Gulag Echoes in the “multicultural prison”: historical and geographical influences on the identity and politics of ethnic minority prisoners in the communist successor states of Russia and Europe
BY DR. MIKHAIL NAKONECHNYI
In a new series of posts, historian Mikhail Nakonechnyi, Postdoctoral Researcher on the Gulag Echoes project, takes a look at how epidemics were contained in the prisons of the Russian Empire. The first of his two posts analyses the Cholera epidemic of 1892-1893. You can read the second post here. Continue reading “Prisons and the cholera epidemic of 1892-1893: How the Russian Imperial penal system contained the outbreak”
BY DR. COSTANZA CURRO
Dr. Costanza Curro, a Postdoctoral research fellow on the Gulag Echoes project, has been analysing what Georgia’s penal system responses to COVID-19 can tell us about divides between the prison and the ‘outside world’. In this post, Costanza considers how exceptional pandemic-driven measures expose the contradictions of the prison itself.
Olga Zeveleva was a guest on Meduza’s English-language podcast “The Naked Pravda,” hosted by Kevin Rothrock. The episode is titled “Pandemic Justice: How COVID-19 and coronavirus containment measures have exacerbated problems in Russia’s courts and prisons.” Other guests included Kirill Koroteev, head of international practice at the “Agora” international human rights group; Ksenia Runova of the Institute for the Rule of Law at the European University at St. Petersburg; investigative journalist Liliya Yapparova; and Valentina Dekhtyarenko, project manager at the “Open Russia” human rights group. You can listed to the podcast here.
In a new article published by the Russian-language news outlet Novaya Gazeta, Dr. Olga Zeveleva has summarized her analysis of prison riots taking place in March in April all over the world. In the op-ed, titled “Hyperisolation regimes: Coronavirus prison riots will enter penal history,” she argues that as prison systems in different countries move towards increased isolation of prisoners (for example, through visitation bans, which sometimes include lawyers and human rights groups), the new rules are causing prisoners to mobilize and protest. At the same time, the hyperisolation resulting from such policies is making prison riots all the more dangerous and deadly due to dwindling oversight of what is happening inside prison walls. You can find the blog post that presents the findings and methods she drew on for the media article on the Gulag Echoes blog.
At least 108 prisoners from 15 countries have died in coronavirus-related prison riots during the past month. In this post, Dr. Olga Zeveleva introduces the prison riots database she is building, and considers the question of whether we are currently witnessing a global prison uprising. Dr. Sofia Gavrilova, a geographer funded by the Christ Church Research Fund (University of Oxford), is mapping the protests and riots.
Continue reading “Prison Riots and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Global Uprising?”
Dr. Olga Zeveleva has summarized her study on responses to COVID-19 in prison systems around the world in a media article published by the prominent Russian-language news outlet Novaya Gazeta. In the article, titled “Carceral Pandemic: How prison systems in different countries are reacting to the COVID-19 threat,” she argues that we cannot view prisons as remote spaces removed from the “rest” of society, and that in the current pandemic there is no such thing as “prison health” – there is simply public health. You can find the blog post that presents the findings and methods she drew on for the media article on the Gulag Echoes blog
Dr. Olga Zeveleva, a sociologist on the European Research Council project Gulag Echoes (University of Helsinki), is building a database of responses to COVID-19 in prison systems worldwide. Dr. Sofia Gavrilova, a geographer funded by the Christ Church Research Fund (University of Oxford), is mapping these trends. The database and map are works in progress and will be updated as the situation evolves (please see explanatory note on sources and limitations at the bottom of this entry).
This is the first post in a series of reports on coronavirus in prisons by researchers on the Gulag Echoes research page. In the post, Olga Zeveleva takes a look at how the coronavirus crisis is playing out in the prison systems of different countries.
At the beginning of March, Costanza Curro, a post-doctoral researcher on the team, spent a week in Tbilisi to do some preliminary research on the prison system in Georgia. Costanza has established useful contacts among academics, social workers and other experts working on topics related to prisons – notably reforms of the penal system occurred since the end of the Soviet Union, and the transformation of prison subculture and its relevance within and outside Georgian prisons. This preliminary strand of fieldwork has laid the foundations for further research in Tbilisi and some of the Georgian regions, which will focus mainly on interviews with former prisoners and will keep into account differences in ethnic background, but also socio-economic position, age, length and type of sentence as well as regional and/or neighbourhood belonging. This research will take two main directions: 1) it will analyse narratives and practices of hospitality in the prison, and detect the role and relevance of ethnicity in them; 2) it will investigate the ethnic dimension of the prison subculture.
A workshop supported by the ReNEW Excellence Hub and titled “Re-Imagining Norden in an Evolving World” was held on March 3-4, 2020 at the Copenhagen Business School. Dr Larisa Kangaspuro was invited. She gave the presentation “Multi-cultural prison in Nordic countries and Russia”.
The workshop used a historical lens to paint a comprehensive picture of the complex identity-making process of postglobal societies with the purpose of disclosing further theoretical, methodological, and empirical guidelines for further research. Presenters tried to analyse how (re)productions of identity are being mediated in post-globalisation narratives through discourses, memories, and places.
Participants discussed the following themes:
– multiculturalism and globalization
– democracy, governance and law
Dr Olga Zeveleva, a postdoctoral researcher on the team, has started her first stage of fieldwork. She is conducting a series of qualitative interviews with people who have worked for Moscow-based and St. Petersburg-based NGOs. The data Olga gathers during this stage of the project will allow us to analyse discourses produced by civil society organisations and NGOs, in order to understand how these groups of people create categories of vision and division of those drawn into Russia’s penal nexus.