Gulag’s Shadow Economy: Prisoner Society and Networking inside the Stalinist Labor Camps

古拉格的影子经济：斯大林劳改营内的囚犯社会和网络

• 批准号: 527032344
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Jörg Baberowski
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl Geschichte Osteuropas
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/527032344?language=en
• 关键词: Gulag; Shadow; Economy; Prisoner; Society

Hardly any first-hand account regarding the harsh realities of the Soviet Gulag misses to mention the existence of a very well developed illicit trade within the camps; a hidden economy so well established that it encompassed informal networks of communication between the prison world and the outside world centered around black market deals, smuggling practices, corruption and barter. This represented the backbone of what could be called “Gulag’s shadow economy”. The fact that the existence of such a hidden trade was even possible considering the restrictive nature of the Soviet Gulag is astonishing and raises a variety of questions. How did the shadow economy come to be in the first place? Was it an outcome of the specific characteristics of Stalinist terror and labor camp policy or could its origins be traced back to the Tsarist katorga? Was this shadow economy simply a way of obtaining scarce goods in a harsh environment or could it be regarded more as a copying mechanism and as a way of determining hierarchy, power relations and survival chances within the prison society? These are the questions this project will be exploring in depth in an attempt to break free from the predominant discourse in Gulag studies, which views the terrors of the Soviet camps mainly through the prism of socialist ideology and Stalin’s dictatorship.

几乎所有关于苏联古拉格严酷现实的第一手资料都提到，集中营内存在着非常发达的非法贸易；隐藏的经济如此稳固，以至于它包含了监狱世界与外部世界之间以黑市交易、走私活动、腐败和易货贸易为中心的非正式通信网络。这代表了可以被称为“古拉格影子经济”的支柱。考虑到苏联古拉格的限制性，这种隐蔽贸易的存在甚至是可能的，这一事实令人震惊，并提出了各种问题。影子经济最初是如何产生的？它是斯大林主义恐怖和劳改营政策特定特征的结果，还是它的起源可以追溯到沙皇卡托加？这种影子经济仅仅是在恶劣的环境中获得稀缺物品的一种方式，还是更多地被视为一种复制机制，以及决定监狱社会中的等级、权力关系和生存机会的一种方式？这些都是这个项目将深入探索的问题，试图摆脱古拉格研究中占主导地位的论述，即主要通过社会主义意识形态和斯大林独裁的棱镜来看待苏联阵营的恐怖。