continue to focus on the more violent, perverse and sexual images drawn by Baldaev, Miriam Dobson and Julie Draskoczy have highlighted more subtle trends, such as anti-Semitism and the relationship with official Soviet values.9 With inmate population and composition in a state of near constant flux, prisoner tattoos helped to inform power relations by providing a universal set of norms and values which even illiterate convicts, of which there were many amongst the 49ers, could understand.10 In the same manner as official categorisation, which sought to distinguish convicts according to the particular article they were sentenced under, prisoner tattoos conveyed important (and alternative) information regarding an individual’s biography. They would, in essence, become a passport that inmates hoped would guarantee passage through penal society as they were questioned whether they ‘stood by’ them, with the threat of brutal consequences if the inked images did not correspond to the truth. In an environment that looked upon lengthy criminal experience, number of convictions and locations of previous sentences as some of the main enhancers of status, tattoos designated an individual prisoner’s rank in the penal hierarchy. Collectively, tattoos further functioned as a way of sharing stereotypes of group behaviour, setting out the rules necessary for maintaining order by invoking a sense of collegiality, tradition and willingness to uphold the prisoner code.11 Yet the inscription of ‘social reality’ upon their own bodies could have particularly adverse consequences, as previously anonymous individuals could be identified through dictionaries circulated amongst secret police operatives.12 Illegitimately revising conventional social conduct with their own ‘laws’ and rituals meant that tattoos became both the cause and effect of exclusion from mainstream society, with inmates often branding themselves as a member of a lower order.13 This, however, was not seen in an entirely negative way as it helped to uphold the binary between ‘our own’ and ‘outsiders’. While some of the most prominent and common images were shaped by major events in the early Soviet period, a widespread practice of tattooing had been developed in the criminal and penal systems of the previous century. In fact, the origins of tattooing in the territory of what was to become the Soviet Union could be traced all the way back to the fifth-century Altai Republic.14 These indigenous Scythian tattoos, however, were far removed from the practice that began to develop more extensively several hundred years later. This boom was aided by the notoriety of famous adventurers such as ‘the American’, Feodor Tolstoi (a first cousin of the great novelist Leo), who was reportedly tattooed by a native Polynesian artist on the Aleutian Islands of North America.15 In the

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mid-nineteenth century, the popularity of tattooing continued to rise in line with a global trend, as images often appeared alongside the ‘exotic’ displays of Africans, Asians and Native Americans at world fairs and sideshows.16 Despite its growing popularity amongst high society, many depictions of early nineteenth-century tattooing continued to portray the practice as almost entirely the domain of soldiers, sailors and criminals.17 As with other punitive societies, one of the measures employed by the tsarist state was to brand prisoners on the forehead. This could be with the letters KAT , indicating katorzhnik (‘prisoner’), or VOR (‘thief ’), which consigned the wearer to exile from the social body – as seen very literally in the case of Vanka Kain, who was removed to the Gulf of Finland after being branded.18 Inadvertently, this led to the emergence of a more widely practised form of tattooing among inmates, who would invert the process of the autocratic state by marking their own foreheads with barbed wire and eyelids with slogans such as ‘don’t wake’ (areas that continued to be popular amongst vory until their more recent shunning of visible tattoos in favour of sharp business suits). Abby Schrader has argued that this self-branding allowed individuals to retain a degree of independence over their own bodies and is evidence of the deeper psychological effect played by late imperial punitive measures.19 Narratives of tattoo culture written by visitors to late tsarist penal camps, however, continued to be more influenced by a Lombrosian approach which suggested tattooing was an extension of atavistic primitivism and linked the images to naval and religious themes rather than seeing them as part of a developing inmate culture.20 In his dispatches from the island penal colony, Doroshevich referred to tattoos as being ‘Sakhalin pictures’ and gave a lengthy description of the prisoner Iorkin, who was ‘tattooed from head to toe’. This included symbols of ‘hope and salvation’ such as a number of large crosses on his chest alongside anchors and scriptural quotes on his arms.21 Upon catching sight of Iorkin, Doroshevich remarked that the Italian criminologist Lombroso ‘would undoubtedly take his photograph and add him to his collection’.22 Criminologists in the early Soviet period denied these purported atavistic origins, however, citing the work of French contemporaries who claimed that images were either created out of boredom or made in order to emulate fellow prisoners.23 In an article from the 1924 volume Criminal World Moscow, Mikhail Gernet claimed that Russian prisoners were ‘more original’ than inmates from any other countries, even stating his belief that that a ‘world record’ had been set by one prisoner who had a copy of the famous Viktor Vasnetsov painting Bogatyrs inked across his chest.24 Gernet stated that the attention to detail and the range of colours displayed by Russian prisoner tattoos made them unique, as

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European convicts rarely had images containing more than a single shade.25 The main purpose behind Gernet’s article, he claimed, was to expand on Lombroso’s work on tattoos from over half a century earlier. With the use of volunteers from Moscow State University who interviewed 198 adult prisoners and 37 juveniles from penal institutions across the city regarding their body art, Gernet analysed the results and compared them not only to Lombroso’s study but to a number of others that had taken place in France and Belgium during the intervening years. Gernet’s study highlighted that images displayed on the bodies of Russian prisoners contained many common Western themes, such as visual autobiography, devotional tattoos and declarations of love (often referred to as ‘men’s ruin’), which could be found on inmates from a number of different countries during the same time period.26 Statistics compiled by the student volunteers indicated that the practice was reasonably popular during this period, with around 25 per cent of prisoners having at least one tattoo.27 Gernet intimated, however, that the spread of tattoos amongst criminal recidivists was ‘beyond doubt’, with the highest percentage of tattoos upon those who had several convictions.28 With regard to the geographical location where the tattoo had been obtained, Gernet focused on how the data pointed towards the bigger cities (43.5 per cent) and various penal institutions (an average of 22.5 per cent). This argument relating to the link between the urban environment and crime fitted into the wider thesis of publication, with Gernet showing a large spread amongst prisoners originating from major cities (68 per cent) compared to those from rural areas. This also helped to emphasise the direct connection between penality and tattooing, therefore denying the atavistic trend suggested by Lombroso.29 Although they are only mentioned briefly by Gernet, there were interesting figures amongst prisoners tattooed whilst serving in various army regiments and battalions (totalling 30.63 per cent).30 Interestingly, the category of ‘Disciplinary Battalion’ was included by Gernet amongst his list of penal institutions and not military brigades, although its definition is open to interpretation. Like individuals such as ‘the American’, Gernet’s article confirmed that tattoos were also popular amongst the ‘propertied class’ although his discussion was limited to one account of a London artist nicknamed ‘the Outlaw’ whose noble clients included women keen to have tattoos on their hands and calves and hidden behind their garters. The study also showed how, as a general rule, prisoners were tattooed immediately after their sentencing or when sent to their first site of incarceration. Similar observations were also found by a series of interviews conducted in Ukraine during the 1920s, which stated that 60–70 per cent of tattooed inmates had first acquired them while behind bars. Abby Schrader has shown that studies

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of tattooing practices amongst prisoners from the 1940s–1980s have all reached similar conclusions.31 Similar to the fashioning of playing cards from whatever was available, tattoos were also created by repurposing artefacts in a manner that differed from their original intention. Erving Goffman describes a similar prevalence of ‘make-dos’ in his study of asylums, describing a number of alternative uses for objects and using the example of ‘pricking’ (tattooing) while on a naval ship.32 Gernet described how this process worked in Moscow prisons, stating that in most cases three needles attached to a stick helped create the device itself.33 Thomas Sgovio later described how an improvised dye could be created by melting burned rubber from boot soles, which was then mixed together with sugar and water. Other alternatives to using needles included sewing or notebook wire with soot, dirt, cigarette ash or a burnt matchhead functioning as a replacement for ink.34 Although urinating on the freshly made image was thought to prevent the spread of disease, many inmates still became infected.35 Some prisoners would pass out from the pain of these makeshift procedures while others attempted to forcibly remove them with razor blades (in particular the tattoos applied as humiliating punishments).36 The 1924 study showed that among the motivations for acquiring tattoos, imitation of others ranked highest (41.32 per cent), closely followed by boredom (39.01 per cent). Other reasons, such as vanity and displaying friendship, were of more marginal significance. Although Gernet’s analysis focused on ennui as the main factor, the more aesthetic reasons are also clear. One prisoner in particular, who received interest from the student volunteers regarding a large crucifixion scene on his chest, promptly acquired a new tattoo after the first set of interviews, which was then proudly displayed to the group on their second visit.37 Their findings also indicated an overlap between juvenile offenders and adult criminals by showing that although tattoos were popular in the age range of 14–20 (30.92 per cent), this was surpassed by 20–25 year olds (39.92 per cent). Prisoners did not often limit themselves to one design, with the highest figure resting between two and five images (21.67 per cent), with one prisoner reportedly having more than 40 different images. Tattoos covering the entire body were rare, with the report indicating that the most common areas were cheeks, chest, forearms and hands. Even a cursory look through Danzig Baldaev’s drawings indicates that tattoos would continue to be displayed on similar areas of the body, although those on the hip apparently became more frequent over time. What we can also learn from the collection compiled by Baldaev is that many tattoos, and their varying positions on the body, contained different linguistic contexts in regard to the arrangement of prisoner society. The upper body area

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(head, neck, shoulders and chest) was often used for tattoos indicating prestige, while the feet and legs would be reserved for jokes, wordplay or other types of humorous images. Elite tattoos on the chest, such as those described by Solzhenitsyn and many others, were known as a ‘talisman’ and reportedly reserved solely for the pakhan. These images took multiple forms including tigers, skulls, werewolves, crowns, scarab beetles and the suits of diamonds and clubs. There was also a regular place for images of eagles, a symbol used as a punitive brand by Peter the Great in the eighteenth century. Talisman tattoos often combined several of the aforementioned images together and also included religious iconography such as Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Orthodox crosses and floating guardian angels (quite often presented in uncompromising positions). As in the photography of the documentary filmmaker and artist Alix Lambert, the image of an Orthodox church represented a distinct symbol of its own, with the number of onion-domes indicating the amount of times a prisoner had been incarcerated.38 The role of the shestyorka (‘sixers’, lackeys) could be indicated by ‘shoulder straps’ or military epaulets, denoting previous convictions and their position within penal society. Demonstrating these honours also apparently glorified their role, making them seem more akin to a ‘lieutenant’ (as they were sometimes described). Three small skulls or stars included in similar ribboned designs designated the wearer not to be a ‘Slave of the Camps’, further indicating their refusal to perform work duties and their unwavering loyalty to the pakhan. Alongside shestyorka, or at times possibly a duty they carried out themselves, was the role of ‘zone executioner’. These were reportedly trained killers who took orders to assassinate fellow inmates from the pakhan or on the orders of criminal ‘courts’. As demonstrated in Baldaev’s drawings, zone executioners could often be identified by a ‘warrior’s grin’, which frequently included the image of a tiger, seen as a symbol of strength and savagery.39 By acting on instructions from the pakhan, zone executioners were bound by the prisoner code to accept their punishment from the authorities and remain silent regarding the involvement of more senior figures. These tattoos often included text indicating animosity towards suki, showing that the need for violence took on greater importance after the fracturing of criminal groups during the Second World War. Tattoos were not just commonplace for the upper echelons, such as the vory, but could be displayed by criminals of all ranks. Intricate designs on often exposed areas of the body, such as the feet and hands, carried varied information regarding a prisoner’s identity. This could include ten letters spread across the

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toes spelling a particular location where the prisoner had spent time, or rings around the fingers indicating their criminal specialisation, such as a bandit. Tattoos of this type were worn by a wide range of recidivists and demonstrate the increased diversification in criminal society which had taken place originally following industrialisation and urbanisation. Other common images included a single dot ring on the finger, signifying an orphan, five dots, representing four guard towers and an inmate, which simply indicated imprisonment, and crosses on the knuckles, which further recorded the number of incarcerations. Added to this could be lovers’ names or individuals’ klichka, with Likhachev stating that ‘every thief has his own nickname, he tattoos it or its symbol to his body and does not change it even if the criminal investigators know it’.40 As suggested earlier in the chapter with identification through notebooks circulated by detectives, this shows how klichka were retained even if it was detrimental to continued criminal activities. Words tattooed across the hand, echoing the acronymic branding of the late tsarist period, likewise contained a number of concealed meanings. These were often ironic twists on official slogans or acronyms with double meanings. Suffice to say, as with camp slang, these were widely known across the penal system. Examples of double meanings included the acronym MIR (‘peace’ or ‘Shooting Will Reform Me’), alongside ZLO (‘evil’ and also ‘I Will Avenge All That is Legal’) and BOG (‘God’ or ‘I’ve Been Sentenced by the State’). Similarly, the acronym for the secret police, NKVD , was often used to express the sentiment ‘There’s no friendship stronger than that of criminals’.41 The palm of the hand was used to convey varying information, with a short sentence written across as a quick insult towards other inmates or camp authorities, whilst other popular symbols included cats, not only representing ability and luck but also forming part of the abstract family of thieves. Although the Baldaev collection suggests a more detailed system of codification, results from the 1924 survey claimed that only around 2 per cent of tattoos were used in this manner. Gernet even went as far as to state that prisoners hid tattoos on various parts of their anatomy, as opposed to showing them out of pride or custom.42 This would make the criminal tattoos of the 1920s more akin to those hidden by the Japanese yakuza (or other groups of criminals) than the images prominently displayed on extremely visible areas of the body by later vory v zakone members. Statistics amongst various offenders revealed the greatest number of tattoos among swindlers (17 per cent of all convicted under the relevant article) and robbers (16 per cent), closely followed by bandits and murderers (both 14 per cent). Mikhail Gernet, however, highlighted the high

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percentage amongst those considered ‘socially dangerous’, who had all been tattooed while incarcerated. According to his commentary, in most cases this represented persons with multiple convictions with no right of residence in major cities. The group he was explicitly referring to here were, of course, the 49ers. Just as some images could be used to indicate prestige, however, a number of tattoos also symbolised a downward fall through penal society. Solzhenitsyn is undoubtedly correct in his assertion that tattoos often satisfied an individual’s sexual desire, yet many similar erotic images could also be forcibly applied as a punishment. Humiliating tattoos depicting various sexual acts, along with the suits of hearts or diamonds, were often applied to the loser of card games and other transgressors of the prisoner code. This would indicate them to be an opushchennye (‘untouchable’), deprived thereafter of any status and facing the very real and immediate threat of sexual violence from higher-ranking prisoners.43 Although Gernet’s article did not refer to any punitive dimension explicitly, it did state that (although they represented a relatively low number of tattoos) genitals and buttocks were reserved for ‘shameless content’. Gernet’s claims were supported by other commentators who agreed that tattoos on this area were worn by ‘passive pederasts’. Further studies, such as those undertaken in France, showed that photos depicting female faces (which were notable for their detail) on the backs of homosexual male prisoners indicated that they took a ‘feminine’ role during sex. Gernet acknowledged that, after leaving prison, many renounced this ‘vice’ and tried to deceive themselves about their sexual history even with the tattoo serving as a permanent reminder.44 Although they appear less frequently in Gulag memoirs, female criminal tattoos contain a large degree of overlap with their male counterparts. Like the fictional ‘tattooed woman’ from Podogin’s play The Aristocrats, Varlam Shalamov described a thief named Sima Sosnovskaya as being tattooed from her head to her feet in ‘sexual scenes of the most unusual sort’.45 In his 1924 article, Gernet claimed that tattoos amongst women in Moscow prisons were rare and mainly confined to prostitutes, adding that both men and women who inscribed the identity of a prostitute had essentially taken a ‘lifetime’ oath to the profession.46 Rather than photographs, the chapter included drawings of prostitute tattoos from a French collection. Female tattoos to designate a prostitute also indicated that their owner could not be forced to perform work duties, reinforcing both of the main components of the informal prisoner code and also in breach of formal camp guidelines. This would suggest that the label of ‘prostitute’, when applied to women rather than men, saw them ranking higher in prisoner society (although they were still on a much lower rung than many male recidivists).

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Close examination of Danzig Baldaev’s drawings shows that female tattoos were not always reserved for prostitutes and the lower classes and were, generally speaking, slightly more devotional or ornamental than those on men. Common images on female inmates included flowers, birds, hearts, angels and wreaths. Unlike vory v zakone tattoos, which were often displayed on highly visible areas of the body, tattoos on criminal women were frequently hidden from view. They were also often autobiographical, recalling experiences such as losing their virginity (to either a man or woman), marriage, and the birth or death dates of close friends or family members. Images demonstrating homosexuality include musical instruments, such as a guitar or violin being played by female figures. Tattoos observed by Danzig Baldaev amongst female prisoners across a lengthy period in various different penal locations appear to lack the same punitive dimensions as those on men, although submissiveness could be often be displayed alongside alternative images to indicate those who took a more dominant role.47 A number of other tattoos represented initiation into criminal society. These tattoos often reflected social problems outside of the camps, particularly that of the besprizorniki.48 This was added to by the hardening of penal practices against juveniles in the years leading up to 1941.49 Initiation tattoos on juveniles could display a rose or tulip wrapped in barbed wire and were often tattooed on the occasion of a prisoner’s sixteenth or eighteenth birthday. This represented them being symbolically ‘born’ into criminal society and was seen as a sign of the abandonment of their youth. Many young inmates had been subjected to various initiation tests as they worked their way up through the penal hierarchy, ending with their ‘social death’ and this tattoo confirming their place in adult criminal spheres. Added to this, images tattooed onto inmates who were born in Gulag orphanages were attributed a higher status in penal society, and were seen as a testament to the hardships of growing up inside the ‘zone’. As with adults, tattoos among juveniles were not solely confined to the sphere of imprisonment. Gernet’s study confirmed that 16 interviewees had received their first tattoo during previous convictions whilst 15 obtained them at home, while living on the street or in another location unrelated to penality (such as on board a ship). Gernet pointed solely to the high percentage of juveniles (32.4 per cent) who received their first tattoo between the ages of 9 and 13, yet his statistics revealed that the ages of 14–15 proved more popular (43.2 per cent). Out of the interviewees, 14 stated that the reason for their tattoo was the imitation of others (37.8 per cent), six out of boredom (16.2 per cent) and four suggested that they wanted to remember an important event or time in their life (10.8 per cent). Gernet stated that many interviewees regretted or were seemingly indifferent to

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their tattoos, which he suggested strengthened his case for the monotony of their surroundings being the main factor. This indifference was demonstrated by one 16-year-old who was completing his fourth term for theft and had ten tattoos (his first being obtained at ten years of age). These were all allegedly made by other minors in rooming houses, orphanages and juvenile detention centres and the images included butterflies, naked women, skulls, ships, a heart pierced by an arrow, a dolphin, a sailor and the date ‘1916’. Statistics showed that, while this case was indeed an exception and having one tattoo was most commonplace among juveniles (14 out of 37), the location on the body displayed no difference whatsoever to adults with the most on the hands, arms and chest. Alongside tattoos indicating ‘social death’ (i.e. being exiled from the main social body), a multiplicity of images contained themes that revolved around the wearer’s own mortality, reflecting the wide array of threats faced by Gulag prisoners on a daily basis. This can be seen by how the tattooing of ‘autographs’, either real names or klichka, was often regarded as a signature under one’s own life.50 Furthermore, a prisoner’s gravitation towards death was seen to be underlined by three main assertions: a primordial relationship with the possibility of one’s own demise; the recognition of death’s constant presence; and the release of any fear that remained.51 This morbid outlook was often demonstrated through the kind of dark, sardonic humour with which Soviet citizens created jokes about living through the purges of 1937–38.52 One particularly graphic variation on this theme could be found on a tattoo belonging to a long-term prisoner. Their image depicted a skeletal witch-like figure, complete with hooded cloak and breasts, pushing a wheelbarrow seemingly overflowing with skulls. At the bottom of the design was a text copying the propaganda message that hung over the enormous entrance gate to the Vorkuta complex where they had evidently been incarcerated.53 As with many worldwide examples of ‘men’s ruin’  – designs that blamed lovers for the crimes and arrest of the tattoo wearer – there was often a sentimental side to these images. For example, prisoners were regularly tattooed with wellknown quotes from the poet Sergei Esenin, who was, according to Shalamov, the only poet the criminal world recognised.54 Other tattoos also continued similar themes to those found in prisoner songs, such as the lack of freedom and apparent helplessness of the penal environment. Tattoos that apparently depicted an inmate’s mother were relatively common, but these could also be misleading and might instead represent abstract concepts of a mythical older female from within the criminal sphere. This maternal character often took the guise of a brothel madam and/or owner of a malina (‘den’) where recidivists stashed their

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Figure 1 ‘Greetings from the Vorkuta Camps! 1947–1963. In the USSR Labour is a matter of honour, prowess and glory! Shelyabozh, Eletsky, Izhma, Kozhma, Khalmer-South.’ Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, vol. 1. Danzig Baldaev. Published by FUEL © 2003.

loot. Like images of male and female lovers which appeared as cats, also an indication of the criminal’s agility and luck, the idealised mother figure became the frequent subject of prisoner lyrics.55 Similar to the song character ‘Murka’ and notions of returning to ‘my Maria’ from Dmitry Likhachev’s recidivist acquaintance Ovchishnikov, who helped him avoid being crushed by overcrowding en route to Solovki in the 1920s, these female figures were often heavily romanticised both to serve an erotic need and to provide detachment from the grave situation inmates now faced. Many of these criminal tattoos could also contain overt political connotations, as suggested by the slogan on the aforementioned witch-like figure from Vorkuta which contained a paraphrased version of the huge propaganda slogan hanging above the entrance gate. Another tattooed modification of the same propaganda message, ‘work is an act of honour, courage and heroism’, would appear in Janusz Bardach’s description of gang rape which took place in the bath-house at a transit camp in Burepolom (present-day Nizhny Novgorod region) in 1942.56 These slogans were joined by numerous examples of tattoos depicting Lenin and Stalin, such as those described in the opening example from Solzhenitsyn. However, these were also not always as straightforward as first appearances might suggest.

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Figure 2 ‘You little Soviet shit, you are still ass-licking and flogging away for the CPSU and being paid zero point fuck-all and do you want to be a cripple? Think about it!’ Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, vol. 1. Danzig Baldaev. Published by FUEL © 2003.

Portraits of Lenin sometimes contained the acronym ‘VOR’, which contained a dual meaning as the word ‘thief ’ was constructed using the initials from Vozhd Oktiabr’skoi Revolutsii (‘Leader of the October Revolution’). Lenin’s familiar lisp was also regularly included typographically in his satirical parody, while Stalin was frequently portrayed as the devil, a vampire or a ghoul, appearing either alone or alongside Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, sometimes even brandishing a copy of Das Kapital.57 Surrounded by the near-constant ‘visual propaganda’ of the authorities, it is clear that prisoners appropriated state discourse to create their own anti-slogans which were widely known as a ‘grin’ (oskal).58 One of the most powerful expressions of what Nanci Condee defines as ‘propaganda warfare with the authorities’ could be seen in a tattooed imitation of Dmitry Moor’s famous Russian Civil War enlistment poster ‘Have you Volunteered?’.59 Miriam Dobson has previously highlighted many tattoos demonstrating how prisoners could appropriate Soviet language and use it as a template for their own discourse against the regime, suggesting that the camp system should be seen as the mirror of wider society in the way that it enabled prisoners to reverse official values. Gernet’s 1924 article, however, demonstrated that this propensity for satire was not solely confined to the tattoos of the Soviet

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era.60 Claiming that Muscovites had broken the record for ‘political content’, the criminologist referred to a particular tattoo entitled ‘triple alliance’ which depicted a naked Russian emperor and the president of the French republic alongside a buxom woman. This example helps show that the satirical nature and reversal of official values was not just aimed at the Soviet regime but had existed beforehand. It simply happened that the ideological shift after the revolution created a lot of propaganda material which prisoners could satirise. Similarly, Gernet’s study helps us to see that recidivists were tattooed for multiple reasons, much in the same manner as those who had naval and military experience. While the orthodoxy on Gulag prisoner tattoos remains fixated on discovering an intricate system of codification, this apparently had little bearing on inmates during the growth of the forced labour system in the 1930s. It would, therefore, appear to have developed more during the split between vory and suki which took place following the Second World War.

Slang Alongside adapting their tattooed bodies to become a linguistic object, criminal recidivists frequently used a second, more conventional method of verbal communication commonly referred to as blatnaya muzyka (‘criminal music’).61 Although the use of a particular vernacular between criminals in central Europe can be traced back to the fourteenth century, criminal slang in Russia is believed to have derived from an eighteenth-century beggars’ slang named fenya, in which extra syllables, usually ‘fe’ and ‘nya’, were inserted amongst syllables of regular words.62 Distinguishing between various external influences, which also includes words used in the navy and criminals outside of penality, has often proved extremely difficult for scholars, with Victor Chalidze acknowledging ‘a great deal of overlapping between prison speech and thieves’ slang’.63 Like other forms of argot, the original fenya was comprised of both foreign vocabulary and Russian words repurposed with new meanings. For example, the word for police, musor, was believed to have derived from the Yiddish for informant (moser) rather than its usual use in Russian for ‘trash’. Similarly, the Russian word for ‘lynx’ (rys’) was adapted to indicate an individual who had acquired intimate knowledge of prison life.64 Increasing criminal diversification was demonstrated by the transformation of the German Guten Morgen (‘Good Morning’) to describe a theft carried out against men in the early hours, of which Sonka

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‘Golden Hand’ was reported to be the original specialist, as discussed earlier. The commonly used term frayera had Yiddish origins and has often been seen as an indicator of the role played by the Ukrainian city of Odessa in the development of criminal and penal mores.65 Natives of ‘Mama’ Odessa were frequently acknowledged as having particular skills as linguists, thwarting the usual conventions of grammar and syntax to create an argot described by Vlas Doroshevich as ‘not even a language, but a language salad’.66 Widespread use of fenya is thought to have all but died out by the midnineteenth century yet its name continued to be associated with the criminal and prisoner vernacular. Published guides to fenya often mixed its terms with criminal and prison argot, all similar but at the same time discreetly different.67 Some of the earliest Russian collections of criminal argot continued to confuse these variations. This includes P. S. Pallas’s dictionary and Andrej Mejer’s text of an allegedly ‘secret’ Belorussian dialect, which both appeared in 1786. Meanwhile the first printing of Komarov’s Vanka Kain almost a decade later would contain a glossary explaining some of the terms.68 All of these early compilations, however, offered little explanation to the origins and use of the terms. Closer scrutiny of prisoner slang would not appear until the development of nineteenthcentury narratives of imprisonment. Former prisoner Fyodor Dostoevsky famously recorded a number of terms from Omsk Fortress in a special notebook, while Vlas Doroshevich was criticised for his suggested overuse of slang from Sakhalin Island as it was deemed unpalatable for his ‘educated’ audience. More significantly, Sergei Maksimov’s 1871 ethnographic study deduced subtle differences between fenya, blatnaya muzyka (described here as a language used by pickpockets) and other forms of argot, including that used by horse thieves and different types of swindlers. Maksimov also listed a number of other items specific to the carceral arc such as alternate names for money, soup, bread and punishment methods such as the rawhide knout.69 The microscopic lens held to the penal environment provided by the recovery of inmate jargon in these prerevolutionary texts is also something we will see when it comes to later works on the Gulag. Publications of various forms of argot at the dawn of the early twentieth century continued to follow the general trend of simple word lists and dictionaries. Nevertheless, some of these remain impressive achievements, with V. F. Trakhtenberg’s Blatnaia Muzyka compiled from more than 700 entries from prisons in Warsaw, Vilna, St Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa. Accenting words, suggesting clearly defined origins and giving examples of when they could be used, Trakhtenberg’s appendix also contained around 100 proverbs and sayings.

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Following the publication of his dictionary in 1908, however, the upheaval of revolution and civil war seems to have brought about a brief hiatus in printed work on criminal and penal argot. This appears to have lasted until the early NEP period and P. Fabrichnyi’s ‘The Language of the Penal Camp’ which, according to its author, was arranged ‘logically’ rather than alphabetically and included almost 200 entries. Renewed interest thereafter was reinforced by a number of studies such as Vjaceslav Tonkov’s ‘An Essay in the Study of Criminal Argot’ and accompanying dictionary in 1930, followed by E. D. Polivanov’s ‘Thieves’ Cant of Schoolboys and the “Slavonic Language” of the Revolution’ a year later. Several wider works also placed additional emphasis on the influence of words of Western European, Gypsy, Turkish, Jewish and Hebrew origin on criminal slang found in different urban centres.70 This continuing focus of scholarly attention can be seen in the academic writings of former Solovki prisoner Dmitry Likhachev following his release from the camps in 1931. He would continue themes from his work in the criminological cabinet who, Likhachev recalled, were hugely influenced by questions of language and linguistics posed by Dostoevsky. Likhachev would publish two sociolinguistic articles either side of the Second World War, during which time he worked as a proofreader and managed to survive the Nazi onslaught of Leningrad.71 Accompanying his 1933 work Traits of Primordial Primitivism in the Speech of Thieves was a detailed list of argot-related works beginning in the nineteenth century that included relevant popular literature such as Vsevolod Krestovsky’s famous The Slums of St Petersburg (1864). Also containing ‘general studies’ of slang and works attached to a specific location, Likhachev’s extensive bibliography culminated in argot used in a variety of different professions. Listing recidivists alongside beggars, lyrists, cattle merchants and tailors, the main thesis of Likhachev’s piece was that all of these forms of argot were currently in the process of disappearing.72 The writer suggested that the large number of synonyms decreased the value of criminal argot compared to more traditional languages. An example of this could be seen in the 30 variations of vory (‘thieves’), each indicating slightly different professional techniques or geographic targets (and all producing their own corresponding verb).73 Emphasising the signalling function of criminal argot, Likhachev noted that words were often ‘infantile’ and did not allow their audience to return any corresponding questions. This shutting down of any conversation, I would suggest, was exactly the point of many of the word forms. Although he declined to give any examples, for Likhachev the key to criminal slang lay in its ‘emotional expressivity’, which often revealed itself through the

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wide array of swearing.74 With its primitive origins revealed by an extremely basic structure, Likhachev concluded that the criminal slang would soon ‘erode’ alongside various other social groups and professions which created it.75 This process had been apparent in the beginning of the twentieth century with the disappearance of a number of jargons from different professions and Likhachev believed that the remaining examples (such as criminal argot) would soon follow.76 In order to support his argument that slang demonstrated a reversion to a more primitive time, Likhachev refuted the widely accepted orthodoxy that secrecy was vital to criminal argot. Carefully distancing himself from the work of Cesare Lombroso, Likhachev emphasised that the primal origins of criminal slang actually made them more visible (rather than hidden, as the Italian criminologist had stated). This practice, Likhachev argued, evoked images of medieval shamans who were able to command their immediate environment. The former Solovki prisoner did partially concede, however, that despite his theory’s dubious and outdated biological and psychological aspects, Lombroso had been correct in defining some of the ‘degenerative’ characteristics of the offender. Yet Likhachev would still point out, however, that these traits could be overcome by making a change to the socio-economic environment. Confining his analysis to argot practised specifically by vory (‘thieves’), some of whom he stated did not use slang at all, Likhachev did not consider the more widespread use of blatnaya muzyka amongst the 49ers. Linking slang to their strict obedience to the prisoner code, Likhachev stated that the majority of vory words had accidental or anecdotal origins and usually expired after a couple of months, or earlier if they were discovered by the authorities.77 The article proposed that, unlike other language used by illegal or stigmatised groups, vory argot was easily identifiable and only used by a small number of inmates.78 Cross-referencing several words with their usage in penal argot from around the globe, Likhachev stated that terms such as ‘academy’ or ‘school’ (to refer to prison as training for further criminal activities) resulted in an ‘illusion of translation’ as they were merely ‘universal’ metaphors. Despite its tight focus on vory, however, the article did make some general points that can be applied across the larger group of inmates. In particular, Likhachev showed how argot could consist of multiple layers and varying levels of secrecy.79 These various layers of the specific world created in the Gulag are reflected in dictionaries of camp slang, starting with the more formal, institutional terms attached to camp topography such as commonly used names for work brigades, disciplinary barracks, ‘meeting houses’ (the Gulag’s place for conjugal visits),

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punishment cells and children’s colonies. These easily identifiable and, in most cases, formal names also included further camp sub-sections such as kitchens, infirmary and storage areas and locations within individual barracks, but also included informal colloquial terms such as vehotura (the upper bed-boards usually occupied by criminals). These names were instantly recognisable by all prisoners, camp personnel and often outside the camps as well, through the oral circulation of first-hand experiences and, latterly, by the publication of survivor memoirs.80 Although the following layer of more everyday items appears less in memoirs, it nevertheless provides important insights into Gulag social life. An analysis of this could be found in the February 1925 edition of the prisoner newspaper Solovetsky Island. Author of the article ‘Blatnye Solovo’ (‘Criminal Slang’) A. Akarverich described his chosen topic as being both ‘extremely interesting’ and a remarkably deep area of linguistics.81 Using an alias, Akarverich was actually the inmate Boris Shiryaev, a former White Army officer who would have his original death sentence commuted to ten years at the Solovki camp.82 In one of a number of works for the inmate publication under this pseudonym, Akarverich suggested that it was inside prison walls that a novice would learn his first words. Stating that the most conspicuous and useful terms would both derive from and demonstrate an intimate experience of penal life, Akarverich claimed that this language would change at a much faster rate than any slang from Odessa, Moscow, Rostov, Irkutsk or indeed elsewhere in the Soviet Union. According to Akaverich, penal slang was constructed by the specific living conditions found in prison. Although he disagreed with Likhachev’s view by stating that the profession of most residents determined a need for secrecy, the author would suggest that the formation of prison slang through everyday objects could be seen in alternative words for horse, paper, trousers and ‘to run’ (which indicated an attempted escape). This also extended to specific tools such as lom’ (crowbar) which, as a criminal’s ‘inseparable companion’, was changed to a gentler, softer variation often found in prisoner songs (fomky).83 Akaverich’s article highlighted once more how items specific to the penal environment could act as a microscope for us to look at the world from the perspective of its inmates. Former Polish prisoner Marek Kaminski agrees with this by stating that, by largely disregarding objects from ‘freedom’, slang can provide a magnifying glass to show only the most important components of prison life.84 In the camps of the Gulag, this could be seen through commonly used terms such as makhora (tobacco) and paika (bread rations).85 In later accounts, this is exemplified through the subject of tattooing, where artists became known as ‘zone prickers’ and the needle as an ‘ice

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pick’, ‘bee’, ‘spur’ or ‘sting’. The argot names for the electronic or mechanical device became ‘typewriter’, ‘dentist’s drill’ or ‘sewing machine’, while ink could be referred to as ‘dirt’ or ‘fuel oil’.86 Interestingly, the Russian word for ‘fuel oil’ (mazut) is also used to describe some of the most valuable products such as sugar, sausage, tea, fats and jam, therefore equating tattoo ink with the highest material possessions inside the zone. According to these accounts, the tattoo itself continues to be referred to as ‘advert’, ‘regalia’ or ‘brand’.87 Akarevich’s article also discussed how slang related to questions of gender, highlighting that the forced conditions of life on Solovki often led to an increase in erotic language. This, he stated, resulted in a half-contemptuous, halfsentimental attitude towards women. As in the example of the character ‘Murka’, this could also be seen in prisoner songs, which often recalled both love and, ultimately, deception.88 Alongside this confused language towards women, Akarverich also stated that female criminals were referred to by terms all roughly derived from shket (indicating a young, inexperienced robber). Like Likhachev, Akaverich declined to discuss swear words, which he claimed were too lewd for publication in the camp newspaper. He would, however, note the playful nature of some words, such as balanda (the camp’s notorious tasteless soup) and radio parasha (the latrine barrel, often used by prisoners as a place to exchange gossip). As noted by a number of Gulag memoirists, the latrine barrel came with a whole set of behavioural rules of its own. This displays a similarity to Marek Kaminski’s description of the Polish equivalent, the Jaruzel’ (named after the chairman of the Polish Communist Party, General Jaruzel).89 Akaverich contrasted the jocular edge of criminal slang with prison songs, which almost ‘borrowed’ the tunes of earlier music and fit into pre-defined themes such as an unfair trial, betrayal of a friend or lover, and loneliness. According to Akaverich, the rather clichéd nature of these frameworks did not fit into real-life experiences, as they often suppressed and distorted the truth in favour of the overall criminal aesthetic. Therefore, Akaverich concluded that while songs provided ‘rich’ and entertaining material, a much clearer reflection of daily life could be found by studying argot.90 Likhachev developed some of Akaverich’s themes further by suggested that an understanding of these words or phrases could not only be confined solely to 49ers, but also helped define roles in wider prisoner society by labelling others contemptuously.91 This is further highlighted by the way a number of derogatory names, as seen in the previous chapter, could be used to relegate individuals down the penal hierarchy and signify them as pariahs.92 Some of these terms were later recalled by former Gulag prisoner Jacques Rossi, who listed ‘unfitness for camp life’ and a number of racist, misogynist or homophobic epithets towards

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a wide range of groups considered ne lyudi (‘not people’) which included camp guards, various ethnic groups, female prisoners and homosexuals.93 The most important point to be made here is, like the tattooed passport, how a degree of familiarity with penal argot could provide insights into both a prisoner’s previous experience and their place in prisoner society. For memoirists and young inmates, penal slang formed a key part of their induction into Gulag life and the development of their linguistic skills presented opportunities for future advancement, with the ability to speak argot with proficiency even having its own specific slang word (botat’).94 For other inmates, however, the opposite could happen as they were relegated down through the social order. Aided by the widespread circulation of gossip and rumour, David Skarbeck’s work helps confirm that the development of precise meanings aids the sharp definitions that exist between different sets of prisoners. Verbal intimidation, Skarbeck states, not only provides a marker of the dominance of certain individuals, such as the pakhan, but other words contain even stronger connotations because they can be used to label prisoners as the most despised class and therefore open to violent or humiliating recriminations. This will be discussed much more in the following chapters when we look at punishment rituals between Gulag inmates.95 As also noted by penologist Gresham Sykes, labelling prisoners with stereotypes plays a crucial role in violent hierarchies of power. By characterising certain types of behaviour, inmates provide themselves with a short-hand that serves to compress a range of experiences into a more manageable framework. This was demonstrated in criminal society by a number of roles amongst not only the higher echelons of penal society but also various subordinate groups such as shobla yobla (‘rabble’).96 Even more derogatory names were attached to the larger groups of frayery and muzhiki (‘peasants’) which included focusing on their ethnic background, pointing out perceived unfavourable traits such as hoarding food and actions considered to be arrogant.97 For the group of opushchennye (‘untouchables’) further terms included ‘head cockerel’ for their unofficial leader, ‘shaggy-faced ghoul’ to indicate rapists or paedophiles and ‘bouquet holders’, which indicated men or women with venereal disease.98 Marek Kaminiski’s study of a Polish prison similarly notes the connection between slang and hierarchy, listing words and behavioural rules associated with touching various cell objects or parts of other prisoners’ anatomy, emphasising the clean/ unclean divide in prison life.99 Furthermore, his description shows how the allencompassing subculture amongst the high-ranking criminals (grypsmen) was more malleable than the rigid categories previously described in the US by

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Donald Clemmer.100 The same flexibility could be seen in how slang fed into prisoner hierarchies, where some inmates often took on several different roles whilst still dividing overall camp life clearly between svoi and frayera. Alongside the observations of Solovki prisoners Likhachev and Akaverich (Shiraev), dictionaries complied by later Gulag prisoners provide a reflection of how the overall structure and scale of slang grew following the development of the camp system in the 1930s. This can be seen in Meyer Galler and Harlan Marquees’s Soviet Prison Camp Speech, based on the former’s ten-year stretch in Karlag. The authors divide their 600-word total into five categories: proverbs and sayings, abbreviations, criminal argot, obscenities and residue which did not fit into the previous categories (the most frequent words in this section are insulting names for fellow prisoners and other derisive terms).101 Although they distinguish criminal argot from prison camp speech, the authors suggest that the etymology of more than 100 terms could be derived from the ‘special vocabulary’ used in the criminal world, again showing the crossover with slang used outside the camps. Another former prisoner, Jacques Rossi, also employed similar methodology in his extensive The Gulag Handbook, compiled during the period 1937–61. Rossi, who had been arrested as an alleged counter-revolutionary, interviewed thousands of prisoners in locations such as the central Vladimir, Lubianka and Butyrka prisons, several dozen transit sites and Norilsk forced labour camp, including those who had experience of both pre-revolutionary and Soviet punitive institutions. Like Galler and Marquess, Rossi separated his study into a number of categories including popular (in frequent use both inside and outside the camps), military, official or institutional, common camp slang, slang used by guards and officers and slang used by criminals.102 Alongside these categories, a voluminous collection of swearing is included in both dictionaries, which reflects the thoughts of many memoirists who describe the widespread use of swearing and other ‘vulgarity’ (finding this especially disgusting when used by female and juvenile prisoners). What has not been considered in historiographical texts, however, is how blasphemous terms performed multiple functions in Gulag life, such as provoking or quelling conflict between inmates as one of the ‘conversational devices’ of violence referred to in the previous chapter. In addition, the work of Steve Smith demonstrates how the wide and varied use of mat (drawn from the root-word ‘mother’ but has come to denote the entire language of taboo words) also existed between factory workers across the 1917 divide.103 In his study of Chicago prisons, Donald Clemmer described how prison slang was much the same amongst inmates as the corresponding class of

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free men (although he does point out that prisoners can come from all types of social backgrounds).104 Regardless of this, scholarship on the Gulag continues to highlight and largely replicate memoirs’ recollections of vulgarity and overlook the more diffuse layers of slang use to shift inmates into different behavioural roles.105 Criminal slang, much like their tattoos, was by no means unique to the Stalinist Gulag but also remains vastly understudied in regard to its role within the broader picture of inmate subculture.

Conclusion There were, of course, multiple ways of communicating in the camps besides going through the painful process of tattooing your body or indoctrination into the various layers of penal slang. Akarevich’s 1925 article also highlighted how stukat (‘to knock’) could often be substituted for that ‘speaking’ and alluding to the persistence of the worldwide penal tradition of ‘wall language’ (in which information is disseminated through a series of taps like morse code).106 While this was unnecessary in the communal environment of Gulag barracks, the initial phase of the carceral arc where prisoners were held in more familiar cells, or perhaps sent to them as punishment, necessitated alternate methods of communication. Sergei Maksimov earlier recalled the prevalence of wall tapping in late imperial penality, referring to how members of the Decembrists developed an effective system during their imprisonment for organising the uprising of 1825.107 Eugenia Ginzburg also referred to the same process happening after her arrest in the 1930s, stating that she had learned of this method by reading the memoirs of the late imperial terrorist Vera Figner. This shows how the passing down of details regarding penal life was not solely confined to the 49ers.108 Other popular techniques of communication other than ‘wall language’ were the circulation of ksiva (notes) passed between inmates, which often took place during etap.109 Just as Donald Clemmer has described a variety of methods in US penitentiaries, a 1939 report from Krasnoyarsk described how the use of threads, cords, ropes and planks had allowed prisoners to ‘systematically pass correspondence, objects and products from one cell to another’.110 This report suggests that communication between prisoners from different cells during transfers had become a regular occurrence. Mark Galeotti has further added to the discussion of ksiva, stating that these small slips of paper (sometimes sent via corrupt personnel) were often used during vory v zakone ‘coronation’ rituals. When a potential new member’s pedigree needed to be checked, ksiva would be

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sent to existing members, who would return a verdict which either agreed that the candidate represented an ‘honest vor’, and was therefore worthy of selection, or else passed a sentence that often condemned them to death.111 What this discussion of ‘wall language’ and ksiva shows more than anything is that prisoners have historically (and will no doubt continue) to find a way to communicate in defiance of the prison authorities. Undoubtedly, tattoos and slang will continue to be key features of Gulag historiography, yet little consideration has been made to their role as twin communicative devices. In part, this continues to be a result of their perceived offensiveness to the wider public. Even though certain words and phrases were undoubtedly known and circulated beforehand, this could be seen after the 1962 publication of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Miriam Dobson has shown how a number of responses became fixated on the question of criminal lexicon with some literary critics raising dissenting voices regarding Solzhenitsyn’s use of blatnaya muzyka.112 Ordinary readers also found Solzhenitsyn’s text, which one declared was composed in the jargon of the ‘thief, the recidivist and the bandit’, to be shameful and disgusting.113 This reaction, which anticipated a cult forming around criminal subculture, played into wider societal concerns regarding the number of Gulag returnees, rising crime and the potential effects that bad language might have on Soviet kul’turnost (culturedness).114 Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn continued to frequently use blatnaya muzyka in works such as The Oak and the Calf, as did another former prisoner, Andrey Sinyavsky, in his famous A Voice from The Chorus.115 Sinyavsky was particularly fascinated by criminal subculture, borrowing his literary pseudonym, Abram Tertz, from a well-known song about a legendary Jewish thief.116 Widespread publication of dictionaries which accompanied the rise of organised crime in the 1990s helped to popularise criminal argot even further. Although he still showed a tremendous amount of insight elsewhere in his analysis, it appears that Likhachev was pretty far out in his assertion that slang would disappear altogether, with an estimated third of the terms of slang during the Gulag era now commonplace.117 As with criminal tattoos, the prominent function of highlighting what is important in camp life and assigning inmates to different roles has been underrepresented in pre-existing scholarship on the camp system. The importance of transmitting strong messages, and the role it played in constructing penal hierarchies, can be observed again through card playing, another extremely prominent feature of the Gulag memoirs which discuss the activities of criminal recidivists.

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Gambling: Card playing and the structuring of prisoner society Varlam Shalamov’s short story ‘On Tick’ demonstrates the ubiquitous nature of card playing at the notorious Kolyma camp complex in the Russian Far East. Based on his own experience while serving several different terms between 1937 and 1951, the account also raises interesting questions as to where these games took place within the internal layout of each particular camp. In Shalamov’s example gambling occurred in the barracks allocated to the mine’s horse drivers, which were reportedly chosen because the overseer on duty never set foot inside.1 Like many other memoirists, Shalamov further recalled how a homemade deck of cards was fashioned out of paper, bread, a pencil, knife and pages cut from a book by the French novelist Victor Hugo. One of the main participants in proceedings, Seva, an apparent expert on ‘classic card games’, faced an opponent named Naumov, a travelling railroad thief who hailed from the Kuban region. After losing his pants, jacket, pillow, blanket, an embroidered towel and, finally, a cigarette case adorned with a portrait of the writer Nikolai Gogol, Naumov was permitted by Seva to continue playing ‘on tick’ (an agreement between both players that one of them could continue playing by borrowing the stake from their opponent with the intention of paying it back at some point later) despite Shalamov narrating how this went against the unwritten ‘rules’ of prisoner society. Following this temporary reprieve, Naumov was able to momentarily recoup his losses, winning back his blanket, pillow and pants from Seva before subsequently losing them all over again. At this point his opponent demanded further payment, resulting in Naumov scanning his eyes through the dimly lit barracks looking for items to make up the remainder of his debt. Demanding a coat from Shalamov’s narrator, who offered little resistance, Naumov then decided upon two items of clothing worn by a former textile engineer named Garkunov. However, Garkunov’s refusal to hand over a woollen sweater which was given to him by his wife meant that he was pinned down and beaten by Naumov’s 109

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companions before being stabbed to death by his shestyorka Sasha. The story ends with the bloodied garment being handed over to Seva, who declared that the debt had now been cleared and the game was over, leaving Shalamov’s narrator morosely reflect on his need to find a new woodcutting partner.2 Shalamov’s bloody account suggests that, despite its being officially prohibited, the prevalence of gambling was well known by camp employees, many of whom were prisoners themselves. Although archival evidence refers to gambling as a disciplinary issue for both prisoners and low-level staff, bureaucratic documents explicitly avoid linking the two groups, therefore contradicting memoir accounts which often describe them as occupying the same social sphere. This complements Wilson Bell’s recent analysis of ‘de-convoyed’ (unescorted or unguarded) prisoners who were allowed limited movement outside the camps and the transitional community of ‘free workers’ who remain linked to the institution even after release. Bell suggests a need to broaden our definitions of who constitutes a prisoner and who is an employee, therefore extending what Primo Levi described as a ‘grey zone’.3 Demonstrating that the negotiation of camp borders often had an impact on the relationship between low-level staff and prisoners, Bell describes how, running beneath the official Gulag supply network, there was a steady flow of black-market goods from the surrounding areas.4 Suggesting a number of fissures between different Gulag administrative departments and camps, Bell’s work further highlights the importance of blat (‘personal connections’) on the ground.5 These carceral-based relationships developed and flourished through important points of connection between prisoners and staff, and from the evidence in memoir accounts these were often lubricated by vices such as alcohol, tobacco and gambling. As with prisoner songs and slang, previous scholarship has often regarded activities such as card playing as an entirely normal component of penal societies, as prisoners attempt to reclaim time for their own activities as a result of the strict discipline and monotony of their daily lives. In the Russian case, however, gambling motifs have a much larger association with criminal subculture. The most explicit example of this is the role of the shestyorka (‘sixer’, lackey) whose name derived directly from the lowest number in a standard Russian 36-card deck.6 The special place occupied by card playing in Russia is also expressed by Valery Anisimkov, who recalled how the phrase ‘sentenced to hard labour without time’ was often substituted for ‘condemned to a perpetual card game’.7 This unity is further demonstrated by the slang phrase derzhat mast (‘to hold the suit’), which means to hold power and authority over other prisoners.8 As well as referring to elements of the card deck, the word mast (‘suit’) plays an important

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role in prisoner hierarchy, embracing multiple values such as an entire class of inmates, a small group or community with a particular speciality, that speciality itself, or an individual’s own fate, happiness or luck.9 Alexi Plutser-Sarner lists a number of different masti, including muzhikov (the suit of ‘real’ men), blatnykh (the suit of ‘thieves’) and kozlov (the suit of ‘goats’, a derogatory term for homosexuals), showing that the ‘suit’ concept covered not only the higher ranks of penal society, but any section that was united by particular traits In his study of Russian prison society in the 1990s, Anton Oleinik described a caste system that divided male prisoners into ‘criminals/real men’ at the top and ‘suits’, who were marginal individuals with no agency, at the base.10 Furthermore, the work of Judith Pallot, Laura Piacentini and Dominique Moran shows that, alongside the various other problems faced by penal authorities in contemporary Russia, at some men’s correctional colonies authorities can only maintain order with the co-operation of criminal gangs. In prison slang these colonies are referred to as chernaya zona (‘black zone’ as opposed to the ‘red zone’ controlled by prison administrators) or simply mast.11 Despite the persistence of this gambling motif throughout penal and criminal subculture, however, it remains imperative to note the changes that took place in regard to prisoner demographics and the shifting nature of the institutions during the period discussed within the pages of this book. For Varlam Shalamov, gambling represented a clear link between the criminal subculture of tsarist penality and his own experience of Kolyma, yet there are some important differences to highlight between card playing in the Gulag and that which took place in the late imperial camps.

Kartzhnaya igra (‘the card game’) Descriptions of the omnipresent nature of gambling appear in numerous accounts of late tsarist penality.These observations were perhaps first posited by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who noted that when the prison room at Omsk Fortress was shut at night it developed a ‘special aspect’ in which the foul atmosphere of the room grew worse as incessant gambling took place throughout the night, sometimes lasting right up until daybreak when the door was finally opened.12 Dostoevsky was of course no stranger to gambling himself, with his novel The Gambler reportedly written under a strict deadline to pay off his addiction to roulette. After his visit to Sakhalin Island, Anton Chekhov described card playing as being ‘an evil which spread its influence far beyond the limits of the prison’

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and recalled the gambling house in particular as a ‘little Monte Carlo’.13 Charles Hawes’s writings of Sakhalin also reported that in the island’s Aleksandrovsk ‘Chains Prison’ (which housed the more dangerous convicts), inmates gambled surreptitiously to relieve their ‘idleness and ennui’. Hawes would further state that if a prisoner had no money or secret stash of food to gamble then there were many ‘underground ways’ to continue playing, such as staking tools, clothes or monthly rations, the last of which was regarded as a real ‘debt of honour’. Using the same ‘Monte Carlo’ comparison as Chekhov, Hawes described how prisoners who had gambled everything away were subsequently ‘put into a cell, and with his own consent starved for every two days and fed on the third, thus accumulating rations to his credit, which are taken in payment of his debt’.14 Doroshevich’s accounts of gambling further illuminated penal society, describing how coded terms such as ‘foreign figurine’ (‘two’) and ‘brother’s little window’ (‘four’) could be heard during the dinner hour, in the evening and all through the night until the early morning, and suggesting that gambling represented a mass illness that altered ‘the entire structure, the whole life, of the prison, and turns all relationships head over heels’.15 While some penal regimes were stricter than others, archival documents reveal the problems faced by authorities in controlling inmate activities including gambling. For instance, a 1910 report from the main prison administration stated that the ‘weakening of the prison regime has resulted in drunkenness, depravity, card playing and frequent escapes and crimes’.16 To avoid being detected, games would often take place in the infirmary or the chains prison, with a makeshift prisoner ‘guard’ (strema or stremshchik) put in place to alert participants to any danger of interruption. According to Doroshevich, this was done by calling out ‘Spook!’ for a guard, ‘Six!’ for someone even more senior or ‘Water!’ for other potential disturbances.17 The omnipresence of these activities meant that some prisoners were able to derive income from selling or loaning handmade playing cards. These inmates were sometimes referred to as chaldonki (from chaldon, a native pun for fugitive or convict and also a Siberian-born prison official), with cards illustrated with human blood regarded as being particularly valuable.18 Doroshevich commented that, while a preference remained to use ‘good packs’ handmade by other prisoners, more conventional decks were also available from the prisoner resource hub known colloquially as the maidan. Although regularly referenced in first-hand sources, the maidan is largely absent from official documentation. For instance, one 1876 memorandum from Nerchinsk Prison in East Siberia warned that ‘only wardens, and in certain cases starosty [‘prisoner-bosses’] could receive deliveries of food and other items’  –

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which Andrew Gentes has surmised is almost certainly in response to the persistent presence of the maidan. Elsewhere, a report from an official in the main penal administration of Eastern Siberia highlighted the damaging effects of contraband vodka at prisons in Kara Valley.19 Regardless of the official prohibition against its existence, George Kennan suggested that, due to a shortage of personnel, prison wardens often welcomed the maidan and other selfregulating mechanisms as long as they were supervised by the prison artel (‘traditional work association’). Kennan described the prison artel as being a small but durable group that enforced solidarity and punished disloyalty and disobedience through often violent punishments (which could sometimes occur even years later). As with the criminal gangs in the Stalinist labour camps, this was all fully rationalised as protecting the solidarity of the collective.20 Dostoevsky also recalled how during his incarceration, in almost every prison room was a convict who kept a small threadbare rug, a candle and a ‘greasy pack of cards’, all of which was collectively known as the maidan.21 In the journalist Doroshevich’s words, the maidan was ‘the prison’s snack bar, tavern, tobacco shop, gambling casino and pawnshop’ all rolled into one and often consisted of a small locker containing milk, eggs, meat and bread alongside sugar and cigarettes, with prohibited items such as vodka and playing cards hidden away from view.22 This description was reinforced by Chekhov, who noted that, on the plank bed of the proprietor of the maidan (known as the maidanshchik), stood a large green or brown chest surrounded by sugar and small white bread rolls along with cigarettes, bottles of milk and other goods wrapped in bits of paper and grubby rags.23 Doroshevich suggested that while the maidan had traditionally been run by brodyagy (‘vagabonds’), economic control on Sakhalin had recently shifted over to a group of Tatar moneylenders known as ‘Mothers’ (as opposed to Russian ‘Fathers’) who conducted their business with the consent but nonetheless watchful eye of prison authorities. According to Chekhov, the operators of the maidan did not relinquish their ‘lucrative occupations’ even after their release into the surrounding colony, continuing to supply similar goods to their new clientele in the surrounding villages.24 As if benefiting from the inflated prices was not enough, maidanshchik further diversified their business to take an important role in card playing activities. Alongside loaning money to gamblers who wanted to keep playing despite losing all of their possessions, the maidanshchik reportedly paid 15 kopecks to any inmate prepared to play ‘prisoners’ preference’, or 20 kopecks to take part in the games of shtos or the ominously titled v konchinku (‘to-the-death’).25 Once the games were over, which was not usually until the early

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hours of the morning, there were additional fees that also had to be collected. According to Doroshevich, the winning players would hand over 5 to 10 per cent of their winnings to the maidanshchik, who in turn gave 5 per cent of this to the croupier (although they could sometimes also double up in this role).26 Card playing was not only amongst the variety of ‘initiation’ tests used to trick new inmates into accumulating debts with experienced prisoners but also formed an important part of forming prisoner hierarchies. Alongside the maidanshchik and their various machinations, Doroshevich also reported several further prisoner identities that related specifically to gambling. Fitting into the more general picture that inmates involved in financial activities on Sakhalin Island were able to exercise a degree of informal power over other prisoners, a ‘Player’ was noted as being someone who displayed expertise in the various card games. This status was more often than not attained through their proficiency in cheating, however, with Doroshevich stating that gambling on Sakhalin was ‘absolutely and without fail unfair’ and that ‘gambler’ and ‘cheater’ were considered synonyms.27 Repeated success meant that ‘players’ could often employ a ‘husk’ to perform their work duties or complete menial tasks in their service such as delivering meals, cleaning the bunk or brewing tea. The nature of gambling, albeit in this extremely poorly regulated form, almost always involves a fall from grace, and gamblers who lost everything were subsequently given the label of zhigan (at this point one of the lowest possible categories in prisoner hierarchy). The somewhat faux status of their previous agency over other inmates quickly disappeared and penal society remorselessly turned upon them, appropriating their belongings, forcing them to sleep on the floor and often administering physical beatings if they were unable to repay debts. These zhigany were then forced to survive by cleaning the wards, emptying the toilet bowl and hiring out their expertise to more successful card players.28 Sometimes the role of makeshift ‘guard’ could also be taken by a zhigan who, according to Dostoevsky, received around five kopecks per night to keep lookout while the games took place, often standing outside for five or six hours at temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees.29 Further accounts of gambling were also included by Petr Iakubovich who recalled how, after being separated from other political exiles at Irkutsk, he lived in a ‘nobles’ ’ room with a former army deserter named Tiupkin looking after him. Reportedly the 26-year-old Tiupkin was a ‘fearsome gambler’ who often borrowed money from Iakubovich before disappearing to play shtos until he had lost everything. When questioned by Iakubovich about why he had turned himself in to the authorities after his desertion from the army, Tiupkin replied

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that he had fled as a result of his longing for ‘drinkin’ ’n cards’, suggesting that prison life would allow him to indulge in his twin passions.30 As in many accounts of late imperial penality, Iakubovich connected gambling to the potential for prison reform, suggesting that distribution of the stipend (cash allowance with which prisoners could purchase food along the transportation route) should be changed in favour of handing out food at transit stations. Iakubovich suggested that this would have a detrimental effect on the activities of the ‘worst half ’ of prisoners, which he named as card-sharps and tight-fisted maidanshchiki. These prisoners would no longer be willing to trade items and this would, therefore, lead to a reduction in the number of inmates drawn to the maidan, card games, and the prison’s ‘other fascinations’, which no doubt included prostitution.31 Iaukobovich’s account shows that, although gambling played an important role in structuring penal hierarchies, during this period it was almost exclusively conjoined with the activities of the maidan. Although the 1917 revolution and subsequent civil war would see the proprietors of the maidan fold their hand, card playing continued to be a key feature of prisoner life in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s and beyond.

Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov (‘Card Games of the Criminals’) The prominence of card playing in prisoner society after the 1917 revolution can be seen in K. E. Utomsky’s 1923 article for Vyatlag Labour Camp’s Behind the Iron Bars, which described shpana as ‘card masters’ and further elaborated on the money it provided for various individuals.32 Utomsky detailed how these were experienced prisoners who subscribed to a detailed and a rigorously thought-out system. The conditions of the labour camp, he stated, helped to provide inmates with the ‘best factory’ of cards and generated money for a variety of different related tasks; from the owners of card decks who rented them and the suppliers who provided the materials to create them to the draughtsmen who drew the images of various suits upon them and, finally, the ‘master artists’, who were the players themselves.33 Gambling was to feature even more prominently in a piece written by Dmitry Likhachev that appeared in the January 1930 edition of prisoner newspaper Solovetsky Island in what was to be the second, and final, article produced by the Solovki prisoner criminological department. Likhachev began ‘Card Games of the Criminals’ by highlighting the ‘considerable importance’ that card games had for prisoners climbing the ranks of what he described as ‘fraudulent qualifications’ (i.e. an upward trajectory through criminal and

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prisoner society). Differences between high-ranking criminals were subtle enough for them to be divided into a ‘brass’, which Likhachev described as a ‘big thief ’, and a zhigan, who was considered in this case to be a ‘genuine and brave’ criminal and hero by the lower-ranked shpana.34 As discussed in Chapter  3, Likhachev’s definition of zhigan clearly regards them as an authoritative prisoner, displaying a marked difference with Doroshevich’s missives 30 years earlier, which placed them on a much more lowly rung on Sakhalin. Likhachev recalled how those not prepared to risk their money and rags were considered to be a ‘cheap person’ and linked gambling inside the camps with criminal society on the outside, stating that recidivists considered a pack of cards to be part of their toolkit and were ready to play under any circumstances. This would be the case even when going ‘to work’, using the same euphemism as a number of prisoner songs. Likhachev reflected that, for these individuals, gambling directed all of their actions, describing this as an electric current flowing through their nervous system. Although the spatial organisation of Solovki sometimes made enacting this vice difficult, playing cards gave prisoners the same sensation of risk as carrying out dramatic crimes. Many compared winning at cards to their professional activities, with one pickpocket describing how it provided the same sense of excitement as ‘slipping his hand onto a tolstyy bumazhnik [fat wallet]’. Likhachev’s article reinforces the suggestions of gambling counsellors and psychologists, who have noted that card games can provide an outlet for individuals accustomed to ‘high-risk’ behaviour. Andrew Gentes further notes this link between gambling, impulsivity and risk-taking, along with defining which types of prisoner would fit into the definition of ‘high-risk personalities’ (often repeat offenders who continued to take risks despite continual arrest and imprisonment).35 The core of prisoners participating in the card games described by Likhachev’s article, such as thieves and bank robbers), would also fit into this category. This connection to their professional identities, according to Likhachev, was further emphasised through the prisoners’ ‘figurative language’, which likened playing cards to being chased by a team of investigators, with ‘cards’ often replacing instruments like the fomka (‘skeleton key’).36 Reflecting the same division evident elsewhere in prisoner society of the 1920s, games were commonly divided into ‘outsiders’ and ‘our own’, with recidivists in the latter group exclusively playing such games as shtos, bura, rams and ters.37 Although low-level groups of ‘our own’ such as vshivki (‘lice’) would play ‘common games’, the more authoritative 49ers reportedly looked upon these with disdain. Likhachev discussed how before the First World War and the subsequent

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revolution, craps (a game in which bets are taken on the outcome of a dice roll) had strongly competed with cards. By the late 1920s, however, craps had become virtually extinct, giving way to Solovki’s most popular game, shtos (which resembled the French game faro, or pharaoh). According to prisoners, the main reason for the continued popularity of shtos was because it was over extremely fast, which was not only important in case of any potential interruptions but also advantageous over other games that required a calmer, more peaceful environment. In order to demonstrate the popularity of shtos, Likhachev reproduced a poem written by an ‘outsider’ which first appeared on the Solovki wall newspaper (a noticeboard that prisoners could read) in March 1926. The poem in question suggested that card games began immediately after breakfast and compared losing a hand to a military commander being captured.38 In order to further highlight the difference between frayery and svoi, Likhachev stated how games played amongst ‘our own’ needed to satisfy two requirements. The first of these was that the game should always have a commercial stake; Likhachev commented that in 13th Company (the work battalion he was originally assigned to after his arrival), chequers and chess were also played for money. The second of these requirements, familiar from reports of late tsarist penality, was that games should never be left ‘to chance’.39 Likhachev reported how at Solovki there were a handful of ‘card masters’ who would win at least six times out of ten. Likhachev agreed with the journalist Vlas Doroshevich’s description of how ‘gambler’ and ‘cheater’ remained one and the same by claiming that deceptive techniques had become ‘institutionalised’ in prisoner society. Despite this propensity for regularly bending the rules, Likhachev observed how games could be interrupted if any of the participants suspected that foul play had occurred. Provided that they could correctly explain how this had taken place, the guilty player would forfeit the game and the challenger would receive whatever was currently at stake. These games would usually be played for money or rags, or ‘on tick’, but Likhachev reported how highly coveted items known as zavetnoe (‘cherished’) or krov (‘blood’) such as underwear, coats, pillows and food rations were never played for by high-ranking criminal inmates. This stipulation was considered to be so important that older prisoners recalled how, during their time, if they saw any of those items being gambled then they reserved the right to attack both players and end the game. Likhachev lamented, however, that zavetnoe or krov items were being played for with increasing frequency by vshivki and other ‘cheap people’ on Solovki. To support this hypothesis further, Likhachev gave the example that in 13th Company prisoners had begun by staking ‘junk and rags’,

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followed by their food rations. Finally, inmates were reduced to playing ‘on tick’ with whatever stakes they had remaining. This situation resulted in the best three players in the entire 13th Company claiming every possible item available, with medical staff required to force-feed the remaining 150 prisoners as guards watched carefully to make sure that no bread rations were stashed away in order to pay off their debt.40 Failure to pay on time, according to Likhachev, could result in prisoners being viewed in the same way as suki and passivnymi pederastami (‘passive pederasts’). This could at times result in a collective decision taken to ensure the debt was paid ‘by blood’, with the offending prisoner forced to stand with his arms at his side, barred from defending himself against physical attack. After this beating had been administered, the prisoner was not necessarily required to pay off the debt, but instead dropped to a lowly place in the inmate social order. To emphasise how powerful a punishment this was seen to be, Likhachev reproduced an old recidivist tale regarding a prisoner who owed around 200 roubles and was ordered to pay up within 15 minutes. According to the account, as this deadline approached, the prisoner in question went to the woodshed and cut off two of his own fingers with a knife rather than waiting to receive the penalty from other inmates. As with the prisoner code, Likhachev stated how the 49ers often followed their own perceived ethical guidelines. They would swear an oath to their freedom (seen as one of the biggest sacrifices) and carefully calculate how much money they could afford to lose. This, they believed, would mean that they did not become too despondent about their losses and, similarly, not express excessive joy at winning large amounts. Outside of penality, Likhachev clarified, certain recidivists were known to steal immediately after losing a game in order to repay their debt as quickly as possible. If they were apprehended while doing so it was widely understood that they would not be required to pay the debt back until their first opportunity after release.41 According to Likhachev’s article the number of cases where vshivki (‘lice’) were failing to pay back their debts on Solovki was increasing, resulting in the disturbance of this apparent ethical code. Furthermore, games were becoming increasingly orchestrated in order to ostracise certain individuals who were not allowed to speak or touch common bowls after their loss in a similar way to nechastnye (‘unfortunates’). Recalling how, traditionally, games could be played for the ‘ownership of a mistress’, Likhachev suggested that losses in these games often resulted from an inmate becoming ‘overambitious’ and could include the removal of gold teeth or other bodily parts, such as fingers and ears. These games were likened to an old-fashioned duel, which could be used as a forum for revenge. According to Likhachev’s article, attacking

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opponents after the games had finished was also seemingly considered ‘legitimate’, as were the actions of an outside participant who had spotted some kind of indiscretion by one of the players and took it upon themselves to intervene. Likhachev concluded his article by describing how the ‘svoi milieu’ was in near terminal decline and, as a result of prisoners reporting gambling activities to the authorities, debts were becoming almost impossible to recover. The situation of forced labour on Solovki was apparently providing an obstacle to adherence to the prisoner code in such a strict fashion. The ‘face’ and authority of the 49ers was, therefore, being slowly eroded, seen here through the decline of card ethics which had powerfully regulated the gambling of previous inmate generations. Although he stated that this decay was undoubtedly good in ‘preparing the soil’ for the prisoners’ rehabilitation, Likhachev warned that if there was nothing to replace this moral code then there would be negative consequences, as recidivists would quickly return to their ‘professional’ skills and behaviour.42 Despite the detail of this study, however, Likhachev was ultimately incorrect in his assertion that forced labour would erode the influence of criminal subculture. Following the expansion of the camp system throughout the 1930s, Gulag memoirists indicated, if anything, that card playing activities became an even more brutal part of prisoner society.

Igrat’ na pyatovo (‘to play the fifth’) Following his arrest in 1935, as part of the repressive wave which accompanied the assassination of Leningrad Party leader Sergei Kirov, Vladimir Petrov described inmates fashioning playing cards from newspapers, soap and coloured pencils in Leningrad’s Shpalerny prison before bearing witness to the seemingly ‘never-ending’ card games that accompanied etap to Siberia.43 Five years later, the Polish prisoner Gustaw Herling recalled a game between three prisoners in a Stolypin wagon heading toward Arkhangel’sk in the Far North. Herling remembered vividly how criminals staked the money, food and clothing of other inmates. His description would refer to one recidivist in particular as a ‘gorilla’, demonstrating again the propensity to depict recidivists as beyond the border of the civilised world:44 ‘Give me the coat,’ he yelled, ‘I’ve lost it at cards.’ Shklovski opened his eyes and, without moving from his seat, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Give it to me,’ the gorilla roared, enraged, ‘give it, or – glaza vykolu – I’ll poke your eyes out!’ The colonel slowly got up and handed over the coat.45

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Herling added that it was only when he reached the labour camp that he understood the meaning of this ‘fantastic scene’, proceeding to describe cards as one of the recidivists’ favourite ‘distractions’ and the phrase glaza vykolu (meaning to poke someone’s eyes out) as among their most popular threats. The aggressive physical movement that accompanied glaza vykolu was made quite simply by stretching two fingers into the letter ‘V’ and thrusting them towards the face of the intended victim, who sought to defend themselves by bringing the edge of their hand up vertically to stop the assailant from reaching their eyes. As Herling duly noted, the ‘gorilla’ in question on this occasion had slightly less chance of carrying out this threat as the index finger on one of his hands was missing.46 This particular movement of glaza vykolu was also described by Solzhenitsyn, as he recalled how young prisoners would often copy the violent techniques of older inmates in one of the penalty camps at Novosiblag.47 Within the individual camp or colony, prisoner barracks became one of the main ‘free spaces’ for illicit activities such as gambling to take place. According to Likhachev’s earlier article, games would be played almost constantly either on or below the bunks. Participants were often surrounded by a crowd of spectators, including a lookout (whose name, tsinkovyye, derived from the chemical element ‘zinc’) who warned players of any approaching threats.48 As in late tsarist penality, card playing remained officially prohibited throughout the entirety of the Gulag (and the various punitive institutions that have followed), with archival evidence reflecting continued problems the authorities had in controlling these infractions. These official documents include, most notably, a 1940 Operational Order from the infamous secret police chief Lavrenty Beria which listed a number of inmate violations at the Krasonoiarsk camp including ‘drunkenness, card playing and the “co-habitation” of men with prisoner women’ while also further describing how recidivists terrorised the camp population by ‘looting, beating, raping etc.’49 As indicated here, gambling was often listed alongside a whole host of other offences. This is further demonstrated by a 1947 report by the local procurator of Novosibirsk Province which noted that from around 4,000 regime infractions in the first half of the year, card playing (367 cases) ranked above hooliganism, ‘cohabitation’, hiding forbidden items, drunkenness, connections with locals and camp banditry. As the report listed more than a thousand different offences, card playing was not necessarily the number one priority for camp officials, which was in this case wastage and work refusal, but certainly represented a consistent problem in controlling the behaviour of their inmates.50 Karlo Stanjer’s account of Norilsk in 1939 confirmed both late imperial accounts and Likhachev’s findings from the 1920s by describing how a number

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of peripheral actors were also employed in the staging of card games. Stanjer remembered how ‘there was a strict ordinance against card games, but that didn’t bother the criminals. Usually, the players would sit on a bunk and the others would form a “wall” around them to prevent the guards seeing anything through the peephole. The criminals would get so excited about these games that they would lose all sense of their surroundings.’51 Like late imperial commentators, Gulag memoirists frequently described the makeshift way cards were created from anything available.52 In order to create the cards themselves, Likhachev suggested that the main difficulty lay in the acquisition of paper, which was sometimes taken from books in the library or party newspapers found in the ‘red corners’ (where busts and/or portraits of Lenin and other varied communist paraphernalia would be kept). These were then held together in several layers with bread glue, with stencils used to apply drawings that were often made from crayons, soot or black soap (similar to the ‘ink’ used for prisoner tattoos).53 In prison slang the homemade dye used to create images was known as himiya (‘chemistry’) while decks were often referred to with religious connotations such as svyattsi (‘calendar’) or bibliya (‘Bible’).54 In a similar sense to Varlam Shalamov’s reference to how pages were cut out of a work by Victor Hugo, the Romanian memoirist Michael Solomon described how a copy of the French essayist Romain Rolland’s 1908 compilation Musicians of Today was stolen from him while he was sleeping. This was subsequently transformed into a pack of cards, with the painted figures and numbers made from a blend of coloured medicines and burnt rubber.55 Janusz Bardach recalled the texture of cards played within the Sverdlovsk transit prison as being ‘so flimsy they felt like well-used paper roubles. The red designs were smudged and worn off. The corners were bent, peeling or missing entirely.’56 Alongside this ad hoc method of manufacturing card decks, again reflecting Erving Goffman’s description of the many possibilities for ‘make-dos’ among inmates, Wilson Bell has shown how a number of Gulag institutions in Western Siberia had a thriving black-market trade with the local community.57 Along with other items, this could conceivably have included packs of playing cards in the same way as they had been stocked in the pre-revolutionary maidan. As was the case in games from the late imperial period and those observed by Likhachev in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s, a number of Gulag memoirists also reflected on their somewhat dubious legality. In the Sverdlovsk transit prison, Janusz Bardach remained convinced that he had been cheated by the gold-toothed dealer Vanya after losing his pants, boots, tunic and two days’ worth of rations in a game of blackjack.58 Although Bardach was forced to strip after his

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loss, the debt was soon voided after he became a storyteller for the pakhan. While it is clear from Bardach’s account that gambling formed part of the prisoner code as an acceptable way to procure money and other items, there is no mention of whether the proceeds formed a contribution to a more centralised obshchak (communal fund) as described in accounts of vory v zakone.59 There also appears to be little discernible difference along ethnic lines, despite Solomon’s extremely xenophobic suggestion that groups of Korean inmates were liable to stab the loser at cards if unable to pay their debts, ‘more promptly than other criminals’.60 As indicated in the earlier accounts, Gulag prisoners from the mid-1930s onwards would continue to gamble anything they had, including clothes, soup, bread and tobacco, all incredibly valuable commodities in penal society.61 Karlo Stanjer recalled how, after gambling away their own allocation, some recidivists would starve or suffer from hypothermia until they stole from other inmates. Many memoirists described how this was done by simply walking up to someone and demanding that they give up their rations or remove a coveted article of clothing (such as the jumper in the opening story by Shalamov). Stating that it was considered to be ‘an honour to steal from a political prisoner’, Stanjer also noted that the loser would often rely on the somewhat scarce generosity afforded them by the winner, although he clarified that any ‘gifts’ had to be repaid with a good deal of personal subservience (a commodity that was at times highly valued in penal society). This further demonstrates how, as in the late imperial penal apparatus, card games played a central role in the informal economy of the camps.62 The more violent aspects of these card games are, of course, extremely well documented. Dmitry Likhachev’s 1930 article shows that there were gradations along this punishment spectrum, with some consequences less physically serious and more humiliating alongside others that were particularly violent. Likhachev recalled how 49ers would group together in the Solovki communal barracks according to the particular streets or districts they originated from. Some games were played merely ‘for fun’; these would sometimes involve a number of seemingly nonsensical and impossible punishments such as ordering the losers to collect a thousand crosses, flies or cockroaches. Victorious prisoners would oversee the accurate ‘payment’ of the debt, which was carried out with such sincerity that camp medical staff became convinced that some inmates had become insane and took them away to the medical facilities. Alongside this, Likhachev noted further humiliating punishments for losers such as having hundreds of balls of crumpled paper glued to their foreheads while trying to

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prevent as many as possible from falling off, or shouting out of a window down a pipe for ten to fifteen minutes ‘Ya durak, ya durak’ (‘I am a fool, I am a fool’).63 Many punishments provide examples of more serious levels of ostracism which saw prisoners relegated down through the ranks of penal hierarchy. Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko described his encounter in the Pechora regional camp in 1944 with Nikola, a fellow prisoner who had been exempt from tree-felling duties as a ‘deaf mute’ and worked as a porter instead. Having not spoken a word to Anton in six months, Nikola later explained how he had forfeited the use of his voice and hearing after losing a card game and, therefore, had to remain silent for three years, describing how any potential violation of this agreement was considered punishable by death.64 Other variants combined humiliation with physical pain, as seen in the memoir of Polish prisoner Karol ColonnaCzosnowski, who witnessed a prolonged card game that ended when one inmate had lost all of his possessions and the winner was left demanding a tattoo as a further repayment. In this case, the punishment was carried out by the ‘barrack artist’, who tattooed a penis onto the loser’s forehead.65 These more violent punishments transmitted powerful messages indicating that the individual had seriously transgressed the prisoner code. This is reflected in General Gorbatov’s account of Kolyma, where he met a prisoner nicknamed ‘Stumpy’ as a result of having three fingers removed from his left hand. Before his transfer to the camp, the multiple murderer ‘Stumpy’ had bet the clothes of a political prisoner during a card game. Forgetting to remove the stake immediately after losing the game, the inmate with the ‘staked’ outfit was transferred to another camp alongside all of his possessions the following day. Subsequently, a criminal court sat down to discuss an appropriate penalty for ‘Stumpy’, with the winner of the original card game demanding that all the fingers on his left hand be removed. After the council first suggested two fingers, it was finally negotiated with the card game winner that three would be a more appropriate number and the punishment was duly carried out.66 Karlo Stanjer also graphically recalled how occasionally the stake of the game could be another human life. On the occasion that there were no other physical items left available, or because some kind of disagreement had broken out between the players which upped the ante, the loser of the card game was tasked with carrying out the murder. Reflecting that this could happen immediately if the designated victim was present, Stanjer also suggested that the target could be in another section of the camp entirely, in which case ‘a regular manhunt would ensue’, sometimes taking years for the killer to catch up with them.67 Existence of this incredibly brutal practice is confirmed by the term igrat’ na pyatovo (‘to play

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the fifth’), which stood for a gambler who had nothing left to stake or in an extremely sadistic fashion bet the life of the second, third, fourth, fifth etc. to enter the prisoner barracks.68 Evidence of this was recalled by Lev Kopelev during his sentence in the post-Second World War camps: Some night some raggedy-ass kid will lose everything at cards in some barracks and start betting with blood. You know what that means? He loses, he’s got to pay by spilling blood – the first man he sees when he goes outside the next morning. So here you’re walking along and some little shit-head you’ve never laid eyes on is slinking after you with an axe. They tell us to maintain order; they let us have sticks, but what good are sticks against knives, axes, crowbars? They’re not human beings, those thieves – they’re worse than animals.69

Card games that took place solely between female recidivists appear to have followed similar rules to their male counterparts, with one group of inmates charged with the killing of another prisoner in March 1948 at a camp near the Urals. The report suggested that, although four inmates grouped together to decide who should carry out the appropriate ‘sentence’ for losing the game, the prisoner designated to be executioner refused and was therefore killed as punishment by the others.70 This example between female criminals would appear to be a significant outlier, however, as more often than not they would find themselves at the mercy of brutal punishments issued by the men, which will be covered in the following section. Although these more violent punishments occupy a prominent place in the literature of the Gulag, and rightly should, it remains important to acknowledge that there was a gradual ascendancy to this scale, even if humiliation or physical pain remained a key component. Even the more absurd of the penalties, such as attempting to collect a thousand insects, seem to have been carried out with almost unflinching obedience. This again shows how the need to adhere to the prisoner code was understood by inmates, who were all too aware of the consequences of not following these principles. The continued way that criminal prisoners retained their hegemony can again be observed in the ways in which card playing related to the sexual order of the camps.

Card playing and the Gulag’s forced sexual order It remains imperative to clarify that card playing did not come close to defining the Gulag’s extremely complicated sexual order, but it was, however, used as a way to maintain the aggressively masculinised active/passive divide between some

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recidivist inmates. This can be seen in one of the punishments for prisoners who continued gambling after having lost their original stake, who were then subsequently understood to be available to be sexually assaulted by other inmates. Tattooing certain images onto these ‘degraded’ prisoners made their status inescapable throughout the penal system, indicating that they were now a member of the opushchennye (‘untouchables’).71 Continuing the popular card playing motif, tattoos of hearts and diamonds were used to indicate that these prisoners were open to abuse from ‘normal’ prisoners, whose own status was seemingly preserved by the active/passive boundary. This is further demonstrated in a drawing from the Baldaev collection which shows the card suits of hearts and diamonds tattooed onto an inmate’s buttocks alongside the term suka.72 Included in this design were the initials ‘V’ and ‘T’, which could conceivably stand for valet (‘jack’) and tuz (‘ace’) in continuing the gambling motif. More dangerously, in regard to the role of this tattoo in prisoner society, arrows pointing to the words and symbols almost definitely confirm that the wearer had become one of the opushchennye. Card playing was also linked to sexual relations between male and female prisoners in the 1920s, with Sozerko Malsagoff ’s memoir account describing ‘female shpana’ parading naked in front of camp staff, swearing, drinking, stealing and being ‘just as addicted’ to cards as their male counterparts. The former Solovki inmate Malsagoff further stated how, without any money, clothes or food to pay, the loser of card games would be forced to go into a male hut and ‘give herself ’ to ten prisoners in the presence of a witness to fulfil the debt.73 Margaret Buber-Neumann similarly noted that male and female prisoners sat in

Figure 3 ‘Bitch.’ Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, vol. 3. Danzig Baldaev. Published by FUEL © 2008.

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the reception centre at Karaganda playing cards, describing the women as wearing ‘only knickers and brassieres, apart from the coloured scarves they wore neatly turbaned around their heads’. Buber-Neumann added that the female prisoners she observed staked their own clothes and when they lost resorted to stealing from other prisoners, stating that they were never short of vodka or food.74 That card games could provide a dubious cover to enforce sexual relations is alluded to in Nikolai Pogodin’s play The Aristocrats, when the recidivist Kostia ‘wins’ the engineer’s secretary Margarita Ivanova. Although Kostia is berated by the supervising officer Gromov (therefore in keeping with the ‘re-forged’ plot of the play), another inmate remarks, ‘they are playing for a live babe! These are my kind of people!’75 Unlike this fictionalised account, however, many female inmates could face the very real and immediate threat at the hands of male prisoners. Anne Applebaum notes that an entire women’s barracks was ‘lost’ on a card game, with the inmates facing an anxious wait of several days to see when the group of male recidivists would attempt to break in and collect ‘their prize’. In this instance the assailants were seen off, having only dished out a few minor injuries and stolen a handful of clothes.76 As with the rising tide of violence towards other prisoners in general, sexualised violence also appears to have increased with the growing population of the camp after the Second World War and the continued struggle of authorities to control the activities of inmates.

Conclusion Gambling was not just commonplace among the incarcerated, but also often appeared in disciplinary matters concerning the activities of camp employees. This is reflected in a complaint to Moscow by a camp administrator who claimed that a lack of entertainment led to regular ‘desertions, violations of discipline, drunkenness and card-playing’.77 As with prisoners, this behaviour was often connected with the monotony of their daily tasks and alcohol, yet still shows the propensity to defy formal directives from superiors in Moscow.78 Card playing was not confined to behind the barbed wire, moreover, but followed the prisoners into the outside Soviet world. References to gambling appeared again in Vladimir Petrov’s account of the population of Magadan after he had obtained a pass that allowed him temporarily to leave the camp.79 Petrov also added that, upon finally leaving Kolyma for good shortly after Operation Barbarossa in late 1941, he saw about a thousand former prisoners in the Magadan transit prison who were

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occupying their time ‘playing cards and organising drinking bouts’ while waiting to be taken to Vladivostok.80 Petrov’s recollections reflect what Kate Brown has described as ‘concentric circles of unfreedom’ throughout the Soviet system (of which the Gulag is placed at the very end of a repressive continuum that allowed individuals little agency).81 As with the circulation of prisoner songs, card playing appears to have been a way that elements of Gulag subculture spread into the mainstream following the mass amnesty in 1953. Vlas Doroshevich’s journalistic reports from the nineteenth century, however, show that these problems were not solely confined to the Soviet experience. The journalist described almshouses of the free settlements on Sakhalin Island as being drinking and gambling dens where ‘shivering, aged, beaten and lacerated bodies of the “tattooed ones” ’ wandered round wrapped in rags. Presumably, these shady establishments were similar to those operated by the super-thief Sonka ‘Golden-Hand’ (covered in Chapter 1).82 As with late imperial urban yamy, officials would refuse to visit these locations, demonstrating again the clear links between penal subculture, the release of prisoners and wider society. Despite the traditional symbiosis between gambling and worldwide criminal society, seen in the activities of UK crime gangs in horse racing, for example, it is extremely important to demonstrate nuance in the way that different games were played at different times, by different individuals, in a number of punitive environments.83 As with late imperial penality, where formally ‘prohibited’ activities such as the maidan were commonplace, access to black-market supply chains was crucial in providing social capital to facilitate prisoner interaction in the Gulag institutions of the following century.84 Furthermore, the persistence of card playing suggests that the Gulag was a penal apparatus which was defined, in the words of Terry Martin, as much by traditional ‘informal’ practices as it was by its newly intended goals of re-education.85 While prisoners in tsarist penality were virtually destitute, gambling provided a way of funding the prisoner artel (‘work association’) and bribing guards and/or executioners, as well as lining the pockets of those individuals operating the maidan.86 In a decidedly disempowering environment, card playing alleviated (at least temporarily) the victimisation often felt by prisoners by providing examples of winners and losers, displaying a degree of agency and social mobility. With the development of the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s, card playing continued to perform some of these mimetic functions, helping to construct a prisoner hierarchy and isolate certain groups/individuals. The decline of any tangible finances to stake, as meagre as these had been in the late imperial period,

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the increase in the number of prisoners to feed and subsequent reduction of items to stake, meant that the punishments associated with games appear to have become more violent over time. This is especially the case as the camp system reached its 2.5 million prisoner population during the post-World World Two era.87 Card playing remained one of the most important forums for prisoners to assert their hegemony and display agency, including helping to define the sexual order of the camps. Yet the largely manufactured card games were far from the only method by which criminal prisoners looked to violently enforce their systems of power. This hegemony was also prominently displayed in the way the recidivists enacted their own system of corporal punishment for infractions of the code and in the maelstrom of territorial violence conducted against each other.

6

Punishment and conflict: Urka courts and the ‘bitches’ war’ Michael Solomon’s account of a transit camp barracks during transportation to the enormous Kolyma camp complex in the years immediately following the Second World War described how a young prisoner, Sashka, was tried and sentenced in front of an ad hoc courtroom of his peers.1 In this instance, Solomon’s views on proceedings were quietly discussed with an older inmate named Victor Mihailovich, a former professor from Odessa who had spent a combined total of 19 years incarcerated. This placed Mihailovich’s year of entry into the camps at 1929, around the time the Secret Police Camp system began to develop into the Gulag apparatus, and he was therefore witness to huge changes in prisoner population and composition. During their conversation regarding Sashka’s impending trial, Mihailovich compared proceedings to an incident from Anton Makarenko’s famous 1933 work Pedagogical Poem in which a juvenile appeared before a ‘People’s Court’ having been suspected of stealing items from the colony’s housekeeper. Makarenko narrated how ‘the ragged dirty judges’ arranged themselves on the beds and tables of the dormitory as charges were read aloud to the accused, who, on this occasion, was a boy named Barum. After his forthright denial elicited an indignant response from the judges, calm was eventually restored to proceedings by Makarenko himself, who, as founder and head of the colony, punished Barum with solitary confinement.2 Similar in some ways to the youthful Barum, the post-war Gulag inmate described as being on trial by Solomon was a 23-year-old recidivist who refused to carry out work duties and lived only on scraps stolen from the kitchen or fellow prisoners. Hauled out from his bed and forced to face three senior prisoners sitting on the upper bunks opposite, Sashka faced the accusation of being a suka and informing to camp authorities. Solomon recalled how no hot-headedness or passion was present at the trial, with the triumvirate of judges clinically acting upon their unwritten laws.3 Remaining calm throughout and not disputing either the original charges or the rudimentary death penalty he now faced, Sashka 129

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responded to the judges only to declare how he wished to die. In this instance, the executioner was not an isolated individual, as was commonplace in late imperial penality, but the most senior of the three judges, who administered the punishment by slitting Sashka’s throat over a washbasin. After washing the blood from the knife and his hands using the drinking barrel, the chief judge duly knocked on the locked door of the barracks to inform the guard that he had ‘slaughtered a bastard’. This prompted the arrival of the duty officer, political officer, assistant commandant and a number of armed guards. As the political officer ordered that Sashka’s body be taken away to the mortuary, his murderer was escorted away to a punishment cell, still convinced that he had done the right thing.4 The punishment rituals that took place between Gulag prisoners replicated some of those used by camp authorities and were entrenched in a system of penality and justice that has historically contained strong elements of theatre.5 These ad hoc proceedings displayed a remarkable resemblance to other ‘trials’ during the same period, such as the case of young pioneer Pavlik Morozov or the infamous 1930s ‘show trials’ of former leading Bolsheviks. These public confessional and condemnatory rituals can be viewed as performing functions similar to Foucault’s ‘spectacle of the scaffold’ in the nineteenth century.6 This historical lineage is reflected in Michael Solomon’s longer description, which drew a direct comparison between the proceedings he had witnessed and samosud, the widespread culture of ‘self-judging’ found in the tsarist village.7 Although linked with vigilantism and often characterised as a form of ‘lynch law’, samosud has been shown to represent a complex and consistent way of maintaining order and shared cultural values within the pre-revolutionary peasant commune.8 Occurring mainly in rural areas with a weak police presence but strong, traditional peasant institutions, samosud was found in almost every province of the Empire and amongst most ethnic groups well into the twentieth century. Often it provided a response to threats and challenges from outside the rural community; crimes that were likely to damage the commune’s cohesiveness and chances of survival were punished the most severely. The various punitive methods of samosud included a number of violent measures such as hanging, shooting, beating with sticks or flogging.9 For what were seen as more minor infractions, payment was often accepted in the form of alcohol and a number of ‘shaming’ rituals, which could see offenders paraded through the streets either on foot or by cart. To warn off other potential offenders, thieves were sometimes forced to wear the goods they had stolen, women had their skirts raised or were stripped entirely naked, while men also faced the removal of their clothes before being tarred and feathered.10

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The same strong visual aspects found in samosud were also displayed in courts between criminal prisoners in the Gulag. These ramshackle trial procedures parodied official judicial practices and presided over the most minor infractions of the prisoner code, with the surrounding ritual remaining as important, if not arguably more so, than the subsequent sentencing and punishment. The spectrum of punitive measures, which (like card playing forfeits) stretched from various forms of ostracism and humiliation to severe physical torture and death, provided a powerful mechanism to ensure the cohesiveness of criminal gangs and disseminate important messages throughout the rest of prisoner society. While these court proceedings performed an important function in setting and regulating behavioural norms, they were far from the only violent acts that took place between groups of criminal prisoners. While a number of different criminal factions had uneasily co-existed during earlier periods, the onset of Operation Barbarossa saw changes in prisoner composition which led to a period of prisoner-on-prisoner violence known as the bitches’ war (suchya voina). This conflict pitted several criminal factions in direct conflict with each other and revolved around one of the main tenets of the prisoner code, hostility towards institutional structures. The main battle lines during the conflict were drawn between vory and suki, who, following their participation on the Second World War front lines, entered into collusion with camp authorities upon their return to the camps. Although the main breakdown occurred between the conflicting views of vory and suki, evidence suggests that these overarching groups broke down into a number of smaller factions who operated independently at the local level. As shown in Chapter 3, these groups were often aligned by factors such as pre-prison acquaintance and professional identities. They all contained similarities including their own form of justice for anyone found transgressing the rules and traditions of the collective. Although competing with each other for power and agency, these factions inadvertently helped to create a system that had some stability as their authority rarely extended beyond localised areas, such as one individual camp or even sub-section.11 As with life on the streets, such as in the pre-revolutionary yamy, when the population density of the camps grew, so did the potential for more widespread territorial conflict.12 The involvement of numerous groups contributed to an inherently unstable camp system in the post-war period, and, as recalled by many memoirists, a rising tide of inmate violence meant that camp authorities were often unable to do more than attempt to separate the warring factions and clean up the bodies. The level of violence seen during suchya voina has subsequently reached a near-mythical status in

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both camp historiography and criminal folklore.13 Not only did these events leave an indelible mark on the prisoner population during this period but they also provided the impetus for the more widespread development of organised crime groups during the second half of the twentieth century.

Ritual Maria Bochkareva’s pre-revolutionary memoir offers an example of trial proceedings between prisoners in the late imperial period. During her transportation into exile in 1912, Bochkareva found herself in a party that mixed together political prisoners and recidivists. Describing the continuous feud between the two groups, Bochkareva stated how a privileged group of convicts with long sentences were given priority by the ‘unwritten laws of the criminal world’. These prisoners always had first use of kettles to prepare food and hot water, and no other prisoners dared approach them until they had finished. According to Bochkareva, their word was law and even the soldiers and officers respected these privileges. When they reached an exile station, similar to the later Gulag transit camps, Bochkareva recalled a scene which she described as a ‘trial of a criminal by criminals’. These proceedings drew upon a ‘rigid code of morals’ and called on the accused to state the charges they were defending in front of the whole travelling party. A number of privileged criminals were chosen as judges and, in this case, were informed that the accused had betrayed a former partner during a robbery. Amidst cries of ‘Kill him! Kill him!’, described by Bochkareva as being the usual punishment for anyone found guilty, penal authorities watched on as the prisoner judges called for order and demanded that the crowd listen to the defendant. The accused subsequently testified how, as the robbery unfolded, his partner was captured while he managed to escape out of a window. As further evidence of his character, the defendant presented the accomplishments of his career, including lists of ‘bosses’ he had worked for and partners he had previously carried out robberies alongside. Upon hearing this evidence, several prisoners in the audience called out glowing personal testimonies in favour of the accused while a number of others objected. Following several hours of deliberations, the judges eventually cleared the prisoner of all charges.14 Several memoirists describe similar makeshift court proceedings between Gulag prisoners, although they often do so under a variety of different names. For instance, some dictionaries of prison slang list the usual Russian word for

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‘court’ (sud) as simply being a ‘camp court’ that had jurisdiction over prisoners.15 Despite some of these minor differences in how they were referred to or recorded, the persistence of the common features demonstrates what Diego Gambetta has described as the imprecise nature of orally transmitted rituals and the importance of focusing in on the symbolic core.16 One of the earliest references to prisoner courts during the Soviet period appeared in Dimitry Likhachev’s 1935 article which described how violation of behavioural norms was punishable by a ‘thieves’ court’ whose punishment was ‘immediate and always cruel’.17 Further elementary proceedings were referred to by Varlam Shalamov as ‘courts of honour’ in which male prisoners ‘tried and sentenced each other for violating their code of ethics’. His brief description suggests that ‘trials’ could theoretically also take place between female prisoners, although they were thought to be neither as cruel nor as bloody as their male counterparts.18 Occasionally also referring to them as ‘small courts’, Shalamov described their function in giving a ‘judicial interpretation’ of suspicious acts, providing an affirmative answer to decisions regarding a prisoner’s guilt, and ensuring that ‘bloody reprisals’ would apply almost immediately. Carrying out these sentences would often be a form of ‘initiation’ test for young inmates, with more experienced inmates declaring that such ‘acts’ were mandatory in order to gain experience.19 Solzhenitsyn also invoked the concept of ‘honour’ in his discussion of prisoner courts, describing sentences as merciless and punishments as executed implacably, even if the condemned person was out of reach in a different compound or camp. Solzhenitsyn’s view was that punishments were often ‘unusual’ and could involve groups of prisoners jumping down from the upper bunks onto another inmate below to apply a physical beating.20 Another camp survivor, Maximilian de Santerre, gave further insights into the trials. After his arrest in 1946, de Santerre’s unruly behaviour and repeated escape attempts meant that he was placed among inmates ‘refusing labour discipline’ and therefore gained exclusive access to the highest echelons of criminal power. According to de Santerre, the courts held in his punishment compound would discuss ‘all questions’ concerning the prisoners he was placed alongside. These proceedings could reportedly continue over several days and include the most seemingly insignificant biographical details in order for a decision to be reached.21 As suggested above, these mock judicial proceedings often revolved around absolute adherence to the prisoner code. As the code often dictated that members were required to share everything with each other, concealing valuable items such as food and cigarettes could lead to a trial and subsequent deprivation of privileges. Unsanctioned violence towards other members, along with verbally insulting or

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Figure 4 Judge tattoo. Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, vol. 1. Danzig Baldaev. Published by FUEL © 2003.

raising hands towards them, was also prohibited. Unlike in late tsarist penality, in which an executioner was often a lone individual, high-ranking recidivists remained central throughout proceedings. As in the opening example from Solomon, the pakhan would often become judge, jury and executioner in the same way as the pre-revolutionary Ivans. While all of the participating judges had the right to vote, the decision of the most senior would carry the greatest weight and their vote often decided the outcome.22 Although high-ranking figures could take on multiple roles, there were also additional tattoos which indicated that being a judge could be a specific status in its own right. An image displaying the scales of justice, an Orthodox cross, olive branches and a skull was found on the shoulder of a prisoner from Chita Jail in the 1950s. According to MVD (‘Ministry of Internal Affairs’, successor to the NKVD ) Major Danzig Baldaev’s commentary, this image would often be bestowed on an ‘orthodox’ (highlighting that they had never transgressed the criminal worldview) and indicated them to be someone who could settle disputes both inside and outside penality.23 Although there is no reference directly to them in memoir accounts, it is speculated that female prisoners had their own proceedings. According to Shalamov, disputes regarding the ownership of female inmates would, however, often be taken up in courts consisting of male prisoners, because, it was said, the ‘hot tempers and the hysteria characteristic of all criminals will make him defend “his woman”. On such occasions the question is taken up in a criminal court, and criminal prosecutors would cite age-old traditions and demand the

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guilty man be punished.’24 This can be seen in the way that the former actress Camilla Horn was protected from the advances of a prisoner sentenced for murder and robbery by another inmate named Valentin Matveich. When the convicted murderer reached for a knife in response to being slapped by Camilla, Valentin intervened and grabbed hold of her assailant’s arm, forcing him to let go of his weapon. After a tense stand-off, the would-be attacker angrily informed Valentin that he would get revenge, stating: ‘You have disgraced me! You made me lose face for a pair of legs, you bastard! I will have to answer for this disgrace to the samosud tribunal!’25 Unfortunately, however, in this instance the memoirist Michael Solomon gives no indication if this intended trial ever took place.

Punishment It is by now commonly understood that a litany of interrogation and torture methods not only characterised the Soviet arrest and imprisonment procedure but was also a regular feature of life in the Gulag. At the Solovki camp in the 1920s guards reportedly punished prisoners by forcing them to jump into the freezing waters as they yelled ‘Dolphin!’ and made them perch naked on crossbeams for hours in the Church of Ascension or roll them down the giant staircase of Mount Sekira attached to logs.26 This cruelty towards inmates continued throughout the expansion of the camp system and, whilst it is not reflected in archival documents, is detailed graphically in survivor memoirs.27 Golfo Alexopolous shows, however, that prisoner letters to Lavrenty Beria suggested that he was ‘naive’ to believe torture did not exist in the Soviet Union, confirming that it was indeed present at the author’s camp at Pechorlag (Komi Republic).28 The letter in question, from a 32-year-old prisoner named Alexander Ivanov, described how guards would place prisoners in straitjackets before twisting their arms and legs and looking to break their spine. Handcuffs would regularly be used to restrain inmates, dirty rags would be stuffed into their mouths, and they would be kept in punishment cells well beyond the formal term of their sanction.29 As with the replication of formal judicial procedures, torture methods used by prisoners mirrored practices used by police and camp authorities (although they were often more primitive in their use of the sparse penal environment). Not only that, but many also bore a strong resemblance to those used in the late imperial period, where striking, visceral images were used to uphold the symbolic

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power of the state.30 For instance, Janusz Bardach described how he witnessed a fellow prisoner in the Buchta Nakhodka transit prison suspended in the air by a rope with his hands and legs stretched behind his back (similar to the medieval torture device ‘the rack’), as two prisoners repeatedly pulled his defenceless torso up and down onto the wooden planks that lined the barracks. As Bardach watched, he was informed by Jora (a recidivist whom he had previously treated in the camp medical ward) that the victim was ‘getting what he deserves. He had his word in court. He’s lucky to stay alive.’31 As one might expect, camp slang recorded multiple terms for various forms of punishments, including registering a number of suggested execution methods.32 These could take the form of physical beatings, sexual assaults, being drowned, sealed in concrete, impaled on a pike or crowbar, having your throat ‘plugged’, being sawn or hung.33 There is little doubt that this sadism, humiliation and sexual perversion served both to dehumanise inmates and to violently enforce hierarchies of power. However, as Foucault demonstrates, torture should not be viewed solely as an expression of lawless rage but also as a technique in which a whole economy of power can be invested.34 While it is impossible to corroborate all of the methods listed by the former camp guard Danzig Baldaev with those discussed in survivor memoirs, this multiplicity of torture methods remains important in understanding the rising levels of violence during and after the Second World War.35 What little evidence we have suggests that during the 1920s there were marginally more lenient punishments (between prisoners at least), displaying some similarity with samosud, which did not always take a violent form.36 One of the main punishments described from Likhachev’s time at Solovki during the mid- to late 1920s was the banning of ‘boasting’.37 As previously noted, storytelling became a highly sought-after commodity between prisoners and some memoirists were able to enhance their chances of survival as a result of their oratorical talents. The sentence referred to here, however, relates more to an inmate’s personal biography and the potential embellishment or fictionalisation of their past achievements. As previously noted, abstract constructions of idealised thieves (or families of thieves) were often apparent in criminal songs and tattoos as well as in the way klichka (‘nicknames’) could be created. This has led Julie Draskoczy to suggest that, with elaborate requirements to get into character such as certain gestures, speech punctuated by intense emotion and slang, a particular type of walk, specific clothing and the ubiquitous presence of tattoos, criminals often resembled other artistic performers.38 Likhachev’s recollections also highlighted a certain sensitivity to these performative aspects,

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with the audience adding extra motivation to take risks during card games and the circulation of the popular criminal refrain ‘in public, even death is beautiful’.39 In accordance with this larger-than-life behaviour, a common phenomenon in the criminal underworld was the embellishment of previous exploits. During these recitations, the actual events that took place only provided the starting point, yet to stop and expose the narrator was considered a deep insult to ‘criminal dignity’ with objections only being permitted if an infringement of the prisoner code was spotted. In the event that this did happen, a prohibition against boasting would henceforth be enforced upon the orator, a punishment considered to be as serious as exile from the criminal sphere. Not only would the individual in question no longer have the right to talk about their exploits, but they could now be interrupted by anyone, even if telling an absolutely unequivocal truth.40 The types of stories told were almost always stereotypical and evoked the bandit tales of the nineteenth century of figures such as Vanka Kain and Stenka Razin. The agility, resourcefulness and ingenuity of the heroes of the story  – usually described as making some kind of self-sacrifice – would almost always be enhanced, although the ability to talk with a ‘bitter’ tone about events was also seen as a valued commodity. According to Likhachev, this whole genre of ‘boasting’ resembled the rites of a medieval shaman and enable an individual to increase in self-confidence while simultaneously consolidating power over subordinates. Likhachev noted how many prisoner songs also bore the hallmarks of this genre, often using the first person and telling a story of a criminal’s exploits.41 Prohibitions against boasting, therefore, provided a method of distinguishing social status and assigning individuals to a particular class of inmates, often resulting in permanent ostracism from higher-ranking groups. This can be viewed as similar to asking if a recidivist ‘stood by their tattoos’, which often provided a passport throughout criminal society.42 It also reflects Donald Clemmer’s divide between ‘grouped’ and ‘ungrouped’ in the US , with this punishment meaning the loss of some of the benefits gained through group interaction.43 This relegation through the ranks of prisoner hierarchy was also described by Maximilian de Santerre as ‘earthing’ – literally burying the individual in question beneath the ground of criminal society.44 Like the violent punishments that took place as the result of card games discussed in the previous chapter, other transgressions were seen as meriting more severe punishment. Use of physical violence regularly provided a powerful mechanism for punishing violators, although, like gambling, this spectrum also involved a number of graduations. One punishment for minor infractions, such

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as using insulting words towards another criminal, was a ‘public slap in the face’.45 To slap another criminal was not only a severe blow to their reputation, but also sent a powerful message to both the immediate audience and the rest of the camp (or even beyond), who would no doubt hear about it second- or thirdhand. As it was possible for an individual to heal without a metaphorical scar to their reputation, this punishment served as more of a temporary warning measure regarding their understanding of the code and where the line was which could not be crossed.46 For more serious violations, however, criminal gangs utilised their own brutal form of corporal punishment. These again displayed similarities to methods seen throughout late imperial penality. For instance, punishments of this type could consist of 50 hits with a stick from other prisoners and were similar to the military penalty of ‘running the gauntlet’. In some cases, an executioner, occasionally a victim of the accused, would pronounce beforehand that they took no ‘responsibility for bruises or blood’, under the threat of replacing the original perpetrator if they failed to declare this statement.47 It goes without saying that punishments of this kind were usually reserved for communicating much stronger messages about someone’s character and/or their adherence to the code, with the physical scarring signalling to other prisoners that someone had a serious complaint regarding that individual’s behaviour.48 For the most severe transgressions, such as informing on fellow prisoners or repeatedly cheating or stealing from other inmates, a rudimentary and often extremely violent death penalty was usually enforced. Alongside Solomon’s description of the young thief Sashka in the opening example, a further account was provided by de Santerre, who described how one condemned prisoner was ‘rotated’ (i.e. repeatedly turned around as if on a skewer), a process that was believed to remove his soul. In this particular instance, the victim was then given the chance to die ‘with honour’ by standing face to face with his executioners, who stood opposite armed with knives. At this juncture, de Santerre suggests, some of the condemned prisoners would tear the front of their shirts open and pronounce ‘take my soul!’ in a show of defiant respect for the ritual. Reportedly, only senior criminal figures such as the pakhan could decide if the accused were ‘worthy’ of a dignified death such as this. If it was ruled that they were not, prisoners faced being killed while they were asleep. Conversely, at other times murdering a fellow inmate while they were sleeping was seen as being cowardly and against criminal ethics if it had not been sanctioned.49 Both Mark Galeotti and Federico Varese describe how the fate of individual ‘thieves in law’ could often be decided in larger criminal meetings, known as

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skhodki. These took place both inside and outside the camps from the 1950s onwards and are comparable to large-scale mafia ‘sit-downs’. Archival documents further demonstrate the authority of skhodki across the length and breadth of the camp system.50 For instance, a decision in 1951 at a corrective labour camp in the Urals sentenced the prisoner Yurilkin to death. Camp authorities responded to this decision by transferring him several hundred kilometres away, later moving him between other transit prisons and larger camps as a precaution. Despite this, four years later two recidivists finally caught up with Yurilkin and executed him. The pair were later found guilty of murder and shot by the authorities, with the official report noting that they were fully aware of the punishment they would face but did not have the authority to disregard the decision of the skhodka.51 This one account, in particular, reflects the lack of control of the authorities and increasing levels of violence as the inmate population rose after the Second World War. What we will see in the following section is that prisoner-on-prisoner violence was not limited to criminal courts and their punishments but expressed in a bloody internal battle that left a trail of dead bodies throughout the post-war Gulag.

Suchya voina (‘bitches’ war’) As with the Soviet system as a whole, the Gulag was shaken irreversibly by the onset of the Second World War. As of 1 January 1939, the collected camps, colonies and prisons held a total of around 1.9 million prisoners. This included 1,290,000 in corrective labour camp institutions, of whom 107,000 were women and 440,000 had been sentenced for counter-revolutionary activities. Annexation of the Baltic republics of Western Belorussia, Moldavia and Western Ukraine in 1939–40 resulted in the percentage of inmates from these regions increasing by over 120 per cent.52 Two years later, in January 1941, the total number of Gulag prisoners would rise again to almost 2.9 million (with another 930,000 in exile).53 This population was not static but subject to constant flux as large numbers continued to be transferred between institutions, attempted to escape or were released early in order to join the Red Army.54 In order to provide extra manpower to halt the Nazi invasion in June 1941, People’s Defence Committee Order Number 227 released around a million prisoners to fight in penal battalions.55 Originally, these battalions had been composed of soldiers who were accused of disrupting discipline through cowardice or what was viewed as a lack of rigour. As the war turned in favour of the allies, however, improved morale and a reduced

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desertion rate meant that units were restocked with former inmates who were granted early release on the condition that they join the army.56 Although this was initially limited to bytoviki (‘everyday-lifers’) who were serving sentences relating to absenteeism and other insignificant work-related or economic crimes, it is clear that some recidivists also ended up serving on the front lines. The promise of amnesty was halted in 1944, when the government began to send huge waves of ex-prisoners back to the camps, along with some who had been released but were subsequently re-arrested.57 This resulted in a notably more diverse penal society in the post-war Gulag than had existed previously as mass release had resulted in the total prisoner population dropping by half throughout 1944, the first substantial decline in the history of the camp system.58 As fighting on the front lines drew to a close, the total number in corrective labour camps and colonies began to rise again by more than 40 per cent: from 1.2 million in January 1944 to 1.7 million in 1946.59 This total included 355,000 Soviet POW s who passed through NKVD filtration camps on suspicion of being spies. Although eventually just under two-thirds of these prisoners were returned to the Red Army, the remainder were sentenced to serve time in the Gulag.60 This upward spike continued into the following year, when a total of 626,987 new inmates entered the camps. This trend would not stop until 1953, when the population of Gulag inmates reached its peak of 2.45 million, the zenith of what has become known as the camp-industrial complex.61 Adjustments to the Criminal Code added to this swelling of numbers, and ultimately resulted in the traditional divisions between prisoners becoming more pronounced and violent than in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s or as the Gulag reached its more recognisable form the following decade.62 An order from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet which took a more severe view of ‘criminal responsibility for stealing’ in June 1947 allegedly worked as a pretext to have many sent to the camps for longer.63 The now-mandatory 25-year sentences which aimed to protect both ‘socialist’ and ‘personal’ property saw around 300,000 convicted from 1947 to 1952.64 Prisoners previously sentenced for these crimes could expect a few months or a year or two at the most inside, but now recidivists faced a prolonged period inside the camps.65 The abolition of the death penalty for murder in May 1947 has also been seen to trigger a dramatic escalation of violence within the camps, with some prisoners suspected of murdering fellow inmates now facing a long investigation into the case rather than their swift execution.66 Exacerbated by the implementation of stricter law enforcement on the outside, one of the main tensions was formed between convicts who joined Second World War penal battalions and those who remained in the camps

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during the conflict.67 By fighting for the Red Army and, de facto, the Soviet state, prisoners known as voyenshchina (‘soldiery’) had violated one of the main tenets of the prisoner code, which stipulated hostility towards any authority symbols. After the war, these former prisoners would be returned to the camps, and some were convicted of crimes again shortly after fighting had ceased. Suffice to say, the voyenshchina included a number of prominent figures from the criminal underworld. Faced with returning to the camps, it was mutually agreed that they could not continue to live under their ‘old ways’ (meaning the refusal to perform work duties) but decided to suspend the matter until they arrived back. While the voyenshchina had hoped that they would be welcomed by those who had stayed in the camps during the war, this was far from the way it played out. The old criminal underworld stuck to their guns and would not permit the voyenshchina back into their ranks, stating that participation in the military was strictly against the code. Although the issue of how to deal with these returning prisoners was complex, Varlam Shalamov recalled how the main divide between the groups was extremely simple: ‘You were in the war? You picked up a rifle? That means that you are a bitch, a real bitch and should be punished by the “law”. Besides, you are also a coward! You did not have the will power to abandon the company – you should have taken a new sentence or even died, but not taken the rifle!’68

According to Shalamov’s story, leaders of the voyenshchina met in 1948 in a transit prison at the infamous Vanino Port in an attempt to thrash out a solution to this problem. During this meeting, it was decreed that a new ‘law’ would be announced, allowing prisoners henceforth to collaborate with the administration and work as trustees, foremen and in other ‘soft job’ positions.69 This growing co-operation amongst criminal elements is reflected in archival documents uncovered by Federico Varese. In an order sent to the Gulag administration in February 1950, General Serov, Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs, acknowledged that ‘signs of repentance’ had begun to appear among ‘criminal-bandit elements’. Serov therefore instructed the administration to identify roughly 15–20 prisoners of this type in each camp and transfer each one of them from strict regime to ordinary regime camps, stating that informants for the camp administration were to be selected from this pool of inmates. This new policy of co-operation was also the case in some of the strict regime camps, confirmed in a May 1952 report sent to Georgy Malenkov, Secretary of the Central Committee, which stated that ‘in some camp sub-units of the strict regimen the administration of Dal’stroi camp recruited dangerous criminal recidivists in the camp service.

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Although they had received several sentences, some of these criminals were appointed prisoner representatives.’70 According to camp legend, this new position ensured that the voyenshchina retained their lofty position in prisoner society but their alignment with the authorities now brought them into direct conflict with the prisoner code.71 These growing tensions meant that it was almost inevitable that the precarious balance which had existed beforehand would be ended and a bloody internal battle soon broke out across the camp system. The bitches’ war has by now achieved nearmythical status and, despite there being no formal declarations, there is little doubt that it raged between different Gulag institutions separated by vast expanses. This has been confirmed by a number of former prisoners including Varlam Shalamov, who used the name given to the conflict as the title of one of his short stories. This account opens with a doctor called into the emergency room where, on the freshly mopped floor, orderlies were treating a tattooed man lacerated by knife wounds. After first lamenting that the floor would be impossible to clean, the doctor described how a lieutenant of the special department hunched over the injured man waving bureaucratic papers in his hands. As with any serious incident, this event had to be documented and the lieutenant was attempting to elicit information from the wounded prisoner. After giving the same basic biographical information which prisoners recited countless times each day (first name, surname, article of criminal code, length of sentence, etc.) the lieutenant, doctor and orderlies continued to wait for an answer to the most important question: ‘Who are you? Who?’  – Kneeling beside the wounded man, the lieutenant excitedly cried. ‘Who?’ And the wounded understood the question. His eyelids fluttered, and his bitten, parched lips parted and exhaled a long, painful: ‘Su-u-ka . . .’ And lost consciousness. ‘Suka!’ The lieutenant cried delightedly, standing up and brushing his hands and knees. ‘Suka!’ ‘Suka!’ Happily repeated the paramedic.72

Shalamov described why camp authorities were so delighted to find a suka (‘bitch’) in the camp, explaining that, following the culmination of the Second World War, an unexpected conflict had flowed through the criminal world like a ‘bloody underwater wave’. Widespread collusion between suki and camp

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authorities was further explained to Alexander Dolgun by the pakhan Valentin the Intelligent. After boasting how his gang had sold items which they had ‘liberated’ from new arrivals, splitting the proceeds with the guards who in turn provided them with food and tobacco from the surrounding areas, Valentin described how camp commanders had tried unsuccessfully to punish the guards. After this failed, they attempted another approach by threatening recidivists with jobs that were ‘absolutely against the code of the underworld’, stating that ‘you must never help build a prison wall or put up barbed wire. No self-respecting urka will ever do that; the rest would rub him out.’ Valentin further explained that suki were converts of the security organs and that any self-respecting recidivists despised them. He added that the authorities made sure to separate the two factions during transportation, fearing they would wipe each other out. Finally, Valentin explicitly described what happened any time a suka was discovered, stating that they would be beheaded or strangled in accordance with the code.73 Although he stated that the suchya voina was deserving of a chapter of its own, Solzhenitsyn directed his readers towards Shalamov’s work.74 For Solzhenitsyn, there was little practical difference between the two factions: he claimed that ‘people will object that it was only the bitches who accepted positions, while the “honest thieves” held onto the thieves law. But no matter how much I saw of one and the other, I never could see that one rabble was nobler than the other.’75 Solzhenitsyn added that the suki, who held jobs such as office clerks, bookkeepers, bathroom attendants, barbers, cooks, dishwashers, tailors and the like, continued to steal with the same frequency from ordinary prisoners and even covered their bodies with similar tattoos.76 Although Solzhenitsyn suggested that it was impossible to tell inked images from the two factions apart, wider evidence suggests prisoner tattoos acquired a different dimension after the Second World War, with this period seeing the beginning of the more detailed codification regularly associated with the Russian criminal underworld. By adding an arrow to the commonly found image of a dagger piercing through a heart, inmates indicated a desire to seek vengeance against those who had violated the prisoner code (most likely suki). The wellknown images found in pairs and displayed on Viggo Mortensen’s character from the 2007 film Eastern Promises would become known as ‘thieves’ stars’ and expressed aggression against prison officials and/or the state. Tattoos on the shoulders represented a vow to ‘never wear epaulets’, an expression of hatred toward those voyenshchina who had served in the army, whilst stars on the knees indicated ‘I will not kneel before the authorities’ – a refusal to be subjugated in

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any fashion. Although some of these animosities had existed beforehand, even going back centuries, it is clear that suchya voina exacerbated divisions. Shalamov’s account further clarifies the role played by tattoos during this period. In 1948, all inmates of Vanino transit prison were forced to strip and line up so that ‘thieves in law’ could be identified by their tattoos. If they were caught, vory had to offer a public rejection of their old law and go through a new ritual which subsequently saved their life along with marking their entrance into the suki. This initiation rite, taken from a novel by Walter Scott (another popular author in the camps), consisted of kissing a knife in order to be knighted as ‘new vory’. When many declined, news of the subsequent massacre spread to Kolyma, where Shalamov was incarcerated. According to his story, a fully fledged war across institutions began to erupt after Korol ‘The King’ (leader of the voyenshchina) and his assistants were given permission to travel between transit prisons in order to either recruit allies or maim any potential enemies. Korol himself later became a high-profile casualty of suchya voina after he was blown up with explosives from a mining site alongside several other prominent criminal figures.77 Collaboration with the Gulag administration continued to provide the primary reason for these violent clashes. Lev Kopelev’s friendship with ‘Sasha the Captain’, a deputy chief ‘trusty’ (prisoner employee) who was serving a one-year sentence after a restaurant brawl, provided an alternative viewpoint of these events. Sasha reported to Kopelev that some ‘bad business’ had taken place at the strict regime barracks where a prisoner’s head had been cut off and placed outside of the main entrance gate. The ‘trusties’ had discovered the head in the dark but refused to enter the barracks, which was always locked during the night. Kopelev further noted a running battle between groups of vory and suki, who brought over their conflict from another camp. According to Sasha, combatants fought each other with axes, knives, bricks and shovels, resulting in three men being killed and 12 seriously injured, with the violence only ceasing when armed guards burst in to stop them. In this particular camp, the suki and their assistants (referred to in this instance as ‘shepherds’) were joined by ‘vipers’ (a slang term for camp staff ), with Sasha recalling the unpredictable nature of this growing animosity by stating: ‘At least at the front you know who is your enemy and who’s your friend, but here you don’t know what to expect, and from what quarter.’ 78 Kopelev was later warned by a doctor that the camp was ‘in a state’ after two men had been murdered the previous evening. One of these was a ‘trusty’ who was strangled in the toilet, and the other a ‘goner’ (prisoner who was too frail to perform work duties) who had been beaten to death by ‘shepherds’ and left near

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the garbage dump. The doctor and Kopelev calculated that the total number of deaths now stood at around a dozen, with two more reportedly on a list of those to be wiped out. Toward the end of the day, a former soldier who was ‘friends’ with some professional criminals warned Kopelev that ‘the bitches plan to attack the hospital tonight’ and that his name was apparently on the list. The situation was only resolved when Sasha, who had reportedly been selected as the best candidate to be Kopelev’s assassin, denying that he ever intended to comply with the plan whilst also informing him that he was being transferred to Butyrka Prison in Moscow the following day.79 The inherently claustrophobic nature of this conflict could often see former acquaintances pitted against each other. Edward Buca recalled how six ‘civilian bosses’ arrived late at night in the Vorkuta transit camp, with the intention of appointing prisoner ‘trusties’. When they asked if there were any former Red Army officers present, a group of about 30 men stepped forward. The highest rank among the volunteers belonged to a colonel who had been arrested and sentenced in 1945 after being captured by the Nazis. The colonel was appointed as ‘senior officer’ (along with the next seven in accordance with their military rank) and placed in charge of cleaning out the toilet. The prisoner spokesman for the civilian bosses then asked if there were any ‘Bandera Partisans’ or any members of the criminal underworld present.80 Greeting the spokesman by his name ‘Grisha’, a prisoner named Ivan stepped forward to embrace the man, with whom he had evidently been incarcerated on a couple of separate occasions.81 It soon transpired that, although he was still technically a prisoner, Grisha had taken the role of a ‘camp boss’ complete with an entourage of assistants. Plying him with loose tobacco, newspapers, matches, bread and porridge, Grisha explained that, under his command, Ivan would be in charge of the prisoner barracks. The following morning the prisoners were suddenly woken by a string of obscenities from Grisha’s assistants, who were lashing out with clubs indiscriminately. Grisha then walked over to come face to face with Ivan, asking him to report the hut number and name of the prisoners, as per his duties. Staring directly at Grisha, Ivan refused to reply, leaving him to announce that a replacement would be named later. The hostility between the two former friends finally spilled over the following day when it was discovered that the colonel and his assistants had not cleaned out the toilet bowl. After forcing them to empty it, and then eat their breakfast without washing their hands, the majority of prisoners slowly dispersed to complete work duties. With the guard cowering in his cubicle as if aware of the scene to follow, Grisha now approached Ivan where he was sitting on an upper bunk. During their tense stand-off, Buca recalled how

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the two spoke with dramatic emphasis as though they were acting on the stage. Suddenly, Ivan launched himself down towards Grisha, slitting his throat in a swift motion with a makeshift knife he had concealed behind his back. Eight other prisoners quickly joined Ivan in the attack, preventing Grisha’s assistants from carrying out any retribution. Buca stated that the fight lasted only a couple of seconds, as Ivan stood victorious over his victim and announced in a loud voice: ‘Death to the bitches! It’s a pity, you were my friend and an urka.’82 Buca’s account provides a microcosm of how suchya voina divided the criminal underworld as a whole, with the clash between former acquaintances Grisha and Ivan replicated on a much larger scale across a number of different institutions. Further accounts also highlight the main rupture between vory and suki, with Maximilian de Santerre recalling an incident during the summer of 1948 at a camp in the Inta region which involved around a hundred participants on each side. With camp authorities reportedly only allowing suki to arm themselves, which they gladly did with knives and other weapons, only a handful of vory survived the attack. These hostilities in the camp continued into 1949, when an armed a group of suki again attacked a number of unarmed vory who had been contained in a disciplinary barrack.83 Despite being housed in separate barracks at a factory in Vorkuta, Solzhenitsyn described how frayery would sometimes join in the fighting between vory and suki who attacked each other with knifes, ladles and iron rods almost on a daily basis.84 Later reports suggested that camps in the Vorkuta area at one point were completely controlled by suki while the Aleksandrovsk transit prison and small camps in Mordovia and Kamchatka had been taken over by vory.85 Finding yourself in a camp controlled by an opposing faction was incredibly dangerous, with one report noting how prisoners often sought refuge in the isolation and penalty wards ‘in order to escape reprisal’.86 These incidents allude to how fighting mostly took place in micro-zones within individual camp complexes, which could stretch over huge geographical areas, with penalty isolators often becoming the most dangerous sub-locations. In a camp near Pechora in the Komi Republic a group of recidivists burned down two barracks and the main kitchen, and murdered two guards. The remaining guards, under the threat of formal reprimands for allowing the situation to occur, refused to enter the penalty isolator in which the arsonists were hiding. The camp commander resorted to enlisting the help of a notorious suka who, along with his assistants, carried out an attack on the vory inside.87 Further reports also described violence taking place within the penalty isolators whilst also suggesting either the incompetence or deliberate manipulation of the situation by camp employees. Aleksei Podsokhin, a member of the faction otshedshie (‘departed’), was given an

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additional ten days on top of his previous sentence and transferred into a different cell on account of his behaviour in the camp. One of the camp employees, who reportedly knew of Podsokhin’s membership in otshedshie, placed a vor named Andreev in the cell. After the two were left alone, Andreev strangled Podsokhin to death as a result of their conflicting allegiances and the employees were punished with ten days’ house arrest.88 Despite these smaller, more localised accounts, and the detailed recollections of memoirists, any mention of suchya voina on a larger scale is mostly absent from archival documents (which of course tend to present a different view from the reality on the ground). Nevertheless, one report from July 1953 stated that a group of 218 prisoners arriving at a camp in Chukotka were greeted with the refrain: ‘Hurrah to vory! We’ll kill all suki!’89 While this source attests to a conflict between the two main groups of vory and suki, it is clear a number of smaller factions were also involved. Steven Barnes shows that official reports from Karlag identified three groups fighting each another, naming them as the more familiar vory alongside the little-known otshedshie (‘departed’) and otkolovshiesia (‘breakaway’). As indicated by their names, the latter two groups appear to have splintered from the main group of vory or at the very least show a diversion from the main principles of the prisoner code. On 21 February 1950, a member of Karlag’s ‘criminal-bandit element’ murdered a prisoner who belonged to the group otshedshie with a camp employee also inadvertently shot and killed by a guard in the process. A further document from May 1950 also described a number of recent ‘bandit murders’, stating that four prisoners who had been receiving treatment in the medical ward were all killed on the same day. Another report, on 30 May, reprimanded camp employees for their ‘cowardice’ after they had fled leaving two ‘bandit’ prisoners to beat another to death with an iron bar.90 As with bureaucratic reports concerning card playing and black-market activities, the tendency to refer to any criminal activities solely as the behaviour as ‘bandits’ (which could mean as few as two prisoners taking part in illicit activities) presents a problem for historians looking to uncover the intricacies of prisoneron-prisoner violence. One potential factor to be considered is that divisions between various groups were often so blurred that even camp officials had problems identifying which group prisoners actually belonged to. In addition to the ascription of the label ‘bandit elements’ to anyone engaged in collective action, camp authorities were also known to manufacture the existence of criminal gangs in an artificial attempt to suppress or control the inmate population (or to redirect attention from themselves).

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Nevertheless, reports in the years leading up to Stalin’s death and the period of mass amnesty show how violence continued to spread across the Gulag. In the Voronezh region in August 1952, a report related to the murder of one prisoner stated that it was part of a larger conspiracy of ‘criminal-bandit elements’ to carry out the ‘physical execution of prisoners, foremen and their assistants’. Elsewhere, in September of the same year, group disturbances took place in the Irkutsk region, with four prisoners killed. In this case the report stated that ‘groups of prisoners that are at enmity with each other are not isolated, continue to be kept together and terrorise the camp population’.91 During 1952 a number of gangrelated incidents were reported at Pechorlag in the Komi Republic. Some of these included groups ranging between two and ten inmates who suffocated other prisoners using bedsheets, towels or shirts, while a group of five also murdered another inmate with a pickaxe. Added to this was a group of nine prisoners who conspired to murder an inmate they suspected of informing the authorities about their planned escape (thus breaking the main tenet of the code).92 Archival evidence shows that central camp organs continued to blame local authorities for their lack of control over the violence. In December 1952, 51 ‘former vory’ came into conflict with 42 prisoners ‘hostile to them’ while working on a construction site. A mass disturbance broke out as a result, with camp guards firing at prisoners who were attempting find refuge somewhere inside the prohibited zone. This incident ended with six deaths and 29 injuries. Another report, from the Komi Republic in November 1953, described how 24 prisoners were killed and another 29 injured when ‘hostile attitudes between different groups of prisoners had not been taken into consideration’ and warring factions were allowed to mix. On 28 January 1953, in a small sub-unit in Perm Krai, proceedings were brought against two Gulag employees for beating an inmate almost to death. This reportedly occurred during an interrogation that was intended to ascertain ‘which one of the groups’ the prisoner was from (suggesting that a number were fighting against each other).93 What this evidence shows is that, although suchya voina reportedly began in 1948, the violence continued into the early 1950s, with even Gulag authorities acknowledging that they were losing ground in their battle to keep order. At a conference of Gulag commanders in 1952 a report stated that ‘the authorities, who until now have been able to gain a certain advantage from the hostilities between various groups of prisoners [are] beginning to lose their grip on the situation . . . in some places [prisoners are] even beginning to run the camp along their own lines.’94 It is also important to factor into the equation a large number of combathardened Second World War veterans who created a further group that tended

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towards the suki and, generally speaking, the institution.95 Andrea Graziosi describes how a decisive moment came about with the arrival of prisoners with military and organisational experience, including many former officers. Likely to have served in the war and experienced combat first-hand, many presumably also displayed some of the physical attributes discussed in Chapter 3 which could help other prisoners fend off the criminal elements. This can be seen in the story of Grigory Antonov, who had been demobilised from the army and was working at an oil institute in Grozny when he was arrested in the summer of 1951. Antonov recalled how, while at a transit prison in the Komi Republic, he found himself in a barrack populated mainly by recidivists, one of whom ‘took a fancy’ to his naval jacket. As he was unwilling to give this item up voluntarily a physical fight ensued, yet unlike some of the earlier accounts that described individual prisoners as outnumbered by the recidivists, convicts like Antonov now formed ‘a united mass of people, ready to repel’ and together they were able to ward off his assailant.96 Encouraged by those with military experience, groups of bytoviki arrested for ‘everyday-life’ crimes, who still consistently formed the largest group of inmates, now also increased their resistance towards criminal gangs.97 Official documents describe some of these tensions; for example, in January 1951 on a construction site linked to a corrective camp in Siberia, a group of bandits tried to steal a parcel and money from two inmates. When they resisted, one of the prisoners was wounded by the bandits. As a result, a number of other prisoners grouped together to defend them, with nearly 400 people taking part in the retributive assault. As a result, four people were killed and nine wounded.98 What these examples help show is that, although the bitches’ war has retained an important position in both Gulag folklore and the foundational mythology of the later vory z zakone, there were numerous other tensions and conflicts to consider in prisoner society which would continue to grow until the time of Stalin’s death in March 1953.

Conclusion The experience of Gulag prisoners during wartime features prominently in the recent Russian TV show Shtrafbat (‘Penal Battalion’), created to roughly coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The series demonstrates one of the ways in which the Gulag has increasingly been incorporated into the memory of the war and also within Vladimir Putin’s postSoviet national project. The series begins with the story of Vasily Tverdokhlebov, a former Red Army officer who miraculously managed to survive his own

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execution by the Nazis by clawing himself out of a hastily dug grave in the opening scene of the first episode (coincidently also the opening event of Janusz Bardach’s Gulag memoir Man is Wolf to Man). Facing a jail sentence for treason, Tverdokhlebov agrees to lead a battalion consisting of prisoners from a variety of different backgrounds. The main plot of the series revolves around the former officer’s ability, or at times inability, to win over his troops. He defends his battalion from accusations of disloyalty from an NKVD officer who is attached to them. The troops’ subordination to both their commander and a sense of Soviet-Russian patriotism is compounded through the initially extremely resistant, knife-carrying pakhan Glymov, who, reminiscent of Kostia and the ‘reforged’ characters of the early Soviet era, is eventually transformed from serial murderer into patriotic hero.99 What we have seen in this chapter is that the aftermath of the Second World War saw huge changes in Gulag society as divisions between prisoners became more pronounced and violent. Although suchya voina is now revered in a highly mythologised sense, comparisons to a number of other penal institutions around the world reveal a similar emergence of criminal gangs within the penal sphere. Usually small and ephemeral, these opposing factions, like gangs on the street, have been known to create structures with some stability by effectively holding a precarious balance of power with the penal authorities. This notwithstanding, the inherently oppositional nature of these elements always contains the potential for territorial conflict.100 Hostilities between a number different criminal factions can be observed in the example of the ‘Numbers Gang’, thought to have emerged from a Western Cape institution to control most prisons in South Africa.101 The ‘Numbers’ contain structural similarities with criminal gangs from the Gulag, including their own systems of trial and punishment for anyone found betraying the strict code of conduct. In US prisons similar informal groups have been known to enforce obedience to the prisoner code through extended social networks, often known as ‘tips’ or ‘cliques’, who help to resolve prisoner disputes. In these situations, influential prisoners often retain their leadership positions but take more of a backseat role in the proceedings themselves.102 In Gulag society, however, the pakhan could perform multiple roles, becoming an important figure in both the sentencing and subsequent punishment, as shown in Michael Solomon’s example of Sashka discussed earlier. These rituals between criminal formations in the Stalinist labour camps often contained strong theatrics, which have continued in examples of crime and punishment in contemporary Russia. Most prominently this includes the much publicised trial of the activist group Pussy Riot, whose members were arrested in March 2012

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for performing inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. During the trial the defendants were regularly brought to court accompanied by armed guards and barking dogs, demonstrating similar ‘disciplining sensibilities’ to those used with Gulag prisoners during etap. Once inside the chamber, Pussy Riot members were placed inside a transparent bulletproof cage known as ‘the Aquarium’ and could only respond to questions through a narrow slit in the glass.103 Similarly, Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow lawyer who died in suspicious circumstances while in jail awaiting trial, was convicted posthumously in July 2013, with television cameras recording the proceedings playing out in front of an empty defendant bench.104 With little evidence suggesting similar ad hoc court proceedings taking place between prisoners in other penal environments, and given their varied experiences of arrest and incarceration, it would appear that recidivists in the Stalinist labour camps seemingly drew inspiration from the very structures that they were historically opposed to and sentenced by.

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Epilogue: Cult of the urka

Amongst the gaudy flotsam of decadent mafia gravestones decorating Moscow’s infamous Vagankovskoye cemetery stands a tall, headless statue adorned with scrawled graffiti. It was reportedly paid for by admirers of Sonka ‘Golden Hand’, and some of the messages on the otherwise somewhat nondescript figure beg her for spiritual assistance in pulling off one last heist whilst others offer more melancholic and spiritual refrains such as ‘help me find happiness’.1 Similar to the appearance of unofficial shrines dedicated to the popular singer Viktor Tsoi, the frequency of pilgrimages to this unmarked grave site speaks to the postmillennium revival of Sonka through a 2007 primetime television serial, the opening episode of which attracted almost a third of the potential viewing audience despite running head to head with breaking news updates regarding the death of former president Boris Yeltsin. Starring a previously unknown actor in the lead role, the series significantly blurred the lines of fact and fiction as it reworked Sonka’s biography into a more conventional period drama similar to the UK hit show Peaky Blinders.2 The characters featured in the series include not only some of Sonka’s real-life acquaintances, such as the visiting journalist Vlas Doroshevich and her long-term lover, the thief Wolf Bromberg, but also individuals with whom there is no record of her ever crossing paths. This includes Sonka’s encounter with one of the dekabristki, wives of the officers from the failed Decembrist movement who followed their husbands into Siberian exile following their attempted revolt in 1825.3 This post-millennium reinvention of the Sonka character was far from her first outing on the screen. Over 90 years earlier the acclaimed film mogul Alexander Drankov had set about producing a six-part series featuring the popular starlet Nina Gofman beginning in 1914. Gofman’s dispute over pay with Drankov’s studio led her to abscond, only to finish the final two episodes through a significantly smaller production company the following year. Some of the last surviving reels of the series show Sonka coming face to face with Rocambole, Ponson du Terrail’s fictional adventurer with whom she had repeatedly been 153

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compared. Interestingly, Gofman’s version of Sonka demonstrated a penchant for arson not mentioned in any of the original police or court reports, as she was shown burning down the apartment of a former lover and the medical institution she was subsequently sentenced to.4 Gofman herself added to the mystique surrounding the character by coyly suggesting that she had enlisted the help of local thieves to help prepare for the role, allegedly demonstrating these newfound talents by stealing a pocket watch from the actor playing her lawyer.5 What these examples perpetuating the various mythologies around the Sonka character help to show is that in a world dominated, perhaps even defined, by highly masculinised traits, the Russian cult of criminality has spread far wider than groups such as the vory.

Criminal subculture after the Gulag Given that this book opened by looking at pre-revolutionary criminal recidivists such as those imprisoned alongside Sonka on Sakhalin Island, it seems fitting to look briefly at what happened following the death of Stalin in 1953. After the seismic shifts in prisoner composition which had already taken place following the Second World War, Stalin’s passing in early March led to the population of the camps deflating in extremely rapid fashion. Less than two weeks after his death, his presumed heir Georgy Malenkov, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, presided over the transfer of almost all economic activities related to the camps out of the hands of the security services and into the appropriate industries. The responsibility of housing all prisoners was shifted to the Ministry of Justice and a tidal wave of amnesties instigated by Lavrenty Beria then took place even before the month had ended. With political prisoners largely excluded from this, there was nevertheless a profound shift in prisoner composition, with 1.2 million inmates released over the remainder of the year. In the long term, this meant that the camp population declined remarkably from around 2.5 million on the eve of Stalin’s death to just 582,717 by the end of the decade.6 During this hugely transitional period, former inmates were frequently reported as being re-arrested in low socio-economic areas well known for nefarious activity (such as train stations) for a variety of different criminal acts, with more than 80,000 of those amnestied the previous year being prosecuted for new crimes during 1954 alone.7 In newly repackaged ‘company’ towns such as Vorkuta, itself undergoing the process of changing from a sprawling Gulag complex into an industrial area

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focused on mining, the identity of released prisoners became remarkably complicated. Tensions between the local population, a potential powderkeg composed of former camp officials and Gulag returnees, were exacerbated by increased violence in the town, including some fully fledged street brawls that involved belts, bricks and knives. Public fears about rising crime were confirmed in newspaper reports which showed that a large percentage of former inmates were responsible for a variety of situational offences such as theft and burglary. However, as Alan Barenberg’s meticulous study shows, suspicion was also directed towards former politicals, who had represented a large proportion of Vorkuta’s inmates.8 Alongside those released, the behaviour of criminal recidivists who remained inside the camps also continued to provide more than a slight headache for the authorities. Steven Barnes’s detailed re-examination of the muchmythologised 40-day prisoner uprising in Kengir, a subdivision of the Steplag Special Camp, during the early summer of 1954 demonstrates how the reintroduction of criminal inmates into the camp aggravated an already tense situation that had seen the death of six prisoners and a subsequent three-day strike. Although camp authorities believed that the transfer of around 600 criminal recidivists into the special camp would help to quell the dissent, events on this occasion followed a remarkably different course. After 18 prisoners were killed and around 70 wounded as guards opened fire when inmates attempted to scale internal walls separating them from the service yard and female barracks, a universal strike was declared. Breaching the internal zones and uniting the entire camp division, inmates soon separated themselves into two factions, one an elected prisoner commission and the other a so-called ‘conspiracy centre’ reportedly controlled by an alliance of criminal recidivists and Ukrainian nationalists. The ensuing stand-off saw camp authorities attempt to convince the striking prisoners that their situation was hopeless whilst simultaneously trying to reinforce the traditional division between the two prisoner groups. Those arrested for counter-revolutionary activities were reminded that they were now collaborating with prisoners capable of raping their wives and daughters, whilst a recently released recidivist was recruited to give a radio appeal making an equally derogatory opposing argument. Despite the concerns about the potential for mass sexual violence, a number of accounts, including one from Liubov Bershadskaia who was in the women’s zone at the time, recalled how this did not materialise, a position also supported by medical examinations. Eventually, the strike was broken by force in the early morning of 26 June, as armed military personnel burst into the camp aided by five tanks firing blanks and crushing everything in their path, resulting in the death

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of 46 prisoners.9 These events at Kengir serve to highlight one of the few examples of criminal gangs participating in an outright act of large-scale resistance against the authorities, which was markedly more defiant than the shunning of work duties as demanded by the prisoner code. Although a number of prisoner memoirs such as Anatoly Marchenko’s My Testimony continued to describe the actions of criminal recidivists in the Khrushchev-era Gulag, this period also marks the point where criminal subculture found a particularly expressive voice outside the barbed wire.10 The popularity of the singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky is widely acknowledged as playing an important role in this shift to cultural adoration. Vysotsky began his career singing traditional prisoner standards, as recalled by a friend who suggested that his versions were sung in such a slow and impassioned way ‘that they felt new and tragic’.11 Vysotsky was so influenced by criminal folklore that, when he began developing his own material in the early 1960s, many of these songs were essentially stylised and more romantic versions of the same kind of blatnye pesni as discussed in this book’s opening chapter. The many recurring themes in Vysotksy’s songs included depictions of camp topology and, like prisoner slang, concepts that were specific to the penal environment. Undoubtedly this was aided by his low, gravelly tone, which gave the impression of being inebriated, itself also an apparent indication of time spent in the camps.12 Alongside other cultural figures, such as fellow songwriter and poet Alexander Galich who popularised songs about the transit point at Vanino, Vysotsky brought criminal folklore to a wide audience and was convincing enough to persuade even former inmates that he must have had first-hand experience of the Gulag.13 This criminal-musical phenomenon has continued into the post-Soviet era, demonstrated through the popularity of performers such as Mikhail Krug, whose repertoire up until his death during a robbery at his home in 2002 included a version of the song ‘Murka’.14 In addition, Radio Shanson, a station dedicated solely to songs of the criminal underworld, has continued to regularly chart amongst the most popular Russian radio broadcasters.15 Popular images of criminal subculture, as discussed in the book’s opening chapter, also continued to appear on screen throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Most prominently, this includes Vysotsky’s own television miniseries The Meeting Place Cannot be Changed in which he played a detective chasing gangs such as the notorious ‘Black Cat’. Aleksandr Proshkin’s celebrated Cold Summer of ’53, which appeared during the wider cultural freedoms of perestroika, prominently portrayed a group of criminal recidivists who had been released in the post-

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Stalin amnesties. The activities of the recidivists, who upheld the aesthetic of the Gulag through their tattoos and slang, can be seen to destroy the harmony of an idyllic rural settlement. This reflects evidence from Barenberg’s study of Vorkuta, and indeed elsewhere, in relation to rising crime and growing moral panic throughout the period. Similar tattooed images to those discussed in Chapter 4 feature in Pavel Chukhrai’s 1997 film Vor (‘Thief ’), through the inked portrait of Stalin on the chest of the film’s protagonist Tolian.16 Regardless of the fairly unlikely suggestion that these images would stop guards from firing at the prisoners, they continue to appear in other popular films such as 2010’s The Way Back. The main narrative arc of the film, based loosely on former prisoner Slawomir Rawicz’s memoir The Long Walk, shows a group of prisoners escaping from a remote labour camp in Siberia and traversing around 4,000 miles to reach their eventual freedom in India. During one of the film’s early scenes, Colin Farrell’s character, a criminal recidivist named ‘Valka’, appears in the crowded communal barracks where he is seen swearing, exchanging crude erotic images intended to aid masturbation and gambling using a homemade pack of playing cards, eventually stabbing his opponent after his refusal to hand over a sweater given to him by his wife. Following their successful flight and treacherous journey around the outskirts of Lake Baikal, the escapees (whose ranks include prisoners of numerous different ethnic backgrounds) eventually reach the Mongolian border. At this point, however, Valka, the only native Russian participant in the group escape, refuses to advance any further, explaining this decision by reference to his personal admiration and loyalty for Stalin who is seen clearly tattooed on his chest alongside Vladimir Lenin.17 In this case, Farrell’s tattooed portraits of Lenin and Stalin are accompanied by two ten-pointed stars at the top of each pectoral muscle. These are accurate in the sense that they correctly imitate those worn by members of vory v zakone. There remains little doubt that the criminal lineage of the vory was directly influenced by groups such as bandit gangs, the travelling criminal artel (traditional form of co-operative) and then the 49ers of the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s. Far from being a secretive alliance looking to camouflage their existence from the authorities, as in the case of the Japanese yakuza, the ‘thieves in law’ were well known for displaying their tattoos on prominent areas of the body. Despite their penchant for these visible symbols, no specific evidence pertaining to any of the various rites and rituals (such as ‘crowning’) has yet been unearthed before the time of the ‘bitches’ war’ during the mid- to late 1940s. The film in question, which is not without other potential problems in terms of

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accuracy, is set during the Second World War when the recidivist population of the camps had decreased significantly after many were called to the front lines.18 Moreover, Colin Farrell’s character Valka does not feature at all in Rawicz’s original memoir and appears to have been added solely for cinematic effect. Valka, therefore, represents how a professional screenwriter believed that a stereotypical recidivist should walk, talk and act as well as paying homage to other fictional tattooed Russian criminals such as Viggo Mortensen’s character Nikolai from the 2007 film Eastern Promises.19

Conclusions This book set out to achieve two principal goals. The first of these was to investigate the persistence of criminal subculture across the traditional historic divide of 1917. This was specifically addressed in the opening chapter which showed how both late imperial and early Soviet regimes framed, and re-framed, images of criminal recidivists in a number of specific ways. These were, of course, entirely dependent on shifting ideological perspectives, especially in the early years of the new Soviet state. What the evidence presented in Chapter  1, and elsewhere throughout the book, demonstrates is that although the events that took place in 1917 marked a clear shift in criminological approaches, norms and behavioural rituals continued to be circulated between prisoners through traditions such as the wide repertoire of blatnye pesni. Whilst depictions of both pre- and postrevolutionary criminality retain their somewhat clichéd stereotypes, they also helped to provide important reference points for future generations of recidivists. This can be seen through the replication of Vanka Kain’s famous phrases by prisoners around a century later and again in the post-Second World War Gulag camps when the image of Sonka ‘Golden Hand’ was resurrected by the similarly authoritative female recidivist Margo ‘The Queen’.20 The continued use of certain types of klichki (‘nicknames’) highlights another way in which real-life and fictional criminality could often intersect. This can be observed in numerous aliases from ‘Vanka Kain’ and his criminal partner ‘Kamchatka’ to ‘Golden Hand’ and her gang the ‘Jacks of Hearts’. Far from unique to Russian crime and punishment, similar monikers also crossed over the revolutionary boundary and indeed remain popular in the underworld to this day. Through the growing medium of cinema, the inclusion of blatnye pesni in early films demonstrated a further example of how criminal subculture was transported into areas outside of penality, again aiding the strength and resilience

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of these messages. What Chapter 1 shows is that, while other elements of prisoner songs retain interesting characteristics, their practical importance was arguably the most crucial. This narrative of unwavering adherence to the prisoner code reflects what Katerina Clark has described in a literary context as being the main ‘master plot’. Continued replication of these songs throughout the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s and into the growth of the Gulag over the following decades transmitted universally accepted values such as not reporting on fellow criminals and remaining defiant in the face of the authorities, even if it meant giving up your own life in return.21 The subsequent chapters of the book all looked to address the second main aim, to reconstruct criminal subculture using the large corpus of survivor memoirs. Alongside prisoner newspapers of the 1920s, often written by inmates from amongst the intelligentsia, these examples show that criminal recidivists continued to be viewed in certain ways depending on the shifting perspective of the author. Visceral accounts by former prisoners such as Alexander Dolgun, Janusz Bardach and Valentina Ievleva-Pavlenko demonstrate, however, that not every memoirist showed the same levels of ‘disgust’ and contempt as others. Chapters  2 and 3 both highlighted how the process of etap and arrival at corrective labour camps were vital moments for all inmates as they attempted to deal with their specific pains of imprisonment. Initial contact with prisoners from a variety of different socio-economic backgrounds, alongside initiation and socialisation rituals, were often crucial for future Gulag memoirists to enhance their reputation and expand their survival skills (even if they were completely unaware of this at the time). As seen in other systems of penality worldwide, adherence to the prisoner code remained a fundamental part of this process in regard to how recidivists acted towards each other on a daily basis.22 Following basic fundamental principles of ‘honour amongst thieves’ and respect for criminal hierarchies, the circulation of this code through important and yet quite often basic signs and symbols ensured that all prisoners could understand the terrain of Gulag prisoner society. The final three chapters of the book, in particular, demonstrate how, despite their omnipresence within Gulag historiography and cultural memory, little consideration has been given to how various methods of enactment such as slang, tattooing, card playing and punishment rituals performed important practical functions with regard to daily camp life. The continued fascination regarding Russian criminal tattoos demonstrates that these images have begun to be viewed as a violent, macabre form of Soviet kitsch in place of remembering their everyday role in Gulag society.23 Bringing together these disparate and

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often overlooked source collections, however, does not create an opposing memory to the one that looks to commemorate political prisoners and those of various nationalities but can help form a more comprehensive understanding of inmate society for all prisoners. Importantly, these various cultural artefacts also remind us how reconstructing the past does not always result in the necessary peace and reconciliation we might be searching for, as they form an important, if uncomfortable, component of the ‘software’ of post-Soviet memory.24 The persistence of an alternative form of memorialisation amongst generations of criminal recidivists is demonstrated through a couple of specific tattoos. The criminologist Mikhail Gernet’s chapter in the 1924 collection Criminal World Moscow on prisoner tattoos included a description from one inmate who had an extremely basic line drawing of an execution inked as an apparent tribute to their ‘hanged companion’.25 Similarly, one of the many drawings by former MVD Major Danzig Baldaev shows a tattoo belonging to a twentieth-century Gulag inmate who was nicknamed ‘Head’ (this being an indication of senior status). Like his father before him, ‘Head’ had been tattooed with the same image that had first belonged to his grandfather, who was a prisoner on Sakhalin Island in 1872. According to Baldaev’s notes on the back of the drawing, ‘Head’ had been tattooed by a prisoner artist at Kolyma in order to signify the passing down of his hereditary status.26 This image, along with many others from the former major’s collection, shows how criminal subculture can also be used to preserve cultural memory. This has meant that well-known locations of late tsarist penality such as Sakhalin Island now form part of a historical lineage which traces a path to the Solovki camp of the 1920s and infamous Gulag labour sites such as Kolyma, and continues right through to more recent punitive institutions such as the ‘Black Dolphin’ Prison near Orenburg. The notoriety of these locations has made them rune-like symbols of places described by the contemporary criminologists Pallot and Piacentini as being mesta ne stol’ otdalennie (‘places not so remote’).27 The various methods of enactment discussed in the pages of this book such as slang, card playing and tattooing became vital carriers of criminal subculture which were passed down to future generations. In a 1993 study, Valery Anisimkov described how the ‘ethics, principles, beliefs and habits’ circulated between prisoners are characterised not just by individual custodians but by wider groups of prisoners, whom he refers to as beig ‘carriers’. Anisimkov recalled the same inmate age and background as Glubokovsky’s description of the 49ers and many criminal recidivists depicted in memoir accounts from the Gulag.28 With Gulag society being defined, as many punitive institutions are, by violence and

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Figure 5 ‘1872 Sakhalin.’ Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, vol. 1. Danzig Baldaev. Published by FUEL © 2003.

honour codes, these various ethics, principles, beliefs and habits, whilst at times somewhat self-contradictory, all helped to share patterns of suggested behaviour. The hegemonic masculinity also prevalent in criminal subculture outside the camps can be seen in incidents of widespread sexual violence (as described graphically in Chapter 2) and through misogynistic expressions in penal slang and the regular derogatory reversals of traditional gender roles. Alongside their use in transporting prisoner culture, these methods of visual and verbal communication also performed other, more practical everyday functions including assigning inmates to different roles in the camps’ informal hierarchy and helping to enforce the sexual order. Punishment rituals not only helped to enforce cohesiveness and solidarity within individual groups but also transmitted powerful messages to wider Gulag society, including the authorities. In line with the main component of the prisoner code, conflict between recidivist gangs was both extremely territorial and marked by traditional hostility towards institutional structures. On a wider level, this book also highlights important features regarding the spatial layout and organisation of Gulag corrective labour camps. Many of the various methods of enactment discussed in these pages, such as tattooing and card playing, constitute what the sociologist Erving Goffman describes as

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‘secondary adjustments’ (the unauthorised means of getting around formal directives). Examples of illicit behaviour involving criminal recidivists often took place in spaces characterised by a lack of surveillance from the authorities, such as during prisoner transportation, during layovers in temporary transit camps or late at night in the communal barracks. This was, of course, also something that had been commonplace in pre-revolutionary penality and in the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s. The Gulag’s long-standing issues with staff recruitment helped to ensure that some spaces were considered completely offlimits even to camp employees and, in this manner, penal authorities tacitly cooperated in the creation of bounded physical spaces. Inside these areas, referred to by Goffman as ‘free places’, inmates could engage in activities considered to be taboo with some degree of freedom, even if they faced repercussions afterwards.29 Most vividly, this includes examples of sexual assault during etap but can be seen in other illicit activities, such as homosexual and heterosexual ‘co-habitation’ and the bonds that were formed for black-market supply chains. The importance of ‘social capital’ for the development of informal networks further supports Wilson Bell’s adoption of neo-traditionalist theories to show how these ad hoc methods often offered more practical solutions at ground level than the formal directives issued from central authorities in Moscow.30 Mary Bosworth and Eamonn Carrabine have also further sought to challenge traditional notions of valorising some of the more drastic and explicit attempts to subvert penal power, such as riots and escapes, arguing for a fresh understanding that recognises multi-faceted dimensions of prisoner agency.31 Daily life in the Gulag was characterised by seemingly microscopic, but nevertheless important and ongoing, negotiations of power.32 Although both central and local authorities benefited from the hegemony of criminal recidivists in order to suppress other groups considered to be more dangerous (such as politicals, various nationalities and homosexuals), the persistent defiance of refusing to perform work duties and the enduring resilience of traditional criminal activities such as tattooing, card playing, prostitution and black-market operations continued to undermine the ability of the Gulag to fully control its incarcerated population. It should also be noted that a number of these illicit activities meant that recidivists were able to secure extra rations, thus continuing to set them apart from the zombified images of dohodyagi (‘goners’). The main core of this book shows how criminal recidivists responded to their own ‘pains of imprisonment’ by creating small social groups which were, albeit modelled on similar structures on the outside, intended to aid their own solidarity and chances of survival. While groups like the 49ers continued to

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preserve the basic hierarchical structures of the late imperial punitive system, a close reading shows how they also displayed a similarity to other accounts of twentieth-century inmates such as those observed by Donald Clemmer and Marek Kaminski. Although any cross-comparative analysis requires a large degree of tact, the hegemony of criminal groups in the Gulag also displays remarkable similarity to that of the Chinese Logai.33 Modelled on the Soviet camps, the Logai has also been shown to be a site of similar power inequalities, supported by Foucault’s assessment that ‘prison makes possible, even encourages, the organization of delinquents, loyal to one another, hierarchized, ready to aid and abet any future criminal act’.34 An unwritten but widely understood code of conduct regulated entry into these rudimentary criminal formations. Although this has regularly been conflated with the more nuanced and detailed vory v zakone ‘understandings’, it displays a further similarity to other prisoner codes which stipulate hostility towards the authorities as their most basic and guiding principle. Introducing the experience of 49ers into the discussion of Russian crime and punishment, therefore, is an attempt to show a wider history which includes both vory and suki alongside many other types of criminal recidivists. Using prisoner newspapers from the Secret Police Camps of the 1920s helps us to fill in the picture begun by late imperial penal observers and former prisoners and the emergence of the better-known Gulag memoirs from the mid-1930s onwards. That this point regarding the wider and presently understudied group of criminal recidivists needs to be made at all is as much down to the excellent scholarly work of Varese and Galeotti as it is to the aforementioned popular film and televisual images, but there is no doubt that a discussion of contrast and continuity between urki and a more specific vory culture has room to be drawn out further. In addition to these wider points on criminal subculture, this book also shows not only that prisoner agency in the Gulag was defined by separate categories of inmates and varying levels of camp staff but also how all of these different groups interacted with each other. Reconstructing various practices of the criminal recidivists demonstrates that they were involved in a complex web of relationships which included ‘soft-job’ workers (pridurki), those imprisoned for ‘everyday’ crimes (bytoviki), peasants (muzhiki) and the barely functioning ‘goners’. Alongside these categories there were a number of other groups composed of juveniles, various nationalities, homosexuals and low-level camp personnel whose spheres often overlapped that of the recidivist groups. The influx of ex-military personnel after the Second World War who formed their own social circles while

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simultaneously protecting other more vulnerable prisoners adds to this complicated picture. While serious lacunae remain regarding some of these groups, a similar methodological approach to the one undertaken here may help elucidate some of their experience within the Gulag system. This is highlighted through the brief discussion of female criminal recidivists in this book. Other than celebrity criminals such as Sonka ‘Golden Hand’ we still know very little about incarcerated women outside of the intelligentsia and any further exploration will have to be mindful of the role of prostitution and concepts of negotiated power.35 In order to create a more complete picture of Gulag prisoner society, it is vital that scholars treat the familiar political/criminal divide with great care. Embedded in both late imperial punishment and continuing in the Stalinist labour camps, this dichotomy has the potential to stifle the opportunity for further exploration if not judged correctly. It is clear that a much greater understanding is needed of some of the problematic and heavily contested labels assigned to criminal groups, many of which (even those using articles of the criminal code) are almost impossible to verify. This study has shown that a close analytical reading from a varied source base can begin to help reconstruct prisoner society from the ground up. The further adoption of methods and techniques from across the social sciences could also provide important observations and help to trace interactions between inmates and movement throughout prisoner hierarchies, regardless of the various labels that prisoners gave themselves or applied to each other. This has been demonstrated through the examples of Ginzburg, Bardach and many others, whose activities and attitudes appear to be ever-changing and entirely dependent on circumstances well beyond their own control. In the same manner that excellent recent scholarship has shown the borders between outside and inside the zone to be much more permeable than was first thought, we also need to challenge the boundaries that have traditionally existed between prisoners. Without continuing to do so, our knowledge of the Gulag as a lived experience is destined to remain incomplete.

Glossary of commonly used terms All twentieth century unless otherwise stated 49ers criminal recidivists arrested under Article 49 of the Criminal Code asmodey prisoner merchants (C19th) ataman leader of bandit gang (C18th, still in use sparingly in the 1930s) besprizornik homeless child blatnaya muzyka ‘criminal music’, slang blatnoi criminal chestnyaga ‘the honest’, traditional thief dohodyagi ‘goners’, prisoners weak through starvation dukhovoym ‘brass’, high-ranking criminal in 1920s etap prisoner transportation frayer ‘outsider’, non-criminal klichka nickname malina criminal den nalyot bank-robber pakhan ‘boss’, leader of criminal gang shestyorka ‘sixer’, lieutenant/lackey in criminal gang shobla yobla ‘rabble’, low-ranking criminal recidivists shpana criminal recidivists of 1920s shtos popular card game suchya voina ‘bitches’ war’, internal prisoner conflict following the Second World War suka ‘bitch’, criminal abandoning the traditional code svoi ‘our own’, criminal recidivists of 1920s urka criminal vor thief vor v zakone ‘thief in law’, thief within the code voyenshchina ‘soldiery’, Gulag prisoners who fought in the Second World War vshivki ‘lice’, low-level criminal recidivists in 1920s yamy slums yesaul lieutenant in bandit gang (C18th) zhigan low position in penal hierarchy (C19th); later changed to become ‘authoritative criminal’ in the 1920s

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Notes Introduction 1 See the insightful biography of Glubokovsky in: Andrea Gullotta, Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923–1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps (Oxford: Legenda, 2018), 313. 2 Boris Glubokovsky, 49 (St Petersburg: Krasnyi Matros, [1926] 2014), 3. 3 Paul Hagenloh, Stalin’s Police: Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR, 1926–1941 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Press, 2008), 41. 4 Glubokovsky, 49, 3–4. 5 The diary entries of Ivan Chistyakov also confirm how other prisoners were named ‘35ers’ from the 1926 article for breaking passport laws. This would strongly suggest that referring to prisoners by their respective criminal-code article was not only reserved for ‘politicals’: Ivan Chistyakov, The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard, translated by Arch Tait (London: Granta, 2017), 21. 6 Glubokovsky, 49, 6. 7 For Howard Becker’s classical formulation of ‘Outsiders’, see: Howard Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 1963), 1–2. 8 Glubokovsky, 49, 5. 9 S. A. Malsagoff, An Island Hell: A Soviet Prison in the Far North, translated by F. H. Lyon (London: A. M. Philpot, 1926), 57, 83–93. 10 Sarah J. Young, ‘Knowing Russia’s Convicts: The Other in Narratives of Imprisonment and Exile of the Late Imperial Era’, Europe-Asia Studies, 65:9 (2013), 1700. 11 Sarah Badcock, A Prison Without Walls? Eastern Siberian Exile in the Last Years of Tsarism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 50. 12 Alena Ledneva discusses how use of the term originates from the Russian cultural practice of viewing certain persons as ‘our people’, a phrase embodying the potential for trust and mutual understanding: Alena Ledeneva, Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 12–13. Daniel Healey also shows how, although not exclusive to illegal or otherwise stigmatised groups, ‘our own’ was also used to self-identify with fellow homosexuals across the revolutionary divide of 1917: Daniel Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 36, 44, 47.

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13 See, in particular a complaint from the imprisoned Don Cossack Alexsei Chekmazov which appeared in Novoye Solovki, 30 (1930), 3. 14 B. Borisov, ‘ “Frayera” i “Svoi” ’, Solovetskie Ostrova, 8 (1925), 80. 15 Ibid. 16 Maria Galmarini, ‘Defending the Rights of Gulag Prisoners: The Political Red Cross, 1918–38’, Russian Review, 71:1 (January 2012), 6–29. 17 Borisov, ‘ “Frayera” i “Svoi” ’, 81. 18 Ben Crewe, The Prisoner Society: Power, Adaption and Social Life in an English Prison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 272–77. 19 Paul Gregory and Valery Lazarev (eds), The Economics of Forced Labour: The Soviet Gulag (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2005), 163–65. 20 Nick Baron, Soviet Karelia: Politics, Planning and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1920–1939 (New York: Routledge, 2007), 86. 21 Baron, Soviet Karelia, 123. 22 Gregory and Lazarev, The Economics of Forced Labour, 167. 23 Baron, Soviet Karelia, 134. 24 Jeffrey Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin: Redefining Punishment in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, 1953–1964 (London: Cornell University Press, 2016), 214. 25 Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin, 13. 26 Golfo Alexopoulos, ‘Amnesty 1945: The Revolving Door of Stalin’s Gulag’, Slavic Review, 64:2 (2005), 274–306. 27 Paul Hagenloh, ‘ “Socially Harmful Elements” and the Great Terror’, in Shelia Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (London: Routledge, 2000), 303; Judith Pallot, ‘Russia’s Penal Peripheries: Space, Place and Penalty in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 30 (2005), 4. 28 On connections between the First Five-Year Plan and the creation of the Gulag in the 1930s: Alan Barenberg, Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labour and its Legacy in Vorkuta (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 18. 29 Steven Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Stalinist Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 113. 30 Wilson Bell, Stalin’s Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory in the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), 159–64. 31 Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin, 12. 32 Kate Brown, ‘Out of Solitary Confinement: The History of the Gulag’, Kritika, 8:1 (2007), 78. 33 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 18–20. 34 Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin, 15. 35 Vladimir Petrov, Soviet Gold (New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1949), 46. 36 Robert Conquest, Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps (London: Macmillan, 1978), 24–25.

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37 For a stark account of the difference between intended functions and realities of transit camps see: Nicolas Werth, Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag, translated by Steven Rendall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 86–120. 38 David Nordlander, ‘Origins of a Gulag Capital: Magadan and Stalinist Control in the Early 1930s’, Slavic Review, 57:4 (1998), 793; Pallot, ‘Russia’s Penal Peripheries’, 101. 39 Brown, ‘Out of Solitary Confinement’, 94. 40 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 141. 41 Oleg Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror, translated by V. A. Staklo (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 192. 42 Judith Pallot and Laura Piacentini, with the assistance of Dominique Moran, Gender, Geography, and Punishment: The Experience of Women in Carceral Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 97–98. 43 Laura Piacentini and Gavin Slade, ‘Architecture and Attachment: Carceral Collectivism and the Problem of Prison Reform in Russia and Georgia’, Theoretical Criminology, 19:2 (2015), 180. 44 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 181. 45 Gullotta, Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki, 48–52; Bell, Stalin’s Gulag at War, 57–60. 46 Ibid., 20–21. 47 Edward Buca’s comparison between the special camps and Dante’s hell is discussed further in: Barnes, Death and Redemption, 184. 48 For excellent work on some of these other institutions see: Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Bell, Stalin’s Gulag at War; Assif Siddiqi, ‘Scientists and Specialists in the Gulag: Life and Death in Stalin’s Sharashka’, in Michael David-Fox (ed.), The Soviet Gulag: Evidence, Interpretation and Comparison (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), 87–113. 49 V. F. Trakhtenberg, Blatnaia Muzyka: Zhargon Tiu’rmy (St Petersburg: Tipografiia A. G. Rozena, 1908), 61. 50 Jacques Rossi, The Gulag Handbook: An Encyclopaedia Dictionary of Soviet Penitentiary Institutions and Terms Related to the Forced Labour Camps (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 304. 51 See, in particular: Mark Galeotti, The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018); Federico Varese, The Russian Mafia: Private Protection in a New Market Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); Joseph Serio and Viacheslav Razinkin, ‘Thieves Professing the Code: The Traditional Role of the Vory-v-Zakone in Russia’s Criminal World and Adaptations to a New Social Reality’, Low Intensity Conflict and Law

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54

55

56 57 58 59 60

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Enforcement 4:1 (1995); Gavin Slade, Reorganizing Crime: Mafia and Anti-Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Varese, ‘Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 39:4 (1998), 522. Valery Anisimkov, Rossiiya v zerkalye ugolovnikh traditsii tiurmi (St Petersburg: Iuridcheskii Press, 2003), 12; Galeotti, The Vory, 241. ‘McMafia’ is a term popularised by Misha Glenny, seemingly following Mark Galeotti’s comments regarding the imagery of Chechen gangs being ‘franchised’ to groups of other ethnicities: Galeotti, The Vory, 163. See also: Misha Glenny, McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime (London: Vintage, 2009). Adi Kuntsman, ‘ “With a Shade of Disgust”: Affective Politics of Sexuality and Class in Memoirs of the Stalinist Gulag’, Slavic Review, 68:2 (2009), 310; Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Penguin, 2004), 261–70. Howard Becker’s 1963 work represents one of the most influential texts on the development of ‘labelling theory’ and provides strong theoretical underpinnings for this book: Becker, Outsiders, passim. Wilson Bell, ‘Gulag Historiography: An Introduction’, Gulag Studies, 2–3 (2009), 1–20. Eugenia Ginzburg, Within the Whirlwind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 266. Janusz Bardach and Kathleen Gleeson, Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving Stalin’s Gulag (London: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 107. Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind (London: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1967), 277; Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 178. See Steven Barnes’ comments in his review of Bardach’s memoir Man is Wolf to Man: Steven A. Barnes, ‘A Life in the Gulag: Janusz Bardach and the Complexities of a Gulag “Society” ’, H-Russia (August 1999), (accessed 19 March 2019). Galeotti, The Vory, 130.

Chapter 1 1 David Gasperetti, Rise of the Russian Novel: Carnival, Stylization and Mockerey of the West (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998), 154; David Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century: The Comely Cook, Vanka Kain and ‘Poor Liza’ (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 228–29. 2 Jeffery Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 200–07: Gregory Breitman, Prestupnii Mir (St Petersburg: Fli. Fak. SPbGU,

Notes

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4 5 6

7

8 9 10 11 12

13

14 15

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[1901] 2005), 42–49. Louise McReynolds, The News Under Russia’s Old Regime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 113, 139. Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, 200–07. Entire publishing industries have also been created around other celebrity criminals, such as the United Kingdom’s infamous ‘Kray Twins’; see: Dick Hobbs, Lush Life: Constructing Organised Crime in the UK (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 58–88. For songs and commentary about the activities of Kretchet and Churkin see: Louise McReynolds and James Von Geldern (eds), Entertaining Tsarist Russia: Tales, Songs, Plays, Movies, Jokes, Ads, and Images from Russian Urban Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 23, 221–30, and Mark Galeotti, ‘The World of the Lower Depths: Crime and Punishment in Russian History’, Global Crime, 9:1–2 (2008), 93. Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 13; Gasperetti, Rise of the Russian Novel, 40–41. Julie Draskoczy, ‘The Put’ of Perekovka: Transforming Lives at Stalin’s White Sea-Baltic Canal’, Russian Review, 71 (2012), 6. Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 251. For further reading on the interplay between real life and fictional criminality see: Alix Lambert, Crime: A Series of Extraordinary Interviews Exposing the World of Crime – Real and Imagined (London: FUEL, 2008). Although G. V. Esipov’s encyclopedia entry suggests that Kain was born in 1718, Yevgeny Akeliev has used the 1722 census, when Vanka was two months old, to disprove this: G. V. Esipov, ‘Vanka Kain’, Osmnadtsatyi Vek: Istoricheskii Sbornik. 3 (Moscow: Russkago Arkhiva, 1867), 294. Akeliev, Povsednevnaya Zhizhn’ Vorovkogo Mira Moskvi vo Vremena Vanki Kain, 114, 116. Akeliev, Povsednevnaya Zhizhn’ Vorovkogo Mira Moskvi vo Vremena Vanki Kain, 130. Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 215, 229. Ibid., 15. Esipov, ‘Vanka Kain’, 276–342. Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, 202–03. For more on the ‘Pinkertonovshchina’ phenomenon: Boris Dralyuk, Western Crime Fiction Goes East: The Russian Pinkerton Craze 1907–1934 (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, 202. The inclusion of bandit stereotypes in late Imperial wrestling was not confined to Vanka, as another late Imperial wrestler also adopted the name of the bandit ‘Anton Krechet’: Louise McReynolds, Russia at Play: Leisure Activities at the End of the Tsarist Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 142. Duccio Colombo, ‘Lenka Panteleev and the Traditions of Vanka Kain: Criminal Biography in XXth Century Russia’, Avtobiografija, 6 (2017), 102. For an explanation of the definition of social banditry see: Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), 13–23. Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 120.

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16 Ibid., 155–60, 224–29. 17 Akeliev, Povsednevnaya Zhizhn’ Vorovkogo Mira Moskvi vo Vremena Vanki Kain, 122. This widely circulated incident is also replicated in Matvei Komarov’s account: Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 117. 18 There is a further example noted by Maksimov which references how, after Kain had been arrested for stealing from some Armenian merchants, Kamchatka hid keys and money inside two kalaches (wheat bread in the shape of a lock) and smuggled them into the prison under the pretence of charity, allowing Vanka to escape: Sergei Maksimov, Sibir i Katorga (St Petersburg: Trip A. Transhelia, 1891), 163. For a description of the original story: Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 130–31. Sarah Young discusses how, although afforded more of a central role in Makmisov’s account, ordinary convicts were often placed amorphously in the background of late Imperial penal writing: Young, ‘Knowing Russia’s Convicts’, 1500. 19 Patricia Rawlinson defines this state–criminal relationship as ‘passive assimilative’, suggesting that integration into legitimate structures through informing or low-level bribery and a restricted level of money laundering shows a subtle weakening of structures: Rawlinson, ‘A Brief History of Russian Organized Crime’, in Phil Williams (ed.), Russian Organized Crime: The New Threat? (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 30–31, 38–40. 20 Yesaul’ was used to indicate both a lieutenant (assistant) in a criminal gang, and the rank of captain in a Cossack detachment: Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 220. For details of Kain’s testimony against his former mentor: Espiov, ‘Vanka Kain’, 304. 21 Ibid., 323. 22 Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 220. 23 Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 161, 216. 24 Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld, 230. In Frederico Varese’s account of vory v zakone, criminal names were often formulised through elaborate initiation rituals and best understood as second names similar to a number of religious ceremonies. However, one feature of klichki is that one individual may have several different nicknames and Varese acknowledges that in initiation rituals recorded from 1950s onwards, multiple klitchki could cause confusion during ‘crowning’ ceremonies which marked entry into the brotherhood. Varese, The Russian Mafia, 192–201. 25 Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 120. 26 Donald Clemmer, The Prison Community (New York: Rinehart, 1958), 91–93. 27 Glinsky, ‘Women in Organised Crime in Russia’, in Giovanni Fiandaca (ed.), Women and the Mafia: Female Roles in Organised Crime Structures (Berlin: Springer, 2007), 232. 28 Elena Katz and Judith Pallot, ‘From Femme Normale to Femme Criminalle in Russia: Against the Past or Toward the Future?’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 44 (2010), 111.

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29 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 309–14. Petr F. Iaukbovich, In the World of the Outcasts: Notes of a Former Penal Labourer, vol. 2 (New York: Anthem Press, 2014), 91–97. 30 Daniel Beer, Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 99. 31 McReynolds, The News Under Russia’s Old Regime, 137–38. 32 Katz and Pallot, ‘From Femme Normale to Femme Criminalle in Russia’, 123. 33 Doroshevich, now writing for the publication Russkoe Slovo (‘Russian Word’), was amongst the many high-profile journalists to report on Tarnovskia’s trial: Louise McReynolds, Murder Most Russian: True Crime and Punishment in Late Imperial Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 171–200. 34 Anton Chekhov, A Journey to Sakhalin, translated by Brian Reeve (Cambridge: Ian Faulkner Publishing, 1993), 112–13. 35 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 309–14. 36 Cesare Lombroso, Criminal Man, translated by Mary Gibson and Nicole Rafter with the assistance of Mark Seymour (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 54–57. For a further discussion regarding criminological theories of female crime in Russia see: Sharon Kowalsky, Deviant Women: Female Crime and Criminology in Revolutionary Russia, 1880–1930 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009), 40–48. 37 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 309–14. 38 Chekhov, A Journey to Sakhalin, 112–13. 39 Katz and Pallot, ‘From Femme Normale to Femme Criminalle in Russia’, 123. 40 Roshanna Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa: Crime and Civility in a City of Thieves (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), 154–76. 41 This perhaps best demonstrated in M. D. Klefortov’s fictionalised story Sonka of the Golden Hand (1903), which sees Sonka defend her criminal lifestyle by claiming that she defied the authorities in order to ‘serve the poor’ in a similar way to her bandit predecessors: Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, 203–04. This is also a feature of Komarov’s Vanka Kain, who ridicules religious figures, such as the priest who officiates at his wedding and engineers the arrest of his former owner Filatiev: Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 116, 155–60. 42 Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 24. 43 For further discussion of the traditional social bandit narrative: Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971), 13–29. 44 Gasperetti, Three Russian Tales of the Nineteenth Century, 160. 45 Breitman, Prestupnii Mir, 45. 46 Julie Draskoczy, Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 71–72.

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47 Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 173–74. 48 Louise Shelley, ‘Soviet Criminology after the Revolution’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 70:3 (1979), 394. Gerald Smith, Songs for Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet Mass Song (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 72; Anton Makarenko, The Road to Life, translated by Stephen Garry (London: Lindsay Drummond, [1933] 1973), 20, 43; Stites, Russian Popular Culture, 48. 49 For an account of these figures see: Alan Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 211. 50 James Von Geldern and Richard Stites (eds), Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore, 1917–1953 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 227–8. Michael David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union 1921–1941 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 168–69; Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened, 36–37. 51 This feature is also highlighted in regard to contemporary territorial youth gangs: Svetlana Stephenson, ‘Violent Practices of Youth Territorial Groups in Moscow’, Europe-Asia Studies, 64:1 (2012), 75. 52 Ball, And Now My Soul Has Hardened, 40. Although Ball does not mention any female gang members, Joan Neuberger describes the role played by women in her study of hooliganism in St Petersburg: Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St Petersburg, 1900–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 37. 53 Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened, 39. 54 Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 120. 55 Ball, And Now My Soul is Hardened, 39. 56 Ibid., 37. 57 Draskoczy, Belomor, 79. 58 Draskoczy, ‘The Put’ of Perekovka’, 42. For other rehabilitative theories in literature: Bell, ‘One Day in the Life of Educator Khrushchev: Labour and Kul’turnost’ in the Gulag Newspapers’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 46:3–4 (2004), 294. 59 Draskoczy, Belomor, 56. This is particularly evident in the chapters ‘The Story of One Reforging’, dedicated to the re-forging of the thief and swindler Rottenburg, and ‘Women at Belmorstroy’. For a comprehensive analysis of the volume see: Cynthia Ruder, Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998). 60 Ruder, Making History for Stalin, 155. 61 Ibid., 168. 62 An English translation of Podogin’s The Aristocrats can be found in: Anthony Wixley (trans.), Four Soviet Plays (Moscow: Co-Operative Publishing Society, 1937).

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63 Other jovial comments saw Sukhanovo referred to as ‘the monastery’ and Lubianka ‘the hotel’: Draskoczy, Belomor, 120. 64 Jeremy Hicks highlights the importance of pointing out differences between film and screenplay: Jeremy Hicks, ‘The Archipelago of Gulag Film’, in Andreas Schonle, Olga Makarova and Jeremy Hicks (eds), When the Elephant Broke Out of the Zoo: A Festschrift for Donald Rayfield (Stanford, CA: Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 2012), 181–82. Gerald Smith also describes how songs sung in the performance of The Aristocrats ‘could not be published under any circumstances’: Smith, Songs for Seven Strings, 72. 65 Draskoczy, Belomor, 123. 66 Robert Rothstein, ‘How it was Sung in Odessa: At the Intersection of Russian and Yiddish Folk Culture’, Slavic Review, 60:4 (2001), 792. 67 Fyodor Mochulsky, Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir, translated by Deborah Kaple (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 15. According to the poet Evgenii Evutshenko, it was also sung outside of the camps following the mass amnesties in the 1950s: Smith, Songs to Seven Strings, 81–82. Maikl Dzhekobsen and Lidia Dzhekobsen, Pesennyifol’klor GULAGa kak Istoricheskii Istorchnik: 1917–1939 (Moscow: Sovremennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 1998), 1:155. Despite making more sense, both geographically and because it was more renowned for its links with the criminal underworld to use Rostov, Mikhail and Lidia Jakobsen suggest that Amur was picked for its rhyming properties. 68 Michael and Lidia Jakobsen describe how the fifth variant of the song was a Jewish anecdote that received more popular distribution after the death of Stalin: Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyifol’klor GULAGa, 1:160. 69 Kowalsky, Deviant Women, 95–96. 70 Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyifol’klor GULAGa, 1:155. 71 Some versions of the song also appeared under the title ‘Kolka The Pickpocket’: Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyifol’klor GULAGa, 1:339. 72 Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa, 48. 73 Rothstein, ‘How it was Sung in Odessa: At the Intersection of Russian and Yiddish Folk Culture’, 794. 74 Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyi folk’lor GULAGa, 1:335–39. 75 Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyifol’klor GULAGa, 1:338–39. 76 Clemmer, The Prison Community, 172–77. 77 Unfortunately, the Jakobsens’ collection does not date the original poem. The term grenadier, however, appears mostly to have been abolished by the time of the Crimean War (1853–56). 78 Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyifol’klor GULAGa, 1:284–85. 79 Yelistratov’s dictionary of ‘Moscow Slang’ describes ban as a public place frequently inhabited by criminals, such as a train station: V. C. Yelistratov, Slovar’ Moskovskogo Argo (Moscow: Ruskii Slovar’, 1994), 32.

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80 Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyi Folk’lor GULAGa, 1:284. 81 Mikhail Dyomin, The Day is Born of Darkness, translated by Tony Khan (New York: Knopf, 1976), 183–84. 82 Colombo, ‘Len’ka Panteleev and the traditions of Van’ka Kain’, 104–05. 83 Dmitry Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, Iazyk i Myshlenie, 3–4 (1935), 64.

Chapter 2 1 Wilson Bell, ‘Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 24:2 (2015), 211. 2 For much more on this point see: Alan Barenberg, Gulag Town, Company Town; Wilson Bell, ‘Was the Gulag an Archipelago? De-Convoyed Prisoners and Porous Borders in the Camps of Western Siberia’, Russian Review, 72: 1 (2013), 116–41. 3 See Wilson Bell’s discussion of the Gulag’s black market in ‘Was the Gulag an Archipelago?’, 132–37. 4 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 92. 5 Becker, Outsiders, 1–2. 6 Adi Kuntsman, ‘With a Shade of Disgust’, 312–13. 7 Applebaum, Gulag Voices, 42. 8 Pallot and Piacentini, Gender, Geography and Punishment, 140. 9 For a number of prisoner extracts that describe conditions during transportation: Applebaum, Gulag, 159–72. 10 For an accessible account of these figures see: Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin, 11–12. 11 Pallot, ‘Russia’s Penal Peripheries’, 101. 12 Mochulsky, Gulag Boss, 16–21. 13 For an account of how contemporary prisoners continue to refer to transportation vehicles using Stolypin’s name see: Maria Alyokhina, Riot Days (London: Penguin, 2018), 108–20. 14 Pallot and Piacentini, Gender, Geography, and Punishment, 147–49. 15 Donald Clemmer notes the importance of the relationships between new prisoners and cell mates: Clemmer, The Prison Community, 100–07. 16 Petr Iakubovich, In the World of the Outcasts: Notes of a Former Penal Labourer, translated by Andrew Gentes (New York: Anthem Press, 2014), 1:9. 17 Sarah Badcock, A Prison Without Walls?, 50. 18 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, translated by Thomas P. Whitney (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 1:499. This is also suggested in the pre-revolutionary era by hard labour prisoner E. Krivorukov who argued that, after 1909, criminal leaders were used

Notes

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22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39

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by the authorities to intimidate political prisoners: Badcock, A Prison Without Walls?, 51. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1:494. Margaret Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1949), 59. This, in fact, was a mock association created by Likhachev and his friends: Vladislav Zubok, The Idea of Russia: The Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017), 24–26. For a detailed explanation of how Karelia was integrated into the Soviet penal imagination, see: Baron, Soviet Karelia, 85. Dmitry Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul: A Memoir, translated by Bernard Adams (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000), 91. Alexander Etkind, Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 31–32. Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, 90. See, in particular, the images of two cats representing the ‘family of thieves’: Danzig Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia (London: FUEL, 2006), 1:152. Glubokovsky, 49, 4. Dmitry Likhachev’s recollections of Glubokovsky are cited in: Gullotta, Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923–1930, 154–55. I.K.,‘Na Etape: Otryvok iz Vospominaniy’, Solovetskie Ostrova, 2–3 (1930), 13–19. Ibid., 13. Ibid. References to Solovev’s memoir are cited in: Roy Robson, Solovki: The Story of Russia Told through Its Most Remarkable Islands (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 209. Elinor Lipper, ‘The God Which Failed in Siberia: A Tale of a Disillusioned Woman’, in Donald T. Critchlow and Agnieszka Critchlow (eds), Enemies of the State: Personal Stories from the Gulag (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000), 25–26. Leona Toker reveals that Lipper was eight months pregnant during the attack, which appears to be a strong reason why she was left alone: Leona Toker, Return from the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 80. Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind, 353. Ibid., 354–55. Ibid., 351, 355–56. Martin Bollinger, Stalin’s Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet and the Role of the West (London: Praeger, 2003), 61. Karlo Stanjer, Seven Thousand Days in Siberia, translated by Joel Agee (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1988), 62–65. Judith Pallot, ‘The Gulag as the Crucible of Russia’s Twenty-First Century System of Punishment’, in David-Fox (ed.), The Soviet Gulag, 300. Mochulsky, Gulag Boss, 15–16.

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40 Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 191–93. 41 See, in particular, Solomon’s chapter ‘Enroute to Magadan’, although some information about his journey is taken from the preceding chapters: Michael Solomon, Magadan (Princeton: Auerbach, 1971), 84–88. 42 Solzhenitsyn dedicated the second part of his work to describing the idea of ‘perpetual motion’: Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–56 (Harvill: London, 1986), 148–74. 43 Elena Glinka, ‘The Hold’, in Veronica Shapovalov (ed.), Remembering the Darkness: Women in Soviet Prisons (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 307. 44 Pallot, The Soviet Gulag, 301. 45 Etkind, Warped Mourning, 35. 46 Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 180; Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind, 356–57.

Chapter 3 1 Alexander Dolgun with Patrick Watson, Alexander Dolgun’s Story: An American in the Gulag (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), 136–37. 2 Applebaum, Gulag, 173–77. 3 Dyomin, The Day is Born of Darkness, 13–14. 4 Oleinik, Organized Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 65. 5 Thanks to Sarah J. Young for pointing this out on her excellent blog post on criminal tattoos: http://sarahjyoung.com/site/2017/03/06/assessing-sources-russian-criminaltattoos/. 6 Oleinik, Organised Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 64. 7 Clemmer, The Prison Community, 102, 299. 8 Clemmer, The Prison Community, 115. 9 Galeotti, The Vory, 65. 10 Badcock, A Prison without Walls?, 51. 11 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 184. 12 Badcock, A Prison Without Walls?, 51 13 Daniel Beer, The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars (London: Allen Lane, 2016), 282–83. 14 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 186. 15 Badcock, A Prison Without Walls?, 51. 16 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 188. 17 Ibid., 215. 18 Ibid., 211. 19 Ibid., 132. 20 Anton Oleinik, Organized Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, translated by Sheryl Curtis (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 64.

Notes 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

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Oleinik, Organized Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 64. Galeotti, The Vory, 30. Badcock, A Prison Without Walls?, 55. Ibid., 56–57. In particular, this can be seen in one of Boris Glubokovsky’s articles from a prisoner newspaper: Boris Glubokovsky, ‘Solovetskii Pshisa’, Solovetskie Ostrova, 9 (1925). K. E. Utomsky, ‘Tyuremnyi Byt”, Za Zheleznoi Reshyotkoi, 4 (September 1923), 10–17. Young, ‘Knowing Russia’s Convicts’, 1700. ‘Winged ace’ referred to an individual who committed a daring heist and fled successfully afterwards. Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyi Folk’lor GULAGa, 1:382. Dzhekobsen and Dzhekobsen, Pesennyi Folk’lor GULAGa, 1:327. In penal slang the terms kot/koshka can also be used to indicate pimp/prostitute: Trakhenburg, Blatnaia Muzyka, 31. These terms can also be used, however, to refer to the lesbian lover of a prostitute: Breitman, Prestupnii Mir, 50–56. Daniel Healey includes a description of a criminal case from 1893 involving a man who finds his wife (a former prostitute) in bed with another former female prostitute: Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, 52–53. Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 206. Utomsky, ‘Tyuremnyye Byt”, 12. Ibid. Trakhtenberg, Blatnaia Muzyka, 67. Jacques Rossi also confirms that, in the nineteenth century, shpana was used to refer to the ‘basic prison mass’ but the evidence presented here would suggest that it was also used at the beginning of the twentieth century: Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 326. M. Usman, ‘Tyuremnaya Matershchina’, Golos Zaklyuchennogo, 3 (1925), 10. Gentes, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 194. Malsagoff, An Island Hell, 57, 83–93. Bezsonov, My Twenty-Six Prisons and My Escape from Solovki (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929), 213–14. Dmitry Likhachev, ‘Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov’, Solovetskie Ostrova, 1 (1930), 32. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 228, 488. Rossi gives a long explanation on the role of ‘stoolies’ (informers): ibid., 457–67. Also see the description in: Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 14. Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, translated by John Glad (London: Penguin, 1994), 159. Solomon, Magadan, 137. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 229–30. Ibid., 181. Larin, ‘Prestupnini Bolshogo Goroda’, 14–22.

180 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Notes

Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 150–51. Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun’s Story, 140. Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, xxvi. Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun’s Story, 140. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 80, 294. Valentin’s nickname displays a marked difference from those found amongst Italian mafia groups, which generally forbid boasting: Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld, 230; Varese, The Russian Mafia, 192–201. Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 14. Victor Herman, Coming Out of the Ice: An Unexpected Life (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 190. Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun’s Story, 143, 153 Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 228–29. Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun’s Story, 156. Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 203. A. V. Gorbatov, Years Off My Life: The Memoirs of General of the Soviet Army, translated by Gordon Clough and Anthony Cash (London: Constable, 1964), 141. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 199. Catriona Kelly, Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 236. S. S. Vilensky, A. I. Kokurin, G. V. Atmashkina and I. Iu. Novichenko (eds), Deti GULAGa:1918–1956 Dokumentary (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond ‘Demokratiia’, 2002), 428. Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULaga, 2:446–47. Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 118. Pallot and Piacentini, with Moran, Gender, Geography, and Punishment, 206–07. Ginzburg, Within the Whirlwind, 36–37. Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, 122. Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 519. Ibid.; Chalidze, Criminal Russia: Essays on Crime in the Soviet Union (New York: Random House, 1977), 51–52. Bell, ‘Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag’, 199. Ibid., 208. Ibid., 205. Ibid., 211; Tobien, Dancing under the Red Star, 188–89. Bell, ‘Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag’, 206. Shapovalov (ed.), Remembering the Darkness, 317–53. Ginzburg, Within the Whirlwind, 12. Daniel Healey also describes how an ‘exchange of favours’ for sex was common between males from the mid-nineteenth century, including inside prison: Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, 232.

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77 Bell, ‘Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag’, 206. 78 Daniel Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 30. 79 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 316. 80 Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 205 81 Ibid., 204–05. Shalamov expanded further on this image in another story, ‘Swindler’s Blood’, which described the criminals as ‘pederasts’ and how each of them in the camp were surrounded by young prisoners named ‘Zoikas’, ‘Man’kas’ and ‘Verkas’, whom they would feed and sleep with, adding that inmates had done the same with a female dog. Cited in Kuntsman, ‘With a Shade of Disgust’, 315. 82 Ginzburg, Within the Whirlwind, 12, 101. 83 Kuntsman, ‘With a Shade of Disgust’, 312–14. Also see: Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, 30. 84 Kuntsman, ‘With a Shade of Disgust’, 310. 85 Ibid., 312; Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, 237. 86 Pallot and Piacentini, with Moran, Gender, Geography and Punishment, 201–04. In camp slang, active lesbians who wore short hair and dressed like men were characterised by masculine features, and could be referred to using the male name volodya: Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 53. 87 Federico Varese simply states that ‘although passive homosexuality was strictly forbidden, active homosexuality was allowed’: Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-vZakone, 1930s–1950s’, 519. For further notes on the observation of homosexual practices in Gulag memoirs: Toker, Return from the Archipelago, 61. 88 For more see: James Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime: A Quarter Century of Theory and Research (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). 89 James Messerschmidt, ‘Engendering Gendered Knowledge: Assessing the Academic Appropriation of Hegemonic Masculinity’, Men and Masculinities, 15:1 (2012), 64. 90 Salagaev and Shashkin, ‘Violence and Victimisation on the Street’, 7. 91 Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 162. 92 Salagaev and Shashkin, ‘Violence and Victimisation on the Street’, 8. 93 Lipper, ‘The God that Failed in Siberia’, 25; Glinka, ‘On the Tram’, 301–10. 94 Tamara Petkevich, Memoirs of a Gulag Actress, translated by Yasha Klots and Ross Ufberg (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 174. 95 Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 106–21. 96 Emma Mason, ‘Women in the Gulag’, in Melanie Illic (ed.), Women in the Stalin Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001),138. 97 Bell, ‘Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag’, 211. 98 Marek Kaminski, The Games Prisoners Play: The Tragicomic World of Polish Prison (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 38.

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99 Andrew Gentes, ‘ “Beat the Devil!” Prison Society and Anarchy in Tsarist Siberia’, Ab Imperio, 2 (2009), 212. 100 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 236. 101 The practice of ‘switching’ with other prisoners also continued to some extent in the Stalinist Gulag, albeit with less frequency after the introduction of photographic ID cards: Bell, ‘Was the Gulag an Archipelago?’, 140–41. 102 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 218. 103 Varese, The Russian Mafia, 147–50. 104 Randall Collins, Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 353. 105 Collins, Violence, 166–67. 106 Oleinik, Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 102. 107 Oleinik, Organized Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 103. 108 Collins, Violence, 24. 109 Herman, Coming Out of the Ice, 190–93. 110 For further discussions of division between clean and unclean see: Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2002). 111 Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun’s Story, 140. 112 Svetlana Stephenson, ‘Violent Practices of Youth Territorial Groups in Moscow’, Europe-Asia, 64:1 (2012). For a more extensive list of verbal threats used by criminal prisoners: Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 69. 113 Collins, Violence, 155. 114 Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 183. 115 Petrov, Soviet Gold, 126–27. 116 Collins, Violence, 332. 117 Karl Tobien, Dancing under the Red Star: The Extraordinary Story of Margaret Werner, the Only American Woman to Survive Stalin’s Gulag (Colorado Springs: Crown Publishing Group, 2006), 180. 118 Stephenson, ‘Violent Practices of Youth Territorial Groups in Moscow’, 74. 119 Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 215. 120 Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 151. 121 Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun’s Story, 145. 122 Starostin, arrested in 1943, recalled that ‘even inveterate recidivists would sit quiet as mice and listen to my football stories’ during his imprisonment in the Soviet Far East: Jim Riordan, ‘The Strange Case of Nikloi Starostin, Football and Lavrentii Beria’, Europe-Asia, 46:4 (1994), 685. In criminal slang ‘storytellers’ could also be referred to as ‘trap/mouth’ or ‘novelist’: Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 30. 123 Pallot and Piacentini, with Moran, Gender, Geography, and Punishment, 200–01. This is also discussed by: Vergil Williams and Mary Fish, Convicts, Codes and

Notes

124 125

126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146

147

183

Contraband: The Prison Life of Men and Women (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1975), 24. Stanjer, Seven Thousand Days in Siberia, 162–63. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays of the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968). See also: Clemmer, The Prison Community, 113. Pallot and Piacentini, with Moran, Gender, Geography, and Punishment, 200. Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 524–25. Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 200. Oleinik, Organised Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 111. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 90, 168. Ibid., 187. Pallot and Piacentini, with Moran, Gender, Geography, and Punishment, 197: Oleinik, Organised Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 107. Shalamov, Sobranie Sochinenii v 4-h tomakh, 21. Oleinik, Organised Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 108. For a guide to the history of the collective principle in the Soviet Union: Judith Pallot, Laura Piacentini and Dominique Moran, ‘Russia’s Penal Peripheries: Remembering the Mordovan Gulag’, Europe-Asia, 62:1 (2010), 3; Laura Piacentini and Gavin Slade, ‘Architecture and Attachment: Carceral Collectivism and the Problem of Prison Reform in Russia and Georgia’, Theoretical Criminology, 19:2 (2015), 181–82. Oleinik, Organised Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 124. Varese, The Russian Mafia, 150. Lee Bowker, Prisoner Subcultures (Lexington, MA: Heath and Company, 1977), 77. Clemmer, The Prisoner Community,152. Williams and Fish, Convicts, Codes and Contraband, 57. Valery Anisimkov, Tyuremnaya obshchina: ‘vekhi’ istorii (Moscow, 1993), 7. Varese, The Russia Mafia, 151. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 76: Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 13. Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 522. Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 12. David Skarbeck, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 26; Ronald Akers, Norman Hayner and Walter Gruninger, ‘Prisonization in Five Countries: Types of Prison and Inmate Characteristics’, Criminology, 14:4 (1977), 527–54. Varese, The Russian Mafia, 152. There are numerous memoir accounts that report criminal prisoners refusing to perform work duties, but vivid depictions include: Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, 71: Petrov, It Happens in Russia, 220.

184

Notes

148 Stanjer, Seven Thousand Days in Siberia, 90. 149 Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 518: Lev Kopelev, To Be Preserved Forever (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1977), 216. 150 Sergei Dovlatov, The Zone, translated by Anne Frydman (Richmond: Oneworld Classics, 2011), 58. 151 G. A. Boduhin ‘Shrhi na Hodu’, 41–45. 152 Kopelev, To Be Preserved Forever, 222. 153 Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun’s Story, 163–64: Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 123. 154 Borisov, ‘Frayera i Svoi’, 80–82. 155 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 92. 156 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 186. 157 Etkind, Warped Mourning, 32. 158 Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, 230–35. This displays similarity to Marek Kaminski’s explanations of behavioural rules toward ‘suckers’ or ‘fags’ in Polish prisons: Kaminski, The Games Prisoners Play, 74.

Chapter 4 1 Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULaga, 3:415–33. 2 Helena Goscilo, ‘Texting the Body: Soviet Criminal Tattoos’, in David Goldfrank and Pavel Lyssakov (eds), Cultural Cabaret: Russian and American Essays for Richard Stites (Washington, DC: New Academia, 2012), 216; Miriam Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime and the Fate of Reform After Stalin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 115; Alix Lambert, Russian Prison Tattoos: Codes of Authority, Domination and Struggle (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2003), 48. 3 Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 1:17–25. The foreword to the first volume of the collection includes a reasonably detailed biography of Baldaev. 4 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 77. 5 Cited in: Tim Tzoulandis, The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulag: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia (London: Little, Brown, 2008), 182. 6 See comments by former prisoners Militsa Stefanskia and Vladimir Petrov in: Barnes, Death and Redemption, 88–90. Some of these dictionaries include: Danzig Baldaev, Slovar Blatnogo Vorovskogo Zhargona v Dvukh Tomakh (Moscow: Kampana, 1997); Arkady Bronnikov and Yu Dubyagin (eds), Tolkovyi Slovar’ Ugolovnykh Zhargonov: An Explanatory Dictionary of Criminal Slang (Moscow: Inter-OMNIS, 1993); Yu Dubyagin and E. A. Teplitsky, Concise English–Russian and Russian–English Dictionary of the Underworld (Moscow: Teraa, 1993). 7 Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld, 150. 8 Applebaum, Gulag, 270.

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9 Draskoczy, Belomor, 101–09; Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer, 113–15. 10 Abby Schrader, ‘Branding the Other/Tattooing the Self: Bodily Inscriptions amongst Convicts in Russia and the Soviet Union’, in Jane Caplan (ed.), Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History (London: Reaktion, 2000), 190. 11 Schrader, ‘Bodily Inscriptions’, 189. 12 Enid Schildkrout, ‘Inscribing the Body’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33 (2004), 319; Nanci Condee, ‘Body Graphics: Tattooing the Fall of Communism’, in Adele Marie Barker (ed.), Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex and Society since Gorbachev (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 350. 13 Nikki Sullivan, Tattooed Bodies: Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics and Pleasure (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 16; Gosilco, ‘Texting the Body’, 210. 14 Condee, ‘Body Graphics: Tattooing the Fall of Communism’, 340. 15 For a longer biography of ‘the American’ see: Nicholas Thomas, Anna Cole and Browen Douglas (eds), Tattoo: Bodies, Art and Exchange in the Pacific and the West (London: Reaktion, 2005), 70–71. 16 Schildkrout, ‘Inscribing the Body’, 327. 17 Helen Rodgers, ‘ “The Way to Jerusalem”: Reading, Writing and Reform in an Early Victorian Gaol’, Past and Present, 205 (2009), 96. 18 Schrader, ‘Branding the other/Tattooing the Self ’, 181. 19 Ibid., 191. 20 Cesare Lombroso, Criminal Man, 61–62; Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 15. 21 Condee, ‘Tattooing the Fall of Communism’, 341. 22 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 15. 23 Mikhail Gernet, ‘Tatuirovka v mestakh zaklyucheniya g. Moskvy’, in A. M. Aronovich and M. N. Gernet (eds), Prestupnyi Mir Moskvy: Sbornik Statei (Moscow: Izd-vo ‘Pravo i Zizhn’, 1924), 220. 24 Ibid., 244. 25 Ibid. 26 Condee, ‘Tattooing the Fall of Communism’, 344. 27 A. Sidorov, ‘The Russian Criminal Tattoo: Past and Present’, in Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 1:25. 28 Gernet, ‘Tatuirovka v mestakh zaklyucheniya g. Moskvy’, 221. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 222. 31 Schrader, ‘Branding the Self ’, 186. 32 Goffman, Asylums, 187, 207. 33 Gernet, ‘Tatuirovka v mestakh zaklyucheniya g. Moskvy’, 225. 34 Condee, ‘Tattooing the Fall of Communism’, 342. 35 Lambert, Russian Prison Tattoos, 40.

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36 Anatoly Marchenko describes how a recidivist nicknamed ‘Vorkuta’ spread permanganate of potash (from the medical ward) into his self-inflicted open wounds to form a new, albeit scarred, layer of skin over a tattoo on his forehead: Marchenko, My Testimony, translated by Michael Scammell (Sevenoakes: Sceptre, 1987), 208. 37 Gernet, ‘Tatuirovka v mestakh zaklyucheniya g. Moskvy’, 242. 38 Schrader, ‘Tattooing the Self ’, 190. 39 Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionary of Symbols, trans. John BuchananBrown (London: Penguin, 1996), 1007. 40 Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, 61. 41 Alexi Plutser-Sarno, ‘All Power to the Godfathers!’, in Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 2:7. 42 Gernet, ‘Tatuirovka v mestakh zaklyucheniya g. Moskvy’, 229. 43 See Daniel Healey’s discussion of men’s ‘shaming tattoos’ in: Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, 45–46. 44 Gernet, ‘Tatuirovka v mestakh zaklyucheniya g. Moskvy’, 233. 45 Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 426. 46 Gernet, ‘Tatuirovka v mestakh zaklyucheniya g. Moskvy’, 233. 47 Condee, ‘Tattooing the Fall of Communism’, 347–48. 48 A. Gleason, P. Kenez and R. Stites (eds), Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 274. 49 See the empirical data presented in: J. Arch Getty, G. T. Rippensporn and V. N. Zemskov, ‘Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence’, American Historical Review, 98:4 (1993). 50 Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 2:45. 51 The Moscow Bureau study also reported how one prisoner displayed a defiant tattoo reading ‘I am not afraid of death’: Gernet, ‘Tatuirovka v mestakh zaklyucheniya g. Moskvy’, 224. 52 Jonathan Waterlow, ‘Popular Humour in Stalin’s 1930s: A Study of Popular Opinion and Adaptation’, PhD thesis (University of Oxford, 2012), 139. 53 Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 1:125. 54 Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 7; Lyrics from an Esenin poem were found tattooed on the feet of a prisoner from a camp in Siberia during the 1950s: Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 3:317. 55 Draskoczy, Belomor, 106. 56 Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 125. 57 Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 3:128. 58 Plutser-Sarno, ‘All Power to the Godfathers!’, 43. 59 Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 2:37. 60 Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer, 117. 61 Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 1:27.

Notes

187

62 For example, the Russian word for prison, tyurma, became tyurfemanya: Galleotti, ‘The World of the Lower Depths: Crime and Punishment in Russian History’, 103. 63 Valery Chalidze, Criminal Russia, 57. 64 Galeotti, The Vory, 67. 65 Applebaum, Gulag, 266. 66 Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa, 4 67 Chalidze, Criminal Russia, 57. 68 Meyer Galler and Harlan Marquess, Soviet Prison Camp Speech: A Survivor’s Glossary (Hayward: Soviet Studies, 1972), 41. 69 Maksimov, Sibir i Katorga, 185. 70 Galler and Marquess, Soviet Prison Camp Speech, 47. 71 Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’; Dmitry Likhachev ‘Argoticheskie slova professional’noi rechi’, Razvitie grammatiki I leksiki sovremennogo ruskogo iazyka (1964), 311–59. Likhachev’s second article was originally penned in 1938 but not published until 1964. Argotic Words in Professional Speech focused more on the use of specific jargon in the work environment and contained limited discussion of criminal slang. 72 This approach displayed a similarity to V. V. Straten’s Argot and Argotisms, published around the same time, which suggested that criminal argot originated in medieval artisan and trade vocabularies and the ‘language of beggars, thieves and vagabonds’. In this work, Straten claimed that the demise of these groups was due to changing socio-economic conditions such as rapid industrialisation and urbanisation: Galler and Marquess, Soviet Prison Camp Speech, 43. 73 Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, 78. 74 Ibid., 62. 75 Ibid., 71. 76 Ibid., 94. 77 Ibid., 56–57. 78 Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld, 57. Daniel Healey describes how a homosexual subculture including its own sexualised geography, rituals of contact and socialisation, signals and gestures, and fraternal language bridged the revolutionary divide of 1917: Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, 29–49. 79 Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, 55. For a further description of how penal argot contains varying levels of secrecy: Kaminski, The Games Prisoners Play, 82. 80 Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 30, 37. 81 A. Akarevich, ‘Blatnye Slova’, Solovetskie Ostrova, 2 (February 1925), 99–102. 82 Gullotta, Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923–30, 319–20. 83 Other suggested criminal tools included a rifle, which would be referred to by using the word for ‘screw’ (vint): Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 46.

188 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

109 110 111 112 113 114 115

Notes Kaminski, The Games Prisoners Play, 83. Galler and Marquess, Soviet Prison Camp Speech, 76, 91, 105, 105. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 17. Plutser-Sarno, ‘The Language of the Body and Politics: The Symbolism of Thieves’ Tattoos’, 31. Akarevich, ‘Blatnye Slova’, 99. Kaminski, The Games Prisoners Play, 62. Akarevich, ‘Blatnye Slova’, 99. Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, 72. Ibid., 61, 68. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 162. Ibid., 30. Skarbeck, The Social Order of the Underworld, 29–30. Danzig Baldaev, Slovar Blatnogo Vorovskogo Zhargona (Moscow, 1997). Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 10. Danzig Baldaev, Drawings from the Gulag (London: FUEL, 2010), 217–21. For further examples of names given to camp ‘pariahs’: Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 80. Kaminski, The Games Prisoners Play, 62. Clemmer, The Prison Community, 111–33. Galler and Marquess, Soviet Prison Camp Speech, 36. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook. Steve Smith, ‘The Social Meanings of Swearing: Workers and Bad Language in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia’, Past and Present 160 (1998), 167–202. Clemmer, The Prison Community, 88. Barnes, Death and Redemption, 90. Oleinik, Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Society, 61. Maksmiov, Sibir’ i Katorga, 159–60. Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind, 71; Judith Scheffler (ed.), Wall Tappings: An International Anthology of Women’s Prison Writings 200 to the Present (New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2002), xxxiv. Oleinik, Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Society, 60; Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 120. Varese, The Russian Mafia, 239. Galeotti, The Vory, 63. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, translated by Ralph Parker (London: Penguin Classics, 2000). Miriam Dobson, ‘Contesting the Paradigms of De-Stalinization: Readers’ Responses to “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”’, Slavic Review, 64:3 (2005), 590. Dobson, ‘Contesting the Paradigms of De-Stalinization’, 590. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf, translated by Harry Willets (London: HarperCollins, 1980).

Notes

189

116 Abraham Tertz, Voice from the Chorus, translated by Kiril FitzLyon and Max Howard (London: Harvill Press, 1995). 117 Oleinik, Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Society, 4.

Chapter 5 1 Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 18–24. 2 Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 3–14. 3 See Levi’s analysis of the ‘grey zone’ in: Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, translated by Raymond Rosenthal (London: Joseph, 1988). 4 Bell, ‘Was the Gulag an Archipelago?’. 5 See the work of Shelia Fitzpatrick and Alena Ledeneva regarding the importance of informal networks in wider Soviet society: Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Ledeneva, Russia’s Economy of Favours. 6 Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 322. 7 Anisimkov, Tyuremnaya Obshchina, 18. 8 Condee, ‘Body Graphics: Tattooing the Fall of Communism’, 350. 9 Sidorov, ‘The Russian Criminal Tattoo: Past and Present’, in Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 1:43. 10 Oleinik, Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, 65. 11 Pallot, Piacentini and Moran, ‘Patriotic Discourses in Russia’s Penal Peripheries: Remembering the Mordovan Gulag’, 13. 12 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead (London: Heinemann, 1915), 47. 13 Chekhov, Journey to Sakhalin, 117. 14 Charles Hawes, In the Uttermost East: Being an Account of Investigations Among the Natives and Russian Convicts of the Isle of Sakhalin, with Notes of Travel in Korea, Siberia and Manchuria (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903), 150–51. 15 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 232. 16 Gentes, ‘ “Beat the Devil!” Prison Society and Anarchy in Tsarist Siberia’, 206. 17 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 204. 18 Maksimov, Sibir i Katorga, 121–22. 19 Gentes, ‘ “Beat the Devil!” Prison Society and Anarchy in Tsarist Siberia’, 206. 20 George Kennan, Siberia and the Exile System (London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1891), 1:391–92: See also: Alan Wood, ‘Administrative Exile and the Criminals’ Commune in Siberia’, in Roger Bartlett (ed.), Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society (London: Macmillan, 1990), 395–414. 21 Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead, 47.

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22 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 204. 23 Chekhov, A Journey to Sakhalin, 117. 24 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 211; Chekhov, A Journey to Sakhalin, 117. 25 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 204. Dostoevsky also lists several other games: Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead, 47. 26 Gentes, ‘ “Beat the Devil!” Prison Society and Anarchy in Tsarist Siberia’, 214. 27 Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 445. 28 Gentes, ‘ “Beat the Devil!” Prison Society and Anarchy in Tsarist Siberia’, 213. 29 Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead, 48. 30 Iakubovich, In the World of the Outcasts, 1:21–23. 31 Ibid., 1:18. 32 K. E. Utomsky, ‘Tyuremnyye Byt’, Za Zheleznoi Reshyotkoi, 4 (1923), 10–17. 33 Ibid., 12. 34 Likhachev, ‘Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov’, 32. 35 Gentes, ‘ “Beat the Devil!” Prison Society and Anarchy in Tsarist Siberia’, 214–15. 36 Likhachev, ‘Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov’, 32. 37 Galler and Marquess, Soviet Prison Camp Speech, 185. 38 Likhachev, ‘Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov’, 33. 39 Ibid.; Likhachev, Reflections on the Russian Soul, 103. 40 Ibid., 33–35. 41 Ibid., 35–36. 42 Likhachev, ‘Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov’, 37. 43 Petrov, Soviet Gold, 46, 129. 44 Kuntsman, ‘With a Shade of Disgust’, 313. 45 Gustaw Herling, A World Apart: The Journal of a Gulag Survivor, translated by Andrezej Ciolkosz (New York: Arbour House, 1951), 18. 46 In this instance, Herling puts the loss of his finger down to self-mutilation rather than a punishment for losing at cards: Herling, A World Apart, 18. 47 Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULaga, 2:446–47. 48 Likhachev, ‘Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov’, 33. 49 GARF f.9401, op.1a, d.56,11. 209–210 ob. Although this reference was consulted in person, and used slightly differently, it was originally found through: Bell, ‘Was the Gulag an Archipelago?’. 50 Bell, ‘Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag’, 212. 51 Stanjer, Seven Thousand Days in Siberia, 106. 52 Goffman, Asylums, 187. 53 Likhachev, ‘Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov’, 32. 54 Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 413, 431. 55 Solomon, Magadan, 138.

Notes 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84

191

Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 168. For more see: Bell, ‘Was the Gulag an Archipelago?’. Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 148–49. Ibid., 151; Varese, The Russian Mafia, 155. Conquest, Kolyma, 99. Pallot and Piacenti with Moran, Gender, Geography and Punishment, 200. Stanjer, Seven Thousand Days in Siberia, 105; Bell, ‘Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag’, 206. Likhachev, ‘Kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov’, 36. Anton Antonov-Ovseynenko, The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny, translated by George Sanders (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 316. Colonna-Czosnowski cited in: Applebaum, Gulag, 269. Gorbatov, Years Off My Life, 140–41. Stanjer, Seven Thousand Days in Siberia, 106. Rossi, The Gulag Handbook, 350. Kopelev, To Be Preserved Forever, 245. Varese, ‘Society’, 535. Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, 45–46. Similar comments about ‘suckers’ or ‘fags’ in Polish prisons are discussed in: Kaminski, The Games Prisoners Play, 74. Baldaev (ed.), Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 3:183. Malsagoff, An Island Hell, 132–38. Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, 70–77. Ruder, Making History for Stalin, 167. Applebaum, Gulag, 268. Cited in Applebaum, Gulag, 243. Lynne Viola also discusses the role of alcohol in relation to the execution teams during the purges of 1937–38. Making a comparison to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen, she notes that in the Soviet context alcohol was less directly a cause than a ‘lubricant, willingly self-administered and an enhancer of excess’: Lynne Viola, ‘The Question of the Perpetrator in Soviet History’, Slavic Review, 72:1 (2003), 11–12. Petrov, Soviet Gold, 182. Vladimir Petrov, Escape from the Future: The Incredible Adventures of a Young Russian (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), 279. Kate Brown, ‘Out of Solitary Confinement’, 78. Gentes and Doroshevich, Russia’s Penal Colony in the Far East, 444. Dick Hobbs describes the involvement of several UK crime gangs in legal and illegal gambling activities: Hobbs, Lush Life, 58–88. Robert Putman, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 173.

192

Notes

85 Terry Martin, ‘Modernization or Neo-Traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primordialism’, in Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.) Stalinism: New Directions (London: Routledge, 2000), 348–67. 86 Gentes, ‘ “Beat the Devil!” Prison Society and Anarchy in Tsarist Siberia’, 217. 87 Applebaum, Gulag, 466.

Chapter 6 1 Solomon, Magadan, 135. At its height in the post-war period, Kolyma housed around 200,000 prisoners. When Michael Solomon first arrived in 1948 the prisoner population had risen sharply from 100,000 to around 150,000: Bollinger, Stalin’s Slave Ships, 85. 2 Makarenko, Road to Life, 27. 3 Solomon, Magadan, 135. 4 Ibid., 136. 5 Judith Pallot, ‘Russia’s Penal Peripheries: Space, Place and Penalty in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia’, 99. 6 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Vintage Books, 1977), 33. For a brief synopsis regarding the theatrical nature of ‘show trials’ in the 1930s and, in particular, the Pavlik Morozov case: Catriona Kelly, Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero (London: Granta, 2005), 96–97. 7 Solomon, Magadan, 133. 8 Stephen Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia: 1856–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 246; Cathy Frierson, ‘Crime and Punishment in the Russian Village: Rural Concepts of Criminality at the end of the 19th Century’, Slavic Review, 46:1 (1987); Galeotti, ‘The World of the Lower Depths’, 90. 9 Frierson, ‘Crime and Justice in the Russian Village: Rural Concepts of Criminality at the End of the 19th Century’, 62. 10 Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 250. 11 Solomon, Magadan, 137. 12 Rodgers, ‘When Vigilantes Turn Bad: Gangs, Urban Violence and Social Change in Urban Nicaragua’, in David Pratten and Atreyee Sen (eds), Global Vigilantes (London: Hurst, 2008), 362. 13 Danzig Baldaev refers to this period as razborki (‘settling of scores/showdown’): Baldaev, Drawings from the Gulag, 199. 14 Maria Bochkareva, Yashka: My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile, as set down by Isaac Don Levine (London: Constable, 1919), 44–46. 15 Galler and Marquess, Soviet Prison Camp Speech, 186.

Notes 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

193

Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia, 148. Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, 60. Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 419. Varlam Shalamov, Sobraniye Sochineniy v 4-h Tomah (Moscow: Khddozhestvennya Literatura, 1998), 60–63. Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULag, 1918–1956, 3:433. Cited in: Varese, The Russian Mafia, 157–59. Ibid. Baldaev, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia, 1:138. Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, 420. Solomon, Magadan, 147. Robson, Solovki, 227. Applebaum, Gulag, 255. Golfo Alexopoulos, ‘A Torture Memo: Reading Violence in the Gulag’, in Golfo Alexopoulos, Julie Hessler and Kiril Tomoff (eds), Writing the Stalin Era: Sheila Fitzpatrick and Soviet Historiography (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 157. Ibid., 164. Abby Schrader, Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002), 50. Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man, 178. Baldaev, Drawings from the Gulag, 208–214. Ibid., 129–141. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 35. Alexopoulos, ‘A Torture Memo’, 160. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 246. Consulted/translated from Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, but analysis cited from: Varese, The Russian Mafia, 158. Draskoczy, Belomor, 101–02. Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, 63. Ibid., 63. Likhachev, ‘Cherty pervobytnogo primitivizma vorovskoi rechi’, 64. See the discussion of this in: Galeotti, The Vory, 69. Donald Clemmer discusses the differences between ‘grouped’ and ‘ungrouped’ interaction in The Prison Community, 111–33. Yuri Glazov, ‘ “Thieves” in the USSR: A Social Phenomenon’, in Mark Galeotti (ed.), Russian and Post-Soviet Organised Crime (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 35. Varese, The Russian Mafia, 158. Skarbeck, Social Order of the Underworld, 80. Varese, The Russian Mafia, 159. Skarbeck, Social Order of the Underworld, 80.

194

Notes

49 Glazov, ‘ “Thieves” in the USSR: A Social Phenomenon’, 35. 50 Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 96–97. 51 Widespread obedience to these rulings continued to be a major problem for camp authorities in the post-Stalin camps: Varese, The Russian Mafia, 159. 52 Varese, ‘Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 527. Steven Barnes describes professional criminals ‘strutting around like dandies’ in tight-fitting jackets, vests, coats, hats and scarves stolen from newly arrived prisoners who arrived from the annexed territories: Barnes, Death and Redemption, 109–10. 53 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 113. 54 Edward Bacon includes detailed statistical analysis of Gulag prisoner transfers, turnover rate, distribution of prisoners added to the camps and the sources/ destinations of those entering and leaving: Edward Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labour System in Light of the Archives (London: Macmillian, 1994), 110–22. 55 Slade, Reorganzing Crime, 15. 56 Baldaev (ed.), Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia, 3:27. 57 Patricia Rawlinson, From Fear to Fraternity: A Russian Tale of Crime, Economy, and Modernity (London: Pluto, 2010), 60. This promise of amnesty was not particularly unique, as the Gulag operated a ‘revolving door’ of frequent arrests and releases; 20–40 per cent of the total inmate population was released every year, even at the height of the Great Terror: Golfo Alexopolous, ‘Amnesty 1945: The Revolving Door of Stalin’s Gulag’, Slavic Review, 64:2 (2005), 274–306. 58 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 113. 59 Bacon, The Gulag at War, 91. 60 Ibid., 93. 61 Applebaum, Gulag, 414–27. 62 Varese, ‘Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 527. 63 Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 15. 64 Varese, ‘Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 537. 65 For details on differing sentences during the 1930s: Hagenloh, Stalin’s Police, 53–57, 91–93, 95–96. 66 Baldaev, Drawings from the Gulag, 199. 67 Slade, Reorganzing Crime, 15. 68 Shalamov, Sobraniye Sochineniy, 63. 69 Ibid., 65. 70 Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 529. 71 Oleinik, Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Society, 72. 72 Shalamov, Sobraniye Sochineniy, 60–63. 73 Dolgun, Alexander Dolgun’s Story, 147–48. 74 Despite this, Solzhenitsyn still stated that Shalamov’s writings on suchya voina were incomplete: Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULaga, 3:438. 75 Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULaga, 3:438; Barnes, Death and Redemption, 174.

Notes

195

76 For Solzhenitsyn the animosity between vory and suki began before the Great Patriotic War: he described an incident from July 1933 and also referred to Podogin’s play The Aristocrats. Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULag, 1:539. 77 Shalamov, Sobraniye Sochineniy, 60–63. 78 Kopelev, To Be Preserved Forever, 245. 79 Kopelev, To Be Preserved Forever, 248–52. 80 ‘Bandera Partisans’ were Ukrainian soldiers who continued to fight battles with the Soviet government well into the post-war period: Barnes, Death and Redemption, 162. 81 Edward Buca, Vorkuta, translated by Michael Lisinki and Kennedy Well (London: Constable, 1976), 53–57. 82 Buca, Vorkuta, 53–57. 83 Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 529. 84 Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULag, 3:413. 85 Varese, ‘Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 530. 86 Ibid., 538. 87 Solzhenitsyn, Arkhipelag GULag, 3:412. 88 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 177. 89 Varese, ‘The Society of Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 530. 90 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 177. 91 Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-V-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 538. 92 Alexopolous, ‘A Torture Memo’, 166. 93 Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 538. 94 Alexopolous, ‘A Torture Memo’, 164, 171, 175; Stephane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (London: Harvard University Press, 1999), 239. 95 Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 15. 96 Varese, ‘Society’, 537. 97 Slade, Reorganizing Crime, 15. 98 Varese, ‘The Society of the Vory-v-Zakone, 1930s–1950s’, 528. 99 Steven Hutchings and Natalia Rulyova, Television and Culture in Putin’s Russia: Remote Control (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 114–38. For more on Strafbat’ see: Stephen Norris, Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, and Patriotism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012). 100 Rodgers, ‘When Vigilantes Turn Bad: Gangs, Urban Violence and Social Change in Urban Nicaragua’, 62. 101 See: Nicholas Haysom, Towards an Understanding of Prison Gangs (Cape Town: University of Cape Town, 1981); Johnny Steinberg, The Number: One Man’s Search for Identity in the Cape Underworld and Prison Gangs (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2004). 102 Skarbeck, Social Order of the Underworld, 31. 103 Alyokhina, Riot Days, 88.

196

Notes

104 For a Reuters news report on the Magnitsky Case see: Maria Tsvetkova and Steve Gutterman, ‘Russia Convicts Lawyer Magnitsky in Posthumous Trial’, 11 July 2013, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-magnitsky/russia-convicts-lawyermagnitsky-in-posthumous-trial-idUSBRE96A09V20130711 (last accessed 13 June 2019).

Epilogue 1 ‘The Princess of Crime’, Moscow Times, 27 April 2007. 2 Ibid. 3 Breitman, Prestupnii Mir, 43; For more details regarding the decision of the dekabristki to join their husbands in Siberia see: Beer, The House of the Dead, 75–79. 4 McReynolds, Murder Most Russian, 229. 5 McReynolds, Russia At Play, 278. 6 See Jeff Hardy’s detailed examination of Gulag demographics on either side of Stalin’s death: Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin, 12, 55. 7 Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer, 109–22; Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin, 23. 8 Barenberg, Gulag Town, Company Town, 206–09. 9 Barnes, Death and Redemption, 211–32. 10 See, in particular, Anatoly Marchenko’s descriptions of two recidivists in the cell opposite him at Vladimir Prison in 1961: Marchenko, My Testimony, 208–09. 11 Etkind, Warped Mourning, 104. 12 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, 58–71. 13 Etkind, Warped Mourning, 104. 14 For more on the singer Mikhail Krug and his link with criminal subculture: Galeotti, The Vory, 265. 15 Ibid., 74–75. 16 Goscilo,‘Texting the Body: Soviet Criminal Tattoos’, 216. 17 The Way Back. Directed by Peter Weir, 2010. 18 Rawicz’s memoir was published in 1956, selling around half a million copies and translated into more than 20 languages. Its accuracy has been questioned by another former prisoner who claims he was one of the original participants of the group escape. Archival evidence, however, seemingly contradicts both of their versions of events: Hugh Levinson, ‘Walking the Talk, 30 October 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/6098218.stm (last accessed 24 January 2020). 19 For a lengthy discussion of the film, including a full-body analysis of Nikolai Luzhin’s (Viggo Mortensen’s) tattoos: http://easternpromises.livejournal.com/47809. html (last accessed 24 January 2020). 20 Demin, The Day is Born of Darkness, 192–93.

Notes

197

21 Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as a Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 4. 22 Skarbeck, Social Order of the Underworld, 27. 23 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Lewis Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 38. 24 Alexander Etkind, ‘Post-Soviet Hauntology: Cultural Memory of the Soviet Terror’, Constellations, 16:1 (2009), 182–200. 25 Gernet, Prestupnyi Mir Moskvy, 243. 26 Baldaev (ed.), Russian Criminal Tattoo, 1:186. 27 Judith Pallot & Laura Piacentini, ‘ “In Exile Imprisonment” in Russia’, British Journal of Criminology, 54:1 (2014), 30. 28 Anisimkov, Tyuremnaya Obshchina, 9. 29 Goffman, Asylums, 171–72, 203–12. 30 Martin, ‘Modernization or Neo-Traditionalism?’, 348–67. 31 Mary Bosworth and Eamonn Carrabine, ‘Reassessing Resistance: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Prison’, Punishment and Society, 3 (2001), 501. 32 Mochulsky, Gulag Boss, 58–63. 33 Philip Williams and Yenna Wu, The Great Wall of Confinement: The Development of Chinese Communist Prison Camps Through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 84. 34 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (London: Vintage Books, 1977), 267; Bosworth and Carrabine, ‘Reassessing Resistance’, 501. 35 Bosworth and Carrabine, ‘Reassessing Resistance’, 501.

198

Bibliography Prisoner newspapers Golos Zaklyuchennogo (‘Voice of the Prisoner’, Gomel) Novye Solovki (‘New Solovki’, Solovki) Solovetskie Ostrova (‘Solovetsky Island’, Solovki) Za Zhelznoi Reshyotkoi (‘Behind the Iron Bars’, Vyatka)

Related films Cold Summer of ’53. Directed by Aleksandr Proshkin, 1988 Eastern Promises. Directed by David Cronenberg, 2007 The Mark of Cain. Directed by Alix Lambert, 2000 Thief. Directed by Pavel Chukhray, 1997 The Road to Life. Directed by Nikolai Ekk, 1931 The Way Back. Directed by Peter Weir, 2010

Printed document collections consulted Afanas’ev, Iury Nikolaevich, and V. P. Kozlov, Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga: Konet 1920-khPervaia Polovina 1950kh Godov. 7 vols (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004) Kokurin, A. I., and Nikita Vasil’evich Petrov, Gulag 1917–1960: Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei (Moscow : MFD, 2002) Okhotkin, N. G., and A. B. Roginsky, Sistema ispravitel’no-trudovykh lageri v SSR, 1923–1960: Spravochnik (Moscow : Zven’ia, 1998) Vilensky, S. S., Kokurin, A. I., Atmashkina, G. V., and I. Iu. Novichenko (eds), Deti GULAGa: 1918–1956 Dokumenty (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond ‘Demokratiiia’, 2002)

Memoirs cited Alyokhina, Maria, Riot Days (London: Penguin, 2018) Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton, The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny, translated by George Sanders, (New York: Harper & Row, 1980)

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212

Index Agamben, Giorgio 55 Akarverich, A. 102–3, 105–6 Aleksandrovsk transit prison 112, 146 Alexopolous, Golfo 135 Altai Republic 87 Andreev (vor) 147 ‘An Essay in the Study of Criminal Argot’ (Tonkov) 100 Anisimkov, Valery 110, 160 Antonov, Grigory 149 Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton 123 Applebaum, Anne 126 Aquarium (bulletproof cage) 151 Aristocrats, The (Podogin) 33–34, 40, 93, 126, 175n.64 Arkhipelag Gulag see Gulag Archipelago, The (Solzhenitsyn) artel (work association) 78, 113, 127, 157 Article 49 8 Article 58 4 Asmodeys 58 ataman 25, 65, 75 A Voice from The Chorus (Sinyavsky) 107 Badcock, Sarah 4, 45, 60 balanda (soup) 103 Baldaev, Danzig 17, 85–87, 90, 92, 94, 134, 136, 160 Ball, Alan 32 Bandera Partisans 145, 195n.80 Band of Forest Devils 64 Bardach, Janusz, altercation with recidivist prisoners 76 and card games 121–22 conclusions 159, 164 description of a transit camp 14–15 encounter with ‘Little Hand’ 77 and Man is Wolf to Man 150 origin of memoir title 72 and ‘Pockmarked’ 64–65, 77–78

and punishment 136 stabbed whilst waiting to board ship 53 and tattoos 96 witness to mass sexual violence 51 and work brigadier in Kolyma 67 Barenberg, Alan 40, 155, 157 Barnes, Steven 10, 40, 147, 155 ‘Baron Laszlo something’ 67 Barum 129 Becker, Howard 41 Behind the Iron Bars (Utomsky) 60, 115 Bell, Wilson 40, 70, 110, 121, 162 Beria, Lavrenty 8, 120, 135, 154 Bershadskaia, Liubov 155 bespredel (without limits) 74 besprizorniki (homeless children) 30, 68, 94 Bezsonov, Iuri 62 bibliya (bible) 121 bitches’ war (suchya voina) 12, 17, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 139, 141, 145–49, 157 Black Cat gang 156 Black Dolphin Prison 160 Black Mask gang 64 Blatnaia Muzyka (Trakhtenberg) 99 blatnaya muzyka (criminal music) 34, 98, 101, 107 Blatnoi 76 blatnye pesni 156, 158–59 ‘Blatnye Solovo’ (Criminal Slang) (Akarverich) 102 blatnykh 111 blat (personal connections) 110 boasting 136–37 Bochkareva, Maria 132 Boduhin, G. A. 82 Bogatyrs (Vasnetsov) 88 Bolsheviks 5, 20, 130 Borisov, B. 5, 82 boroda (beard) 73 Bosworth, Mary 162

213

214

Index

Brewers 64 brigadir 10–11 brodyagy (vagabonds) 113 Bromberg, Wolf 153 brother’s little window (four) 112 Brown, Kate 8, 127 Buber-Neumann, Margarete 46, 69–70, 125 Buca, Edward 145–46 Buchta Nakhodka transit prison 136 Budyonny (ship) 50 Bugurchan 39 Burepolom 96 Burepolom transit camp 72 Butyrka prison, Moscow, history of overcrowding etc 8 and Jacques Rossi 105 and Lev Kopelev 145 and Margarete Buber-Neumann 46 bytoviki (everyday lifers) 40, 83, 140, 149, 163 ‘Card Games of the Criminals’ (Likhachev) 115 card playing, conclusions 126–28, 161–62, 191n.78/83 and the Gulag’s forced sexual order 124–26 Igrat’ na pyatovo (to play the fifth) 119–24 introduction 109–11 kartezhnye igry ugolovnikov (card games of criminals) 115–19 Kartzhnaya igra (card games) 111–15 Carrabine, Eamonn 162 Cartouche see Garthousen, Louis Dominique chaldonki (fugitives) 112 Chalidze, Valery 69 Chalidze, Victor 98 chefir 79 Chekhov, Anton 19–20, 27–28, 111–13 chernaya zona (black zone) 111 Cherviakov, Evgeny 33 chestnyagy (the unconverted) 55 Chinese Logai 163 Chita Jail 134 Chukhrai, Pavel 157 Chukotka camp 147 Churkin, Vasili 20, 171n.3

Clark, Katerina 159 Clemmer, Donald 26, 37, 56, 80, 105–6, 137, 163 Club of the Jacks-of-Hearts, The (Ponson du Terrail) 27 Cold Summer of ’53 (Proshkin) 156 Collins, Randall 74, 76 Colonna-Czosnowski, Karol 123 Condee, Nanci 97 corrective labour camps 8–11, 43, 55, 63, 70, 140, 159, 161 Cosa Nostra 17 Crewe, Ben 5 Criminal Code 13 Criminal Investigation Department (MUR) 35 Criminal World Moscow 88, 160 crowning 74, 157 Cultural Revolution 30 Dal’stroi camp 141–42 Das Kapital (Marx) 97 Decembrist movement 106, 153 de-convoyed prisoners 110 dekabristki wives 153 Derevenko, General 52 derzhat mast 110 de Santerre, Maximilian 133, 137–38 Disciplinary Battalion 89 Dobson, Miriam 87, 97 dohodyagi (goners) 47, 83, 162 Dolgun, Alexander 55, 65–67, 75, 78, 143, 159 Doroshevich, Vlas, and card games 112, 114, 127 hierarchies 57–62, 65 real-life acquaintance of Sonka 153 and ritual 73 and same-sex relations 71, 73, 153 and slang 99 and Sonka 19–20, 27–28 and tattoos 88 and Wolf Bromberg 153 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 20, 99–100, 111, 113–14 Dovlatov, Sergei 81 Drankov, Alexander 153 Draskoczy, Julie 33, 87, 136, 174n.59

Index dukharik 75 dukhovym (brass) 63 ‘During Penal Transportation’ (I. K.) 48 Dyomin, Mikhail 38, 55–56, 69 Dzhurma (ship) 49–50 Eastern Promises (film) 143, 158 Ekk, Nikolai 30, 33 Elizabeth, Princess 19 Engels, Friedrich 97 Esenin, Sergei 1, 95 Esipov, G. V. 22 etap (prisoner transportation), acting as its own coercive power 56 and card games 119 conclusions 52–54, 159 Elena Glinka’s description of 72 Gulag prisoners during 151 introduction 8 Na etap 42–52 sexual assault during 162 sexual and social hierarchies 73 shaping of relations 39–42 Farrell, Colin 157–58 Felix Dzerzhinsky (flagship) 50 female recidivists 68–73, 76, 93–94, 124, 134 fenya 98–99 58ers 2, 167n.5 Figner, Vera 106 Filatiev, Peter 21, 24 First Five-Year Plan (1928–32) 6, 71 Fish, Mary 80 fomka (skeleton key) 116 fomky (prisoner songs) 83 foreign figurine (two) 112 49ers, of the 1920s 11–13 and Alexander Dolgun 65 continued dominance of 73 description of 2–4, 160 and Dmitry Likhachev 63 and females 69 and gambling 118–19, 122 imitation techniques used by 48 ‘pains of imprisonment’ of 44 preservation of basic hierarchical structures 162–63

215

rules of socialisation 77 and socio-economic backgrounds 57 and tattoos 93 use of blatnaya muzyka 101 and vory v zakone 157 young ‘wives’ of 71 49 (publication) 1–2 Foucault, Michel 130, 136, 163 frayera 4–5, 60, 82, 99, 104–5, 117 Galeotti, Mark 59, 106, 138–39, 163 Galich, Alexander 9, 156 Galler, Meyer 105 Gambetta, Diego 21, 133 Gambler, The (Dostoevsky) 111 gambling 116–17, 127 see also card games Ganin, Aleksei 1 Garthousen, Louis Dominique 22 gate of shpana 48, 52 Gentes, Andrew 113, 116 Gernet, Mikhail 88–93, 97–98, 160 Ginzburg, Eugenia 2, 14–15, 49–51, 53, 69–71, 106, 164, 180n.76 glaza vykolu 120 Gleb Boyki (ship) 47 Glinka, Elena 39–41, 45, 48, 52–53, 72 Glubokovsky, Boris, an important figure 1 code of living 3–4 description of transit 47 discussion of 49ers 11, 160 potential threats 48 and prisoner songs 37 writings of 6 Goffman, Erving 78, 90, 121, 154, 161–62 Gofman, Nina 153 Gogol, Nikolai 109 golova (head) 65 Gomel 6 Gorbatov, General 67, 123 Gorky Commune 30 Gorky, Maxim 33 Great Terror (1937–38) 7, 12 Grisha (prisoner) 145–46 grypsmen (high-ranking criminals) 104–5 Gubcheka emergency committee 35 Gulag Archipelago, The (Solzhenitsyn) 8, 45, 68, 85

216 Gulag Handbook, The (Rossi) 105 GULAG (Main Administration of Camps) 7, 12 Gulag semiotic code 54 ‘Guten Morgen’ (robbery technique) 27, 98–99 ‘Have you Volunteered’ (Moor) 97 Hawes, Charles 112 Healey, Daniel 70–71 Herling, Gustaw 119–20 Herman, Victor 66–67, 74–75 hierarchies 57–69 himiya (chemistry) 121 History of the Construction 33 Hobsbawm, Eric 29 ‘Hold, The’ (Glinka) 52 homosexuality 72, 83, 181n.87, 184n.58 Horn, Camilla 135 House of the Dead, The (Dostoevsky) 20 Hugo, Victor 109, 121 Iakubovich, Petr 27, 44–45, 114–15 Ievleva-Pavlenko, Valentina 70, 159 I. K. 48–49, 52 Iorkin (prisoner) 88 Irkutsk region 148 Ivanov, Alexander 135 Ivans (prisoners) 3, 57–58, 134 Jacks-of-Hearts gang 27, 64, 158 Jaruzel 103 Jora (recidivist) 136 juveniles 30, 32, 68, 89, 94–95, 163 Kain, Vanka, communal fund of 32 conclusions 158 continued use of his phrases 38 history 19–29, 171nn.7,13 name in criminal circles 64 and punishment 137 and reciprocal support 78 eighteenth-century bandit leader 18 and tattoos 88 Kamchatka, Peter 21, 25 Kaminski, Marek 73, 102–4, 163 Kaplan, Vera 59–60 Kara Valley 113

Index Karlag camp, Kazakhstan 42, 46, 105, 147 KAT (katorzhnik) 88 katorga (hard labour) 11, 43 Kem‘ transit prison 9, 43, 46–47, 62 Kengir 155–56 Kennan, George 113 kham (bitch) 59, 71 Kirov, Sergei 119 Kitay Gorod (Chinatown) district 20 klichki (nicknames), and Alexander Dolgun 66 ‘Boris the Careerist’ 67–68 Karapet the Bomber 82 Korol ‘The King’ 144 Margo ‘The Queen’ 38, 69, 158 Valentin the Intelligent 66, 75, 78, 143, 180n.52 conclusions 158 creation of 136 formulation of 172n.24 importance placed on 25–26, 31, 64 and tattoos 92, 95 kolhoz (collective farm) 79 Kolyma camp, card playing at 109, 111 and Elena Glinka 39 and etap 42, 48–49 and Eugenia Ginzburg 14 and General Derevenko 52 historical lineage 160 and punishment 129, 144, 192n.1 survival network at 86 and Varlam Shalamov’s sketches of 71 ‘Kolyma Tram’ (Glinka) 39 Komarov, Matvei 22, 29, 38 Kopelev, Lev 82, 124, 144–45 Korneyeva, V. A. 45–46 Kostia-the-Sailor 34 koti (cats) 61, 179n.30 kozlov 111 Krasonoiarsk camp 120 Krechet, Anton 20, 171n.3 Krestovsky, Vsevolod 100 Kresty prison, Leningrad 8 Krug, Mikhail 156 ksiva (notes) 106–7 Kuibyshev transit prison 55, 65 kul’turnost (culturedness) 107

Index Kuntsman, Adi 13, 41, 71 Kuptsov (recidivist) 81 Lambert, Alix 85, 91 ‘Language of the Penal Camp, The’ (Fabrichnyi) 100 Lenin, Vladimir 97, 157 Levi, Primo 110 Likhachev, Dmitry, academic writings of 100–101, 187n.71 and card playing 115–19, 121–23 and criminal songs 38 and etap 46–47 observations of Solovki camp 63 and punishment 133, 136–37 and tattoos 96 and use of slang 103, 105 Lipper, Elinor 48–49, 72, 177n.32 Little Hand 77 Little Red Cap 64 Lobsters 55 Lombroso, Cesare 88–89, 101 Long Walk, The (Rawicz) 157 Lubianka prison 105 lyudi (people) 57 ‘McMafia’ 12, 170n.53 ‘Magadan’ (samizdat song) 9 Magadan transit prison 39, 64, 126–27, 129, 192n.1 Magnitsky, Sergei 151 maidan 112–13, 115, 121, 127 maidanshchik 113–15 Makarenko, Anton 30, 33, 129 Makhno, Nestor 64 Makhnovists 64 makhora (tobacco) 102 Maksimov, Sergei 24, 38, 99, 106, 172n.18 Malenkov, Georgy 141, 154 Malsagoff, Sozerko 62, 125 mama’s boy 76 Mandelstam, Osip 15 Man is Wolf to Man (Bardach) 150 Marchenko, Anatoly 156 Mark of Cain, The (Lambert) 85 Marquees, Harlan 105 Martin, Terry 127 Marx, Karl 97 mast (suit) 110–11

217

Matveich, Valentin 135 May, Karl 78 mazut (fuel oil) 103 Meeting Place Cannot be Changed, The (Vysotsky) 156 Mejer, Andrej 99 Messershmidt, James 72 mesta ne stol’ otdalennie (places not so remote) 160 Mihailovich, Victor 129 Miller, Frank 22 Minsk (ship) 52 MIR 92 Mochulsky, Fyodor 35, 43, 50–51, 175n.67 Moldavanka, Odessa 36 Molotov, Vyacheslav 7 Moor, Dmitry 97 Moran, Dominique 43, 111 Morozov, Pavlik 130 Mortensen, Viggo 143, 158 Mothers (Tatar moneylenders) 113 ‘Murka’ (song) 156 Musicians of Today (Rolland) 121 ‘Music is Playing in the Moldavanka’ (song) 36–37, 69 musor (police) 98 muzhiki (peasants) 83, 104, 163 muzhikov 111 MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) 17, 134, 160 My Testimony (Marchenko) 156 Nakhodka port 9 nalyoty 60–61, 64–65, 179n.28 nechastnye (unfortunates) 118 ne lyudi (not people) 104 Nerchinsk Prison, East Siberia 112–13 neschastnye (unfortunates) 60 New Economic Policy (NEP) 5, 30, 37 nicknames see klichki (nicknames) Nikola (deaf mute) 123 NKVD (secret police) 92, 140, 150 Norilsk forced labour camp 105 Novosiblag penalty camp 120 Oak and the Calf, The (Solzhenitsyn) 107 obshchak (communal fund) 79, 122 Odessa 20, 35, 99 OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate) 6

218

Index

Oleinik, Anton 59, 74, 79, 111 Omsk Fortress 99 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn) 107 ‘On Tick’ (Shalamov) 109–10 ‘On the Way “to Work”–I Wanted to Drink’ (song) 34–35, 175nn.67-8 Operation Barbarossa 7, 42, 126–27, 131 opushchennye (untouchables) 93, 104, 125 ‘Order of the Russian Fascists’ 1 Osipov, Ivan 19 oskal (grin) 97 otkolovshiesia (breakaway) 147 otrisalovka 81 otshedshie (departed) 146–47 pakhan 25, 64–66, 75, 78, 91, 104, 122, 134, 138, 150 Pallas, P. S. 99 Pallot, Judy 42–43, 50, 111, 160 passivnymi pederastami (passive pederasts) 118 Peaky Blinders (TV show) 153 Pechora camp 123, 146 Pechorlag prison 35, 51, 135, 148 Pedagogical Poem (Makarenko) 30, 129 Pentonville prison 42 People’s Defence Committee Order Number 227 139 perekovka (re-forging) 33 perestroika 156–57 Perm Krai 148 Peter the Great 91 Petkevich, Tamara 72 Petrov, Vladimir 9, 76, 119, 126–27 Piacentini, Laura 11, 43, 111, 160 Plutser-Sarner, Alexi 111 ‘Pockmarked’ 64–65, 77–78 Podogin, Nikolai 33, 93, 126 Podsokhin, Aleksei 146–47 Polivanov, E. D. 100 Ponson du Terrail, Pierre Alexis 27 Pontius Pilate 45 ponyatiya (understandings) 80 pridurki (soft-job workers) 82, 163 prisoner code 80–82 Prisoners, The (Cherviakov) 33–34, 175n.64 Procurator General of the USSR 80 Proshkin, Aleksandr 156

prostitution 70, 93 see also sexual activities Provisional Government 20 punishment, introduction 129–32 regular feature in the Gulag 135–39 suchya voina (bitches’ war) 139–49, 194nn.54/57 Pussy Riot (activist group) 150–51 Putin, Vladimir 149 Radio Parasha 103 Radio Shanson 156 Raiza 69 rape 39, 72 see also sexual activities Rawicz, Slawomir 157–58, 196n.18 Rawlinson, Patricia 24, 172n.19 Razins, Stenka 44, 64 Red Army 6, 15, 139–41 Red Caps 64 Ribbentrop, Joachim von 7 rituals 73–77, 132–35 Road to Life (Ekk) 30 Rogervik, Finland 19 Rolland, Romain 121 Roosters 55 Rossi, Jacques 12, 63–64, 103–5 RSFSR 1922 Criminal Code 1, 3 ‘Russian Mafia’ 12 Sakhalin Island, and card games 111, 113–14, 116, 127 Doroshevich’s descriptions of penal society on 61, 63, 65 imperial Russian version of Alcatraz 3 and pre-revolutionary criminals 154 and slang usage 99 and Sonka 19–20, 27, 29 and tattoos 160 and zhigany 59 samosud tribunal 130–31, 135–36 Santerre, Maximilian de 146 Sasha the American see Dolgun, Alexander Sasha the Captain 144–45 Sashka the Trump 66 Sashka (young thief) 129, 138, 150 Schrader, Abby 88–89 Scott, Walter 144

Index Secret Police Camps, and card playing 115, 121, 127 development into the Gulag apparatus 129 emergence of in the 1920’s 13, 38 hierarchical structure of 60 homosexual relations in 70–71 illicit behaviour in 162 isolation of different groups in 4 and the nalyoty 64–65 newspapers in 163 observations of Solovki 63 and political prisoners 82 and prisoner songs 159 prisoner subcultural practices in 57 and punishment 140 and transit prisons 9 and vory v zakone 157 self-mutilation 81, 183n.147 Serov, General 141 sexual activities 69–71, 83, 125–26, 161–62, 181n.86 Sgovio, Thomas 86, 90 Shalamov, Varlam, and card playing 109, 111, 121 and courts of honour 133 feminine roles of male prisoners 71 formation of gangs 63–64 and punishment 141–42, 144 and ‘Swindler’s Blood’ (story) 181n.81 and tattoos 93, 95 trust between groups of prisoners 79 shestyorka (sixers/lackeys) 66–67, 91, 110 Sheyndlya-Sura Solomoniak see Sonka ‘Golden Hand’ Shiryaev, Boris 37, 102 shobla yobla (rabble) 67, 75, 78, 104 Shpalernaya prison, Leningrad 46–47, 119 shpana 4, 61–63, 67, 116 shpanku (the mare) 57, 59 shtos (game) 113–14, 117 Shtrafbat (Penal Battalion) 149 Sinyavsky, Andrey 107 Skarbeck, David 104 skhodki 139, 194n.51 Slade, Gavin 11, 68, 81 slang 98–107, 157 Slave of the Camps 91

219

Slums of St Petersburg, The (Krestovsky) 100 Smith, Steve 105 Snorters 58 socialisation 77–80 Solomoniak, Sheyndlya-Sura see Sonka ‘Golden Hand’ Solomon, Michael 51–52, 63–64, 121–22, 129–30, 134–35, 138, 150 Solovetsky archipelago 1, 6 Solovetsky Island (newspaper) 47, 102, 115 Solovev, Emelian 48 Solovki camp, and card games 117, 122 criminal recidivists imprisoned in 2 description of 1, 6, 9 and Dmitry Likhachev 46, 63 and Emelian Solovev 48 food rations in 11 and gambling 119 historical lineage 160 and I. K. 49 main Kremlin of 5 network embedded in 42 and punishment 135 and shpana 4, 62 torture allegations at 7 Solovki prisoner press 75 Solovki wall newspaper 117 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, a ‘58er’ 2 and Arkhipelag Gulag 8, 68, 85, 176–77n.18, 178n.42 and the concept of honour 133 and Shalamov’s work 143, 194n.74 and Stolypin wagons 45–46 and tattoos 91, 93, 96, 194n.76 use of blatnaya muzyka 107 and vory and suki attacks 146 a ‘world in perpetual motion’ 52 and young prisoners 120 Sonka ‘Golden Hand’ 18–21, 26–29, 38, 59, 98–99, 127, 153–54, 158, 164 Sosnovskaya, Sima 93 Soviet Prison Camp Speech (Galler/ Marquees) 105 Sovlatvia (cruiser) 51–52 sozhitel’stvo (co-habitation) 73

220

Index

Space Academy of Sciences 46 Spiridonova, Maria 59–60 Stalinist labour camps 26, 38, 42, 113, 164 Stalin, Josef 12–13, 17, 39, 65, 97, 148–49, 154 Stanjer, Karlo 50, 78, 81, 120–23 starosta (prison elder) 49 Starostin, Nikolai 78, 182n.122 stengazety (wall newspapers) 86 Stenka Razin 137 Stephenson, Svetlana 76–77 Steplag Special Camp 155 stipend (cash allowance) 115 Stolypin, Pyotr 43 Stolypin wagons 45–46, 119 ‘Story out of Rocambole, A’ (Iakubovich) 27 Strelka 52–53 Stumpy (prisoner) 123 suchya voina 131–32, 143–44, 147–48, 150, 192n.13 sud (court) 133 suka (bitches) 125, 142–43 suki 118, 131, 142–44, 146, 149 Sverdlovsk transit prison 64, 121 svoi (our own) 4–5, 60, 82, 105, 117, 167n.12 svyattsi (calendar) 121 Sykes, Gresham 104 talisman tattoos 91 Tarnovskia, Maria 28, 173n.33 tattooing 85–98, 107, 125, 135, 143–44, 157, 160–62, 186nn.36/51 Terrail, Ponson du 153–54 Tertz, Abram see Sinyavsky, Andrey ‘Thieves’ Cant of Schoolboys and the “Slavonic Language” of the Revolution’ (Polivanov) 100 thieves in law 59 13 Rue Madeline 78 13th Company 117–18 Throats 58 Tiupkin (fearsome gambler) 114–15 ‘Tolik the Hand’ 70 Tolstoi, Feodor 87 tolstyy bumazhnik (fat wallet) 116 Tonkov, Argot 100 toreadors (bullfighters) 61

Traits of Primordial Primitivism in the Speech of Thieves (Likhachev) 100 Trakhtenberg, V. F. 62, 99–100, 179n.34 transportation 41–42 Tsoi, Viktor 25, 153 Tverdokhlebov, Vasily 149–50 Twisters 58, 61 ‘Uncle Sarai’ 73 untouchables 83 urka (wolfblood) 75, 81, 146, 153–64 USSR in Construction (magazine) 34 Utomsky, K. E. 60–63, 115 Vagankovskoye cemetery, Moscow 153 valenki (boots) 66 Valentin, Camilla 135 Vanino transit prison 9, 14, 43, 141, 144 Vanka Kain (Komarov) 99 Varese, Federico 59, 69, 138–39, 141, 163, 194n.52 Vasnetsov, Viktor 88 vehotura 102 veselie nishie (jolly beggars) 63 Viatka Labour Camp 63 vitrioleuses 28 v konchinku (game) 113 Vladimir prison 40, 105 Voice of the Prisoner (Gomel) 62 Vorkuta transit camp 145, 154–55, 157 Vorkutlag camp 42 Voronezh region 148 vorovskoi zakon (thief law) 80 Vor (Thief) (Chukhrai) 88, 157 VOR (Vozhd Oktiabr’skoi Revolutsii) 97 vory (thieves) 100–101, 131, 146–48, 154, 163, 187n.78 vory v zakone, and Alexander Dolgun 65 and card games 122 code of conduct 163 legacy of 12 male-dominated criminal environment 18 prisoner code 80–82 and slang 106 and tattoos 92, 94, 98, 157 tensions and conflicts 149 women ‘no place’ in hierarchy 69, 72

Index youth gangs of 74 voyenshchina (soldiery) 141–43 vozhd (leader) 65 vshivki (lice) 47, 63, 116, 118 Vyatka 6 Vyatlag Labour Camp 115 Vysotsky, Vladimir 85, 156 wall language 106 Way Back, The (film) 157 Werner, Margaret 76–77 White Sea–Baltic Canal 6–7, 33, 36 Williams, Vergil 80

221

yakuza (Japanese) 92, 157 Yeltsin, Boris 153 yesaul 25 Yurilkin (prisoner) 139 Zaria, Mikhail 25 Zaz, Elka 28 zhigany (whipping boys) 59–60, 63, 114, 116 zhuchki 41 ZLO 92 zone executioner 91 Zone, The (Dovlatov) 81

222

223

224

225

226