Punishment As a Crime? Perspectives on Prison Experience in Russian Culture

ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS Uppsala Studies on Eastern Europe 5 Punishment as a Crime? Perspectives on Prison Experience in Russian Culture Edited by Julie Hansen and Andrei Rogachevskii © The authors and Uppsala University 2014 Printed in Sweden by Danagård LiTHO AB, Ödeshög 2014 Distributor: Uppsala University Library Box 510, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden www.ub.uu.se [email protected] ISSN 1104-6481 ISBN 978-91-554-9064-5 Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis for funding the publication of this volume. We are also grateful to Riksbanken Jubile- umsfond for funding the workshop on which this volume is partially based. The workshop was entitled “Punishment as a Crime? Interdisciplinary Per- spectives on Prison Experience in Russian Culture” and hosted by the Upp- sala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies (UCRS) at Uppsala University on 15–17 August 2012. The cover image is by Ilia Rogatchevski (London) and the inside images are by Igor Cherchenko (Tel Aviv). Nils Dahlqvist and Felix Cowan, interns at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, have provided in- valuable editorial assistance. This book would not have been possible without the support of the Upp- sala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Special thanks are due to Pro- fessor Elena Namli, research director in the area of identity formation, and to the Centre’s director Claes Levinsson. Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................... 9 Part I: Prison Realities Igor Sutyagin Russian Prison Culture Today: A Participant-Observer’s View ................... 19 Martin Kragh Free and Forced Labor in the Soviet Economy: An Uncertain Boundary .... 43 Part II: Reactions and Representations Sarah J. Young Criminalizing Creativity: Language, Performance, and the Representation of Convicts in Imperial and Soviet-Era Prisons and Penal Colonies ............. 69 Andrea Gullotta Gulag Humour: Some Observations on Its History, Evolution, and Contemporary Resonance ............................................................................. 89 Helena Goscilo Complicity in the Illicit? Liube’s Rock Band Bond with the Criminal Zona ............................................................................................................ 111 Part III: Comparative Dimensions Inessa Medzhibovskaya Punishment and the Human Condition: Hannah Arendt, Leo Tolstoy, and Lessons from Life, Philosophy, and Literature .................................... 137 Andrei Rogatchevski Non-Totalitarian Imprisonment under Western and Eastern Eyes: Lord Archer, Eduard Limonov, and Theories of Human Motivation ......... 163 Index ........................................................................................................... 185 Notes on Contributors ................................................................................. 191 Introduction “A prison or a concentration camp is society’s extension,” observed Joseph Brodsky. In some ways, what goes on inside prison walls can be seen to mirror the outside world. By the same token, prison experience is not con- fined by barbed wire, but leaves traces in the surrounding society and culture. This volume is an attempt to elucidate various aspects of Russian culture through a study of its prisons and representations of prison experience, from tsarist times to the post-Communist period. It also seeks to understand Russian prison culture in a global context, as the specificity of Russian prison experience can be seen to go hand in hand with its universality. Throughout Russia’s history, prisons have had a far-reaching impact on its society, culture, and political systems. Although the Gulag is the most notorious and frequently invoked example of inhumane punishment on a massive scale, the threat of imprisonment continues to be significant in the post-Soviet Russian Federation, where no fewer than 25 million people (between one-sixth and one-fifth of the population) have experienced a depriva- tion of liberty since 1991 (Ovchinskiĭ). According to one source, although the crime rate is between three and five times lower in Russia than in West- ern European countries, the rate of incarceration is between eight and fifteen times higher. As a result, 25 percent of the adult male population in the Rus- sian Federation is an ex-convict (Svinarenko 258). The recent high-profile court cases of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot continue to attract the world’s attention to the plight of Russian prisoners today. The questions surrounding Russian prisons past and present are numer- ous. This book does not claim to provide definitive answers or a comprehen- sive historical overview of the Russian prison system. Rather, it aims to offer new perspectives on the phenomenon of prison experience in Russia and beyond, drawing upon both factual and fictional source material. A number of scholarly approaches inform the chapters of this volume, coming from literary and cultural studies, film and gender studies, philosophy, psycholo- gy, and economic history. Its contributors are united in their ambition to examine previously understudied material, taken in its complexity and vary- ing degrees of disparity and continuity, in order to shed new light on both the specific and universal aspects of prison experience in Russia. The book consists of three parts. The first, entitled “Prison Realities,” provides a factual overview of conditions of forced labor and confinement during the Stalin and Putin eras. The second, “Reactions and Representa- 9 tions,” examines a number of cultural responses to prison experience in Rus- sia, from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. The third, “Com- parative Dimensions,” broadens the focus to include accounts of prison experience originating from contexts outside Russia. The first chapter, “Russian Prison Culture Today: A Participant- Observer’s View,” provides witness testimony of prison life in Putin’s Rus- sia. Its author, the researcher Igor Sutyagin, was arrested by the FSB in Oc- tober 1999 and accused of high treason due to a contract he held with a Brit- ish-based consultancy to prepare press surveys in Russia. In a trial later ruled to be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Sutyagin was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. After more than a decade of imprisonment, he was released in July 2010, as part of a prisoner swap between the United States and Russia. Sutyagin opens his chapter by noting that “many inmates of Russian prisons come to feel that it is absolutely impossible to explain the prison world to people who haven’t been there.” Nevertheless, this is what he does from the unique perspective of a participant-observer. After descriptions of the different types of facilities within the current Russian prison system, Sutyagin examines socialization processes within the prison subculture and various ways in which inmates’ internal hierarchies can be seen to replicate social structures in the outside world. He argues that inmates undergo both positive and negative socialization. Although taboos and behavioral codes among prisoners function as collective survival mechanisms, the harsh conditions of daily life in Russian prisons ultimately tend to turn inmates into anti-social individuals lacking skills essential for life on the outside. Sutyagin also considers the detrimental consequences of the contemporary Russian penitentiary system for society as a whole. He argues that the Rus- sian prison system produces citizens who have lost any faith in the law and are unprepared to cope with such aspects of contemporary life as computer technology and the pace of information flow. As contributing factors, he cites disproportionately long sentences, the practice of sending inmates to prisons far from their homes, a corrupt judicial system, and the arbitrary enforcement of prison regulations. Finally, Sutyagin assesses the prospects for the current prison reforms in the Russian Federation. Contrary to the belief of some Western observers, Sutyagin concludes that these reforms are likely to increase the inhumanity of an already inhumane system. The inhumanity of forced labor during the Stalinist era is the subject of Martin Kragh’s chapter “Free and Forced Labor in the Soviet Economy: An Uncertain Boundary.” Kragh argues that the institution of forced labor can- not be properly understood in isolation from the Soviet labor economy as a whole. As his overview of the labor market under Stalin shows, forced labor was not limited to the Gulag. Although exceptional in its scope and brutality, the Gulag was merely one component of Stalin’s efforts to increase labor production at a minimal cost to the state. Agricultural workers were tied to 10 the farms in what came to be called a “second serfdom.” The mobility of industrial workers was also restricted through legislation. Kragh elucidates the consequences of the forced collectivization of agriculture and forced industrialization begun in the late 1920s, showing how the labor market became progressively more restrictive even for employees who were never sent to the Gulag. In this way, the boundaries between the categories of “free” and “forced” labor became blurred. When organized protest or strikes became impossible, some workers resisted coercive practices in the workplace through absenteeism and unauthorized job-changing. Such tactics were sub- sequently criminalized, ultimately making labor disciplinary

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