Crime & Punishment: Russia's Prison System

The legacy and reality of Russia’s prison system

Few institutions have had a greater impact on 20th century Russia than its prisons. From 1918 through the mid-1950s, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were summarily snatched from their homes and sent as slaves to toil and perish in labor camps, building dams, canals, factories, even whole cities, not to mention working in mines and cutting timber. 

“Originally,” wrote Jacques Rossi, in his encyclopedic book, The GULag Handbook, “inmates were not to perform any work except camp service. However, due to their ever-increasing numbers, local administrators began utilizing them as manpower for timber-felling, road building, peat digging, and the like ... Before Stalin died, the GULag [the acronym for Chief Administration of Correctional Labor Camps] was responsible for all Soviet timber felling, gold mining, highway and railway construction, as well as the bulk of all other major construction projects ... the only ethic [was] that taught by Lenin ‘Everything that serves our purposes is ethical.’” 

Many camps in the GULag were designed to work inmates to death—those who were not summarily executed, of course. And the toll was horrendous. Robert Conquest, the leading Western expert on Soviet-era purges and the GULag, estimated in his seminal work, The Great Terror, that during the Stalin epoch “as many as 20 million” may have died in the camps, and that 40 million more were repressed. By 1952, the Soviet camp population was some 12 million persons.

Following Stalin’s death in 1953, the Terror came to an end, but prisons have retained an important formative role in Soviet society. Many Russians have felt the heavy hand of prison—either through personal incarceration or that of a loved-one. From the mid-1960’s to the 1980’s, an estimated thirty-five million people passed through the “zona” (the prison system), though mostly for criminal and not political offenses. 

Even “na volye” (in free society), the strict regulations of the Soviet police state —limiting internal migration and restricting foreign travel—remained. So it was that the Soviet Union was often likened to one big prison—referred to as Bolshaya Zona (the Big Prison).

Today, as the Russian penitentiary system enters its 120th year since its founding,* the number of citizens “za reshchetkoy” (behind bars) is once again rising rapidly, especially with those who have benefited little from economic reforms. The country’s per capita prison population is now the highest in the world, at 694 per 100,000 (the United States is a close second, with 645 per 100,000). In stark contrast, the European average hovers at around 90 per 100,000.

OF HORNETS AND FLIES

It is often difficult for foreigners and younger Russians to comprehend the central role that prisons have played in the formation of the collective national psyche and culture. Many words and mannerisms found in everyday Russian have their origins in the camps, and prison life has had a profound influence on the country’s literature—most notably in the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn—as well as on music. There is a whole genre of thieves’ songs (blatniye pesni), and many popular songs and poems, which dwell on prison life and the criminal world and which influenced many Russian bards, including Vladimir Vysotsky (e.g. in his “Na Bolshom Karetnom”) and, more notably, Alexander Rozenbaum (esp. his “Gop-Stop”, criminal slang for an armed hold-up).

The prison experience has had a particularly pervasive influence on the Russian language. When a Russian wants to express just how unpredictable and cruel the Fates can be, he may utter the proverb, “Ot sumy da ot tyurmy, ne zarekaiysya,” (Prison or poverty can befall even you). Cynicism about legal justice pervades Russian proverbs, both modern and not so modern: Gde sud, tam i nepravda (Where there is a court, there is falsehood); U kovo dengi est, tot na zakon ne smotrit (He who has money, need not worry about the law); Byl by chelovek, statya naidyotsya, (If there is a person, charges can be found against him). Indeed, such cynicism does not seem unfounded: Russian and international human rights advocates continue to cite arbitrary arrest and detention as one of the country’s gravest abuses.

This is not to say crimes are not being committed. Amid rising material expectations wrought by Russia’s consumer goods revolution, mixed with the accompanying scarcity of well-paying labor opportunities, many Russians cannot resist the urge to swipe that which is not nailed down. This seems particularly true among Russia’s ruling elite, referred to by some as a “kleptocracy.” As respected writer and critic Andrei Sinyavsky wrote in The Russian Intelligentsia, Russia “is being controlled and administered not by society but by the criminal world, historically the most enterprising part of Russia. Why the most enterprising? Because in highly centralized and normative Soviet society, where any personal initiative was totally excluded, flashes of independent thinking were produced or preserved only by criminals ...” Russians bitterly joke that half the country is stealing, while the other half works in the security business. And, as they say, “in every joke there is a bit of truth.” 

Indeed, theft, petty-theft, is at the root of Russia’s growing prison population, which, according to Presidential Yeltsin’s Council on Judicial Reform, has climbed 150% since 1991. Of course, it is naive to expect that any member of Russia’s oligarchy or mafia ringleaders, guilty of stealing whole companies and committing fraud on a scale unparalleled in history, will ever end up behind bars. For in Russia, justice, like everything else, has been privatized. According to some observers, police and court decisions are often decided by the highest bidder. Yuri Vdovin, veteran St. Petersburg human rights activist and director of Citizen’s Watch, said that most of the newly-convicted come from the ranks of the poorest and most defenseless, usually the unemployed who are trying to eke out a living, while the most dangerous criminals go free. As the sage Russian proverb has it: Zakon kak pautina—shmel proskochit, a mukha uvyaznet (The law is like a web—the hornet gets through, but the fly gets caught).

The “flies” are the approximately one third of Russia’s 1.1 million citizens aged 25 and younger. There is an interesting contrast here with the US, which has seen its population behind bars rise 250%—to 1.8 million, the largest of any country—since 1986. This rate of growth is much faster than in Russia, but it is the result of specific policies, such as mandatory sentencing laws, crackdowns on drugs and gangs and sentencing youths as adults. In Russia, the prison population is swelling because social and economic policies have driven people to destitution; in their desperation, they commit petty criminal theft, get caught, and spend 10 months in detention before they even see a lawyer or a judge. 

There can be little comparison between US and Russian prison facilities. Indeed, Russian prisoners and human rights activists refer to American prisons as “resorts,” filled with “luxuries” such as TVs and plumbing in a clean cell where there might be only two inmates. While such a glowing opinion might perplex American inmates, reality is relative. Russian prisoners live in such horrendous squalor that, according to a recent U.S. State Department report on human rights, between 10,000 and 20,000 Russian prisoners die each year from malnutrition and disease, especially due to a rapidly spreading tuberculosis threat (see box). Living conditions are so horrible that Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently said that merely one’s physical presence in a Russian prison amounts to torture. 

Vdovin echoed Robinson’s judgement: “as in Soviet times, the current Russian prison system is a tool of repression, where the accused is almost always convicted, and there is no effort at correction or rehabilitation back into society.”

Despite these problems, efforts are being made at prison reform. In February 1996, when Russia joined the Council of Europe, it agreed to follow that body’s human rights standards. Towards that goal, in October 1997, President Yeltsin decreed the country’s prisons be transferred from the Interior Ministry (MVD) to the Justice Ministry. Transferring de jure control to the Justice Ministry was slated for completion last autumn, though in fact it is expected to drag on into next year.

But the transfer of jurisdiction is only a small step forward for human rights. “The transfer in itself does not mean a big change,” said Diederik Lohman, director of Human Rights Watch (formerly Helsinki Watch) in Moscow. “But giving the Justice Ministry jurisdiction is an improvement because it takes the prisons out of the hands of those who are investigating the crime and whose main concern is to have good statistics on the number convicted.”

One substantial problem complicating the transfer is the fact that the MVD’s prison system is a massive bureaucracy that dwarves the entire existing Justice Ministry, which needs to create a bureaucratic infrastructure to absorb prison personnel—not unlike a hamster trying to swallow an elephant.

In a more recent move, early this summer, the government and parliament approved an amnesty to free some 100,000 prisoners, primarily those in pre-trial detention, those convicted of minor offenses, female convicts, veterans, and the elderly. Former Justice Minister Pavel Krasheninnikov said the reform would humanize the country’s prisons and relieve overcrowding. He also called on the courts to impose fines and punishments other than imprisonment for minor offenses. 

“Ever since we began transferring the prison system from the Interior Ministry to the Justice Ministry, our top priority has been to reduce the number of labor camps and SIZOs [remand prisons for those under criminal investigation and awaiting trial],” said Yuri Kalinin, deputy Justice Minister and former head of Russia’s prison system, in an interview with the Moscow Center for Prison Reform, or MTsTR. “This problem must be solved before we can overcome the critical situation in which the prison system currently finds itself. People who understand the problem realize that there will be no increase in crime in the event of this amnesty. Recidivism among amnestied prisoners is minimal.”

BURIED ALIVE

The modern labor camp is a purely Soviet invention. In tsarist times, punishment came in the form of a prison sentence or, for political crimes, exile to a remote Siberian village. Capital punishment was used occasionally, usually in cases of insurrection, terrorism, and treason. The penitentiary system was under the Justice Ministry.

In 1918, Lenin first called for the security service to create labor camps to detain those resisting the Revolution; they were established in the North, near the White Sea. Previously among European nations, concentration camps had only been used to hold prisoners of war. The Bolshevik regime was the first to incarcerate its own civilian population this way. And after the Great Terror was set in motion by the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, camp facilities sprouted all across Russia’s northern expanses. The prison population increased ten-fold almost overnight. 

Today, the GULag is gone, but an emphasis on labor during incarceration remains. Now known as GUIN (the Main Directorate of Corrections), the Russian penal system is comprised of 985 prisons. Of these, 191 are SIZOs. The latter hold some 250,000 prisoners at any given moment. Most of the remaining prisons are corrective labor facilities, commonly referred to as a “kolonia” (though close to the English word “colony,” it is better translated as “labor camp”). There, inmates, known in the singular as zek [a legacy of the first purge victims’ forced labor on the White Sea canal, the term derived from Z/K, the abbreviation for zaklyuchyonny kanaloarmeyets, “prisoner-canal troop], may cut wood, mine or work in industrial production. But the collapse of Russian industry has left few jobs for inmates to perform. 

Labor camps typically house between 1,500 and 2,000 prisoners (roughly the same as during the GULag era). They are divided into the following types: 1) minimum security for non-violent, first-time male offenders, and all females except especially dangerous recidivists; 2) medium security for males convicted for the first time of serious crimes; 3) medium to maximum security for dangerous male and female recidivists; and 4) maximum security for especially dangerous male recidivists. There are also separate camps for prisoners with TB, as well as for invalids and for former police officers. 

Conditions in the camps are hardly enviable, but certainly much better than in the notorious SIZOs. There, a prison cell may have as many as 25 to 30 inmates, who share 60 to 70 square meters. In the corner stands the toilet (sometimes merely a bucket), a sink, and a table with benches. “The stench in the cell turns one’s stomach,” one prisoner wrote on the MTsTR Web site. “The cells are infested with bugs, cockroaches, mice, etc. It is a problem to wash oneself or clothes, or to use a toilet, because according to prison rules it is prohibited to screen anything in the cell, even a toilet.”

A row of bunk beds made of iron pipes lines the walls. Cells are not enclosed by bars, but a solid iron door with a peep-hole through which food is passed. What food the authorities supply is often not worth eating. “At first it seems it is better to die from hunger than to touch prison food, it is so repulsive,” the prisoner continued.

“Prison life is hell,” said Anatoli, 36, a former prisoner who has spent about half of his life in and out of prison for theft. “Physically, your health is broken with all the violence and disease. A Russian prison is a cruel school of survival and only the strong and young can make it through. If you’re older than 45 and somewhat sick, you’ll never make it out alive. A stay in a prison today is worse than Soviet times because, at least then they fed prisoners and now you must fend for yourself.” 

Indeed, Anatoli’s aged and withered appearance betrays his youth. His torso, arms and knuckles are etched with tattoos and nakolki, the art of the prison world, and bear witness to his veteran status. More than decoration, each tattoo carries particular significance and meaning, exhibiting his status and profession in the criminal world, as well as the crime that sent him to prison. Sometimes, tattoos use phrases and images mocking official justice and the political system. “How much faith and forest has been felled; how much grief and road work have I endured; On my left bosom Stalin’s profile; and on the right, Maria full-face,” sang Vysotsky in his “Banku po-belomu.”

The horrific conditions at Russian prisons (which have a century-long precedent, see box) come down to money. As at many other state institutions, prison financing is meager and unpredictable. Though officials say improving material and health conditions in prisons are a priority, the federal government only supplies about 45% of the funds promised. Inmates end up living on about two to five rubles ($0.08 to $0.20) a day, and only food parcels from relatives help them survive, Citizen Watch’s Vdovin said.

Persistent financial problems mean that the government has not only put off all new prison construction, but cannot even cope with repairing the existing stock. About 60% of prisons are “in a catastrophic state of dilapidation,” according to GUIN. Add to this the fact that courts are hopelessly underfunded for their crushing workload, and the result is horrific overcrowding. Technically, bail exists in Russia, but bond prices go as high as 40,000 rubles ($1,650), a sum that most cannot afford.

The overcrowding is compounded by a system in which police are encouraged to lock prisoners up now and ask questions later, much later. Promotions in Russia’s police forces are made on the basis of arrests made and crimes solved, and confessions are often forced. The Moscow Times recently quoted a Moscow city judge who said that 80% of defendants who come before him claim to have been tortured, and half of them indeed had objective signs that they were. What is more, investigators, fearing the accused will flee town, find it more convenient to detain a suspect in SIZO instead of letting them out on bail or their own recognizance.  

The end result is that, regardless of guilt or innocence, a defendant is forced to suffer incarceration for a year or two before coming to trial. The MTsTR reports countless cases of individuals arrested for stealing trifling amounts of food—three cucumbers or a handful of fruit—and spending months in a SIZO. 

“As for our prisons today, this is the very same GULag,” wrote former dissident and human rights activist Lev Razgon in a Moscow Times editorial in 1997. “Butyrsky prison [in Moscow] is worse than when I was imprisoned there in 1938. In our cells, which were intended to hold 20 people, there were 60 people, and today in the same cells there are 100 odd prisoners. This is not a prison, but torture.”

Many human rights activists and government officials support replacing terms of detention with fines for minor crimes. But the Prosecutor’s Office, which is a separate agency, continues to ignore economic realities and resists change. Perhaps, as Citizen Watch’s Yuri Vdovin said, human rights are “unfortunately a luxury for rich nations.” 

Living in such deprivation, it is little wonder inmates hate the system and even prefer death. To the shock and embarrassment of human rights activists, a recent Moscow Times article reported that most of Russia’s 700 odd death row inmates said they support the death penalty.

“I should have died rather than live like this,” death row inmate, Ravil Dashkin told the Moscow Times recently. “Life in this prison, in these conditions is terrible. It’s not life, it’s a living death; like being buried alive.”

Each year, about 150 people are sentenced to death in Russia. But, in accordance with Russia’s obligations before the Council of Europe, they are pardoned and given a life sentence. Russia’s last execution, a process carried out with a shot to the back of the head, took place August 4, 1996, and many expect capital punishment’s formal abolition will come soon. Public opinion polls, however, consistently show that a large proportion (over 75%) of Russians are against abolishing the death penalty any time soon. 

THE BIG HOUSE

The bone-chilling words Kresty and Butyrka need no explanation to a Russian. These notorious pre-trial detention centers, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, respectively, now hold two to three times more prisoners than their maximum capacity. 

Comprised mainly of two foreboding red brick buildings in the shape of a cross, Kresty (“Crosses”), looms over the Neva river a short walk from St. Petersburg’s Finland Station. It is the country’s (and perhaps the world’s) largest prison and probably its most notorious. 

Built in 1882 for up to 3,000 prisoners, in tsarist times Kresty held around 1000. Today, however, nearly 10,000 prisoners are crammed into Europe’s most hellish house of horror. In a typical cell, between six and 12 inmates live in 6 m2, where there are only six bunks—prisoners take turns sleeping. They are let out for just one hour a day to walk in the yard. During this summer’s six-week heat wave, temperatures inside Kresty soared to 40^o Celsius (104^oF), but only after three weeks did the warden allow the windows to be opened. Before that order was issued, however, some guards took pity on the prisoners and, in strict violation of the rules, left the windows open.

Kresty’s frightful description is hardly an invitation for tourists. But prison officials, hoping to earn extra cash for maintenance, opened the prison to the public in early August of this year—it is the only Russian prison open to the public. For $10 (Russians pay 50R, or about $2), foreigners can enter the prison, visit the one-room museum, and see a choice cell. Talking to inmates is forbidden. 

Though small, the museum holds a trove of lore. For instance, in 1907, some 158 State Duma deputies were imprisoned here for three months for their opposition to the autocracy. Some deputies brought their private libraries and many of their books are still in the prison library. 

The most interesting tales, however, concern the few escape attempts this past century. Most notable was that of mass murderer Sergei Maduyev in 1991, who managed to seduce the woman from the DA’s office that was prosecuting him. She smuggled in a pistol which he used to shoot and kill his guard during the break out attempt. The lovers were eventually caught and sentenced.

Displaying the absurd nature of Soviet-style zoning, on one side of the prison—right under the prison walls—is a kindergarten; on the other side is a children’s hospital. And there is another bizarre twist. Directly across the river from Kresty is a recently completed elite apartment building, with rents accessible only to the very rich. Some Russians—those who are disposed to think of all rich Russians as criminals—joke that the building, with its exclusive view of Kresty, is popular among two types: those just getting out of prison who miss it, and those who will soon end up there.

Just a little downstream from the new apartment building stands Kresty’s sister in repression, still feared today—the Bolshoi Dom (Big House). Today’s MVD headquarters, Bolshoi Dom was formerly occupied by the NKVD. (Older human rights activists tell the joke: “From where is the best view in town? In the basement prison of the Bolshoi Dom, because even on a cloudy day you can see the city of Magadan.” The reference is to the city in the Russian Far East that, for many, was the gateway to the GULag.)

VORY V ZAKONE

Prison life in Russia, much like elsewhere, is alternately mundane and stressful. But here there is also a rather sophisticated and established subculture, complete with its own lifestyle, laws and hierarchy.

Russia’s criminal world lives according to “ponyatie” (understanding, or correct thinking)—norms and rules, that regulate behavior. For instance, the ponyatie condemns snitching, extolls the importance of brotherhood between prisoners and common interests over the personal, provides assistance to those who have fallen on hard times, and metes out justice.

Convicts divide the prison zona into two different types—the “red zone” which is under the control of the prison authorities, and the “thieves’ zone,” where reign the legendary vori v zakonye (thieves-in-law), leaders of the criminal world with near god-like status. The latter is preferred by the zeki to the former—in the red zone, so they say, bezpridyel (lawlessness) rules.

The thieves-in-law, the hardened criminal elite of the criminal world, are members of a ruling caste known as the blatnye (the word derives from Yiddish for “palm of the hand”). The warden himself must often seek the approval and permission of the thieves-in-law to get something done and to get the other prisoners to behave. Membership in the blatnye is only through sponsorship by a current member. A good blatnoi ensures that the community is provided with food, tea, tobacco, vodka, and clothes. Conflicts within the blatnye are resolved collectively. Blatnye also rule over other convicts and protect them from unjustified violence, punishment or insult. 

But it would be wrong to picture the blatnye as enlightened dictators. They enjoy certain privileges such as the right not to work, and to enrich themselves by dipping into the common prisoners’ fund. Stories abound about blatnye living lives of luxury and excess, even complete with visits by prostitutes, not to mention sending commands to criminal groups beyond the prison walls. 

The prison hierarchy’s rock bottom is inhabited by “untouchables:” outcasts guilty of major infringements of ponyatie, or stool pigeons (stukach), often condemned as “kozly” (goats)—traitors of the prison community. Other untouchables include those guilty of committing heinous crimes, such as child rapists and molesters. Branded as “petukhy” (cocks), their lot is the most miserable; they are often sexually abused or forced to work as a slave for someone else.

“In prison, stronger zeki rule over the weak, and this means that most of the items in the aid parcels we send to inmates are pillaged by the inmates who rule the prison,” said Vladimir Tateosov, director of the Salvation Army’s social services center in St. Petersburg, and who previously worked as a prison chaplain. “Yet, according to the thieves’ law, it is forbidden to steal everything, and they must allow something to get through to the prisoner for whom it was destined.” 

The vory v zakone have effectively run Russian prisons since their expansion in the 1930s (and they even pre-date the Soviet era). But the winds of change may even be blowing in the zona. There is a new generation of criminals, often called the “otmorozki,” who pay no heed to the rules of the elders, but also do not offer a competing code of their own. Ironically—and perhaps indicative of the times— elder blatnye complain their order is being ruined by corruption, that today even the title of thief-in-law can be bought.

Upon concluding a tour of Russia’s prison world, one cannot help but feel as if one has stumbled upon the country’s most painful and festering wound. There appears to be little room for optimism and hope. But two glimmers of hope were reported recently. First, a new remand prison was opened in Saratov. With humane facilities that are up to European standards, it shows that, when there is political will and financing, there can be a positive effect. Second, the Justice Ministry has launched a pilot project in six regions—including Tver, Kemerovo, and Perm—to give inmates the opportunity to receive an education while in prison. Courses offered include accounting, management and law. While studying costs about 600 rubles ($20) per course, most parents are willing to pay, hoping to give their son another labor option upon release other than teaming up with his prison-in-laws.

In the end, all efforts at reforming the penitentiary system will be in vain if the real source of the problem is not addressed. If the continuing decline in living standards is not stemmed, and if basic statutory changes are not made to stop detention for petty crimes, the system can only get worse and worse. In the alternative, Russia stands little chance relinquishing its position as the nation with the highest level of imprisonment.  RL

John Varoli is a writer who has lived in Russia since 1992. His article on communal apartments appeared in the April/May 1999 issue of Russian Life. Mikhail Ivanov and Paul Richardson also contributed to this story.

*Certainly, prisons have been around in Russia for a very long time. But, on March 12, 1879 a special Head Directorate of Prisons was created within Russia’s Interior Ministry. Previously, there had been no nationwide, centralized system of prison management—this job was handled by Russia’s governors. Use of prison labor was normalized and unified rules for prisoner behavior were put in place.