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

几乎没有任何关于苏联古拉格残酷现实的第一手资料不提及集中营内存在着一种非常发达的非法贸易；这是一种非常成熟的隐蔽经济，它包含了监狱世界与外界之间以黑市交易、走私活动、腐败和物物交换为中心的非正式交流网络。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质，这种秘密交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形成的？它是斯大林恐怖主义和劳改营政策的具体特征的结果，还是它的起源可以追溯到沙皇的卡托加？这种影子经济仅仅是在恶劣环境中获取稀缺商品的一种方式，还是可以更多地将其视为一种复制机制，以及在监狱社会中决定等级、权力关系和生存机会的一种方式？这些都是本项目将深入探讨的问题，试图摆脱古拉格研究中的主流话语，这些话语主要通过社会主义意识形态和斯大林独裁统治的棱镜来看待苏联集中营的恐怖。

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.