The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia and the Soviet Union, 2017
Imprisonment was central to Soviet history and rates of incarceration remain high in the Russian ... more Imprisonment was central to Soviet history and rates of incarceration remain high in the Russian Federation today with the result that prison discourse is pervasive in Russian culture and the carceral experience the subject of many cultural productions. While men undergo the rite of passage associated with the motto ‘Every real man should pass through prison’, their women relatives become the innocent victims of the penal monolith and have to exercise ingenuity and agency to adapt to their situation. This chapter examines how Russian culture and society have constructed different versions of the ‘prisoner’s wife’. The Decembrist wife, the ‘wife by correspondence’ and the ‘bandit wife’ are three major social models upon which women whose lives and identities are irrevocably transformed by the penitentiary can draw to interpret their experiences of penal Russia.
One of the most popular literary figures in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century, F... more One of the most popular literary figures in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century, Faddei Bulgarin (1789-1859) has been seen by posterity as a second-rate writer, clearly overshadowed by such famous contemporaries as Pushkin and Gogol. Yet Bulgarin's prolific output as a writer, journalist, and critic played a momentous role in the evolution of many genres in Russian literature, such as the historical novel, travelogue, feuilleton physiological sketch, memoir, and essay on mores and morals, to name but a few. In addition, he was considered an arbiter on a variety of current topics in the ongoing public debate and his name was mentioned alongside Pushkin's as one of "the two leading lights of Russian literature." 1 Bulgarin himself stated in his Memoirs (1846-49) that he had every right to say, "in the teeth of envy and literary animosity," that "all literate people in Russia know of my existence!" 2 In Bulgarin's day the Russian reader was already familiar with the literary type of "the Jew" in European literature, best exemplified by Shakespeare's greedy and unforgiving Shylock. In most parts of Europe, "real," nonfictitious Jews were stereotyped as deicides and corrupt moneylenders. 3 This negative imagery of actual and fictitious Jews found fertile soil in Russia with its Christian Orthodox tradition of hostility toward the Jews, one that firmly labelled them Christ-killers and repudiators of his divine authority. Persecution of the so-called "Judaizers" in fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Muscovy, Ivan the Terrible's forcible conversion of Jews and massacre of those unwilling to become Christians at Polotsk 1 L. Myshkovskaia, Literaturnye problemy pushkinskoi pory (Moscow, 1934), 40. This expression was used in 1829 by the "Society of Lovers of Russian Letters" to announce in the press the election of both Pushkin and Bulgarin as its members. 2 Faddei Bulgarin, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 2001), 5. All translations from the Russian are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 3 Usury, an "impure" occupation forbidden to Christians, was one of the few professions open to Jews, who were traditionally banned from working on the land. On this issue see, for example, Todd M. Endelman, The
ABSTRACT The inherited geography of the penal estate in the Russian Federation, which results in ... more ABSTRACT The inherited geography of the penal estate in the Russian Federation, which results in prisoners being sent long distances to serve their sentences, creates difficulties for maintaining prisoners' family ties. Using the results of interviews conducted with prisoners, former prisoners and relatives in the Russian Federation in 2007–2011, the article examines the patterns of contact between minors and their incarcerated parents in the context of arrangements put in place by the prison service to support the parent-child relationship. Despite arrangements that appear positive on the surface, societal prejudice and historical practice combine with geography to militate against good outcomes.
Prison agencies around the world are reporting a rise in the use of illicit communication devices... more Prison agencies around the world are reporting a rise in the use of illicit communication devices in prison. Nevertheless, there have been no criminological studies examining prisoners' online behavior. Using Russia as a case study, this paper reports findings from new research on prisoners' illicit internet use and the effects on prisoner agency and prison structure. Our main finding is that Russian penality sits at the nexus of two processes. First, penality is de-institutionalised whereby the prison, discursively speaking, is no longer fixed to a built form. Second, penality is reflexively re-territorialised by placing prisoner agency onto a third space. The paper presents a new conceptual framework of prisoners as absent, which reveals Russian penality as culturally contingent and politically resilient. The interplay between deinstitutionalisation and re-territorialisation has produced a new penal imaginary-a carceral motif for the twenty first century-in the form of a virtual world.
This paper introduces to punishment and society scholarship a new carceral framing of human right... more This paper introduces to punishment and society scholarship a new carceral framing of human rights in Russian prisons. Russian imprisonment remains elusive to prison scholars and ethnographers around the world. Moreover, on the subject of prisoners’ rights specifically, the scholarship is dominated by legal discourse. The empirical and theoretical scholarship that has developed over the last twenty years has argued that Russian imprisonment is exceptional in the study of world penal systems with the research seeking to gain a sense of this exceptionality through looking at the inertial legacies of Gulag penal culture on present day punishment forms. This article attempts to challenge this claim and will argue that specifically in the area of human rights, Russia has followed a not dissimilar carceral formation to Western prisons. Through an interrogation of the cultural, political and historical factors underpinning how rights are framed in Russian prisons the article suggests that ...
Queer Criminology and Criminology and Queer Theory present two different visions of queer crimino... more Queer Criminology and Criminology and Queer Theory present two different visions of queer criminology. Buist and Lenning offer a short manifesto positioning queer criminology as empirical, activist and concerned with LGBTQI issues, even if their vision is mostly focused on the USA. Ball offers an abstract discussion of the ways that queer theory and some criminological perspectives might align. Both start with definitions. Buist and Lenning define queer criminology as 'a theoretical and practical approach that seeks to highlight. .. the stigmatization, the criminalization and in many ways the rejection of the Queer community, which is to say the LGBTQ (lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) population as both victims and offenders by academe and the criminal legal system' (p.1). They recognise that there are problems with the catchall nature of the LGBTQ label. Ball defines LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex) as those communities and people who are 'positioned outside normative frameworks relating to sexuality and/or gender, specifically heteronormativity and gender binaries' (p.3, footnote 1) and opines that queer criminology ought to be more than merely the inclusion of LGBTQI experience into knowledge about criminal justice. Borrowing from queer theory, Ball states that '"queer" can also be used as a verb, to denote a position or attitude' (p.6) of constant disruption and deconstruction of knowledge. I will return to the issue of definition later for it seems to me that these definitions of a queer criminology raise profound sociological and political issues that neither book fully explores. Queer Criminology follows in the tradition of exposé reportage. It catalogues some of the truly regressive ways that LGBTQ people are treated in the USA and abroad in the name of justice. The authors spend time describing the invisibility of the LGBTQ experience or the terrifying, brutalising, and very unjust, manner that LGBTQ people are treated within systems of justice. They discuss the criminalisation of queer sexualities, paying particular attention to countries that continue in this way. They describe how (largely US) policing 'fails' LGBTQ people of all ages-drawing parallels between the #blacklivesmatter and the #blacktranslivesmatter movements; the latter highlighting that the murders of black trans people in the USA go almost completely undetected. They suggest that anti-LGBTQ discriminatory practices within many American police forces produce challenges for LGBTQ officers, which, in turn, produce legitimacy problems with the ways in which queer populations are policed. The theme here is familiarthose defined as sexual Others are over-policed in relation to the crimes they commit and under-protected in relation to crimes committed against them. Buist and Lenning claim that courts fail to protect or represent LGBTQ people adequately. They note the use of homophobic language in court, or the way non-LGBTQ defendants will make false allegations of sexual impropriety against their LGBTQ victims for the purposes of mitigation. Buist and Lenning argue that LGBTQ people in prison in the USA are 554
The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia and the Soviet Union, 2017
Imprisonment was central to Soviet history and rates of incarceration remain high in the Russian ... more Imprisonment was central to Soviet history and rates of incarceration remain high in the Russian Federation today with the result that prison discourse is pervasive in Russian culture and the carceral experience the subject of many cultural productions. While men undergo the rite of passage associated with the motto ‘Every real man should pass through prison’, their women relatives become the innocent victims of the penal monolith and have to exercise ingenuity and agency to adapt to their situation. This chapter examines how Russian culture and society have constructed different versions of the ‘prisoner’s wife’. The Decembrist wife, the ‘wife by correspondence’ and the ‘bandit wife’ are three major social models upon which women whose lives and identities are irrevocably transformed by the penitentiary can draw to interpret their experiences of penal Russia.
One of the most popular literary figures in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century, F... more One of the most popular literary figures in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century, Faddei Bulgarin (1789-1859) has been seen by posterity as a second-rate writer, clearly overshadowed by such famous contemporaries as Pushkin and Gogol. Yet Bulgarin's prolific output as a writer, journalist, and critic played a momentous role in the evolution of many genres in Russian literature, such as the historical novel, travelogue, feuilleton physiological sketch, memoir, and essay on mores and morals, to name but a few. In addition, he was considered an arbiter on a variety of current topics in the ongoing public debate and his name was mentioned alongside Pushkin's as one of "the two leading lights of Russian literature." 1 Bulgarin himself stated in his Memoirs (1846-49) that he had every right to say, "in the teeth of envy and literary animosity," that "all literate people in Russia know of my existence!" 2 In Bulgarin's day the Russian reader was already familiar with the literary type of "the Jew" in European literature, best exemplified by Shakespeare's greedy and unforgiving Shylock. In most parts of Europe, "real," nonfictitious Jews were stereotyped as deicides and corrupt moneylenders. 3 This negative imagery of actual and fictitious Jews found fertile soil in Russia with its Christian Orthodox tradition of hostility toward the Jews, one that firmly labelled them Christ-killers and repudiators of his divine authority. Persecution of the so-called "Judaizers" in fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Muscovy, Ivan the Terrible's forcible conversion of Jews and massacre of those unwilling to become Christians at Polotsk 1 L. Myshkovskaia, Literaturnye problemy pushkinskoi pory (Moscow, 1934), 40. This expression was used in 1829 by the "Society of Lovers of Russian Letters" to announce in the press the election of both Pushkin and Bulgarin as its members. 2 Faddei Bulgarin, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 2001), 5. All translations from the Russian are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 3 Usury, an "impure" occupation forbidden to Christians, was one of the few professions open to Jews, who were traditionally banned from working on the land. On this issue see, for example, Todd M. Endelman, The
ABSTRACT The inherited geography of the penal estate in the Russian Federation, which results in ... more ABSTRACT The inherited geography of the penal estate in the Russian Federation, which results in prisoners being sent long distances to serve their sentences, creates difficulties for maintaining prisoners' family ties. Using the results of interviews conducted with prisoners, former prisoners and relatives in the Russian Federation in 2007–2011, the article examines the patterns of contact between minors and their incarcerated parents in the context of arrangements put in place by the prison service to support the parent-child relationship. Despite arrangements that appear positive on the surface, societal prejudice and historical practice combine with geography to militate against good outcomes.
Prison agencies around the world are reporting a rise in the use of illicit communication devices... more Prison agencies around the world are reporting a rise in the use of illicit communication devices in prison. Nevertheless, there have been no criminological studies examining prisoners' online behavior. Using Russia as a case study, this paper reports findings from new research on prisoners' illicit internet use and the effects on prisoner agency and prison structure. Our main finding is that Russian penality sits at the nexus of two processes. First, penality is de-institutionalised whereby the prison, discursively speaking, is no longer fixed to a built form. Second, penality is reflexively re-territorialised by placing prisoner agency onto a third space. The paper presents a new conceptual framework of prisoners as absent, which reveals Russian penality as culturally contingent and politically resilient. The interplay between deinstitutionalisation and re-territorialisation has produced a new penal imaginary-a carceral motif for the twenty first century-in the form of a virtual world.
This paper introduces to punishment and society scholarship a new carceral framing of human right... more This paper introduces to punishment and society scholarship a new carceral framing of human rights in Russian prisons. Russian imprisonment remains elusive to prison scholars and ethnographers around the world. Moreover, on the subject of prisoners’ rights specifically, the scholarship is dominated by legal discourse. The empirical and theoretical scholarship that has developed over the last twenty years has argued that Russian imprisonment is exceptional in the study of world penal systems with the research seeking to gain a sense of this exceptionality through looking at the inertial legacies of Gulag penal culture on present day punishment forms. This article attempts to challenge this claim and will argue that specifically in the area of human rights, Russia has followed a not dissimilar carceral formation to Western prisons. Through an interrogation of the cultural, political and historical factors underpinning how rights are framed in Russian prisons the article suggests that ...
Queer Criminology and Criminology and Queer Theory present two different visions of queer crimino... more Queer Criminology and Criminology and Queer Theory present two different visions of queer criminology. Buist and Lenning offer a short manifesto positioning queer criminology as empirical, activist and concerned with LGBTQI issues, even if their vision is mostly focused on the USA. Ball offers an abstract discussion of the ways that queer theory and some criminological perspectives might align. Both start with definitions. Buist and Lenning define queer criminology as 'a theoretical and practical approach that seeks to highlight. .. the stigmatization, the criminalization and in many ways the rejection of the Queer community, which is to say the LGBTQ (lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) population as both victims and offenders by academe and the criminal legal system' (p.1). They recognise that there are problems with the catchall nature of the LGBTQ label. Ball defines LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex) as those communities and people who are 'positioned outside normative frameworks relating to sexuality and/or gender, specifically heteronormativity and gender binaries' (p.3, footnote 1) and opines that queer criminology ought to be more than merely the inclusion of LGBTQI experience into knowledge about criminal justice. Borrowing from queer theory, Ball states that '"queer" can also be used as a verb, to denote a position or attitude' (p.6) of constant disruption and deconstruction of knowledge. I will return to the issue of definition later for it seems to me that these definitions of a queer criminology raise profound sociological and political issues that neither book fully explores. Queer Criminology follows in the tradition of exposé reportage. It catalogues some of the truly regressive ways that LGBTQ people are treated in the USA and abroad in the name of justice. The authors spend time describing the invisibility of the LGBTQ experience or the terrifying, brutalising, and very unjust, manner that LGBTQ people are treated within systems of justice. They discuss the criminalisation of queer sexualities, paying particular attention to countries that continue in this way. They describe how (largely US) policing 'fails' LGBTQ people of all ages-drawing parallels between the #blacklivesmatter and the #blacktranslivesmatter movements; the latter highlighting that the murders of black trans people in the USA go almost completely undetected. They suggest that anti-LGBTQ discriminatory practices within many American police forces produce challenges for LGBTQ officers, which, in turn, produce legitimacy problems with the ways in which queer populations are policed. The theme here is familiarthose defined as sexual Others are over-policed in relation to the crimes they commit and under-protected in relation to crimes committed against them. Buist and Lenning claim that courts fail to protect or represent LGBTQ people adequately. They note the use of homophobic language in court, or the way non-LGBTQ defendants will make false allegations of sexual impropriety against their LGBTQ victims for the purposes of mitigation. Buist and Lenning argue that LGBTQ people in prison in the USA are 554
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