In the Gulag's Shadow: Producing, Consuming and Perceiving Prisons in the Former Soviet Union

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The Soviet Gulag was one of the most awesome expressions of penal power in world history. Yet, thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union research into punishment in the former Soviet Union is limited. Whereas criminology as a discipline is burgeoning in North America and Western Europe, in the former Soviet Union varying incarceration rates and the social and cultural legacies of the Gulag's continent-sized system of punishment has not been systematically studied. Yet, the region presents a number of puzzles that touch on our wider understanding of penal policy, cultures of punishment and societal attitudes. We describe these puzzles below. To explore them, we have chosen to compare Russia and Kazakhstan - the two biggest countries in the former Soviet Union that held the most Gulag sites during the Soviet period.Firstly, how do we map and explain change in prison rates and conditions across the post Soviet region? How can we understand why, since the year 2000 and against all predictions, many prison populations across the former Soviet Union have gone into decline? What political economic factors might explain this? How did policy makers in Russia and Kazakhstan go about constructing a penal policy and what shaped their preferences? What might it tell us about the driving factors that can explain decarceration in other contexts? Secondly, what do Russians and Kazakhs think about state-sanctioned punishment? Many political scientists believe that the rise of strong leaders and authoritarianism in Russia is a result of political culture. On this view, Russian attitudes - forged by history, geography and culture - favour particular undemocratic governance forms. Yet, despite the size and scale of the Gulag we know very little about how Russians or Kazakhs think about punishment, its predictability and severity, and how this mediates the relationship of citizens with their states and what citizens want from prisons today.Thirdly, how is punishment constructed culturally in products such as TV shows, films, songs and prison museums? How do Russians and Kazakhs consume these products and what meanings are conveyed through them? Theorists have debated the ways in which punishment is also a cultural practice. Despite the fact that one of the legacies of the Gulag has been a visual and musical culture that has become popularized in the present day, there has been no systematic study of this in the former Soviet Union, still less on the various prison museums that have emerged there. This is an important question as how citizens spectate on prisons and punishment often from afar can help to maintain a system of power. In investigating these questions, this research project aims to produce a unique, in depth study of the construction of punishment through state policy, societal attitudes and cultural forms in Russia and Kazakhstan. The project utilizes mixed methodologies taken from across academic disciplines. The methods include a social survey, interviews with policy makers, documentary analysis and desk-based statistical analysis as well as in situ cultural exploration at museum sites and interactions with cultural consumers.The research speaks to important topics about the nature of punishment, its embeddedness in society, culture and the economy and how this impacts upon prison rates and prison conditions. The project is high impact, generating unique data on: prison population trends, a documentary film on penal spectatorship, a large survey database on attitudes to punishment and focus groups for others to use and analyse. The project works with a number of key stakeholders who wish to better understand the use and meaning of prison in Russia and Kazakhstan today. These include government bodies such as the general prosecutor's office of Kazakhstan, national NGOs in the post-Soviet region, and international organizations such as the Council of Europe.