Criminal Subculture in the Gulag Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Mark Vincent is an independent scholar who obtained his PhD in 2015 from the University of East Anglia, UK.<i>Criminal Subculture in the Gulag </i>decolonizes every reader’s perception of what they think they know about incarceration. Vincent’s thoughtful book is a humbling, often harrowing, but necessary read that I recommend to anyone interested in cultures beyond their own.
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The horrific criminal subculture which festered inside Stalin’s Gulags has become a staple of film and novel thanks to its ruthless codes and savage tattoos, but has never been examined in such forensic detail as within this book. By digging into contemporary accounts and documents, Mark Vincent shines a light into the deepest darks of labour camp life.
Mark Galeotti, Honorary Professor, UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies, UK
The Gulag was a horror not just for its incarceration of innocents. Mark Vincent creatively uses available but previously untapped sources to draw a captivating portrait of the experiences and unique culture that developed amid the brutal conditions behind barbed wire among the least understood victims of the Gulag—its criminals.
Steven A. Barnes, Associate Professor of Russian and Soviet History, George Mason University, USA
Despite growing academic interest in the Gulag, our knowledge of the camps as a lived experience remains relatively incomplete. Criminal Subculture in the Gulag, in its sophisticated analysis of crime, punishment and everyday life in Soviet labour camps, rectifies this.
From Gulag journals and song collections to tattoo drawings and dictionaries of slang, Mark Vincent draws on often-overlooked archival material from the Moscow Criminological Bureau to reconstruct a fuller picture of Gulag daily life and society. In thematic chapters, Vincent maps the Gulag ‘penal arc’ of prisoners across initiation tests, means of communication, the importance of card playing, punishment rituals and the notorious 1948-52 cyka (‘bitches’) internal prison war between military veterans and vory-v-zakone. Most importantly, this timely examination of crime and punishment in modern Russia also highlights the lines of continuity between the Gulag systems, late Imperial Katorga,and today’s Russian mafia.
As such, this impressively interdisciplinary volume is important reading for all scholars of 20th-century Russia as well as those interested in international criminality and penology.
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Etap (Transportation)
2. Socialisation
3. Communication
4. Enactment
5. Punishment
6. Conflict
Conclusion: Criminal Subculture after the Gulag
Bibliography
Index
The Library of Modern Russia series showcases 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 shed fresh light and nuance on Russian history. Volumes 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:
· 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
· 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
Editorial Advisory Board
- Michael David-Fox, Professor at Georgetown University, USA
- Mark Edele, Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, Australia
- Sheila Fitzpatrick, Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago, USA
- Lucien Frary, Professor at Rider University, USA
- James Harris, Professor at the University of Leeds, UK
- David L. Hoffman, Distinguished Professor of History at the Ohio State University, USA
- Robert Hornsby, Lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK
- Ekaterina Pravilova, Professor of History at Princeton University, USA
- Donald J. Raleigh, Jay Richard Judson Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 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