Criminal Subculture in the Gulag: Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps

(Hardback)

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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 todays 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.

Reviews

Criminal Subculture in the Gulag decolonizes every readers perception of what they think they know about incarceration. Vincents thoughtful book is a humbling, often harrowing, but necessary read that I recommend to anyone interested in cultures beyond their own. * Lossi 36 *
The horrific criminal subculture which festered inside Stalins 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 Gulagits criminals. * Steven A. Barnes, Associate Professor of Russian and Soviet History, George Mason University, USA *

Author Bio

Mark Vincent is an independent scholar who obtained his PhD in 2015 from the University of East Anglia, UK.