From Gulags to Europrisons

Exploring National and Ethno-Religious Issues in the Prisons of Former Communist Eastern Europe
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-3-032-25379-8
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan

Buch, Englisch, 600 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology

This book explores the path dependencies that have shaped the prison systems of the former communist countries of Europe following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Reflecting the varied ethno-religious populations of the region, the collection details how ethnic minority prisoners were managed under different communist regimes and how this changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In chapters written by authors from fifteen countries, it explores past and present aspects of penal governance, gang culture, Council of Europe leverage, geopolitics and prisoner experiences. The authors are drawn from across the disciplines of anthropology, criminology, geography, history, modern languages and literature, and sociology. The collection shines a light on prison systems that are often overlooked in discussions of European penalty. It addresses the question of whether ‘post-communist’ is an appropriate label to attach to these prison systems and, in line with the current imperative to decentre Russian and East European area studies, it brings together research from a diverse range of the former communist states of Europe. This book will be of interest to criminologists, historians, and social scientists and a general readership interested in Russia, and the countries of East Central Europe and the Balkans.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Humphreys, Brendan

Pallot, Judith

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Kriminologie, Strafverfolgung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Menschenrechte, Bürgerrechte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1: Is there a Post-Communist Prison? by Judith Pallot.- Part 1: Communist Penal Collectivism: Myth or Reality?.- Chapter 2: Ethnicity in the GULAG and its Socialist-Bloc Analogues by Dan Healey.- Chapter 3: Ethnicity in a Borderland Penal Colony: The Prisoners of Sakhalin Island, 1858-1905 by Carrie Crockett.- Chapter 4: One Empire, Multiple Prison Systems: How the Grand Duchy of Finland Pulled Ahead of Russia in the Prison Reform Movement of the 19th Century by Larisa Kangaspuro.- Chapter 5: Ethnically Blind or Covertly Ethnicised? Minority Prisoners and Construction of Their Ethnicity in the Soviet Penal System, 1921-1991 by Mikhail Nakonechnyi.- Chapter 6: Political Education, Illegal Immigrants from Finland, and the GULAG System in the 1930s by Ira Jänis-Isokangas.- Chapter 7: Myth and Reality: Ethnicity in the Romanian Gulag (1948-1956) by Alin Mursean.- Chapter 8: Shertay Suvanov’s ‘Sorrows of a Dead End’: A Kyrgyz Memoir of Stalin’s Terror, Przheval’sk Prison, and the Kolyma GULAG, 1937-1949 by Nathan Light.- Chapter 9: Speaking 'Proper' Russian: Language Attitudes and Social Hierarchies in GULAG Memoirs by Yury Surochkin.- Chapter 10: Prisoner-of-War Camps and the Complexity of the Soviet Forced Labour Camp System by Sherzod Muminov.- Chapter 11: Intersectionality and Everyday Encounters of Women Political Prisoners in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1968 by Marie Koval.- Part 2: Divergent Starting Points and Divergent Paths post-1989/1991.- Chapter 12: The Impact of Soviet Legacies by Laura Piacentini.- Chapter 13: A Brief History of Sovereign and Disciplinary Power in Croatia by Krešimir Petkovic.- Chapter 14: Punitive Legacies in Contemporary Western Balkan Prison Practice by Olga Kantokoski.- Chapter 15: Progressive Incarceration in Socialist Yugoslavia? The Case of Lepoglava by Brendan Humphreys.- Chapter 16: Is There a Strategy for Reforming the Penitentiary System of Ukraine? by Mykhailo Romanov.- Chapter 17: Carceral Violence in Estonia: Dismantling Socialist Punishment and Moving Towards ‘Europeanized’ Social Control by Olga Zeveleva.- Chapter 18: Usable Pasts: The Russian Prison Service’s Narrative of the GULAG in the Great Patriotic War by Ryan Reed.- Chapter 19: Not So Great Expectations: Russia’s Culture of Punishment as a Frame for Penal Subjectivity by Gavin Slade.- Part 3: The Carceral Journey of Ethnic and Ethno/Religious Minorities; Subjectivities, Identities and Hierarchies.- Chapter 20: The Carceral Journey of Ethnic and Ethno-Religious Minorities: Identification, Hierarchies, and Emergent Intermediate Statuses by Rustamjon Urinboyev.- Chapter 21: The Ethnic Composition of the vory-v-zakone: Data from a new research project by Federico Varese, Elena Racheva, and Niles Breuer.- Chapter 22: To Be and Remain a Muslim: Adaptation, Solidarity and Survival Strategies of Muslims in Russian Prisons by Elena Omel'chenko and Al'bina Garifzianova.- Chapter 23: Different Perspectives on the Muslim Space in Russian Prisons: Ethical Space or Space of Resistance by Lili Di Puppo.- Chapter 24: Tolerance and Ethnic Identification: Data Collection from the Prison and Former Prison Population in Romania by Gabriela Ligia Groza.- Chapter 25: ‘A man is a man:’ Everyday Experiences of Imprisonment and Ethnicity in Rural Georgia by Costanza Curro and Laura Mafizolli.- Chapter 26: The Triple Jeopardy of Women’s Imprisonment in Russia by Judith Pallot.

Über Autor(innen)

Brendan Humphreys is a senior researcher and an Associate Professor of East European studies at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland. He has co-edited two collections on Russian modernization and international relations, and published widely on the history and politics of the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Judith Pallot is Professor Emerita at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, where she taught for forty years.  In 2018, she was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant to research ethnicity in the prison systems of the former communist countries in Europe, which she took to the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. She is the author of numerous books and articles on USSR and the Russian Federation.