Gulag Echoes in the Media

24 February 2024: In the reporting surrounding the death of Alexei Navaln’ny, Professor Judith Pallot shared her knowledge of IK-3 in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Oblast where the oppositionist was held with Juri Vuortama, for an article in Ilta-Sanomat on 24th February, Kuin maanpäällinen helvetti – tällainen paikka on IK-3, jossa Aleksei Navalnyi kohtasi loppunsa (IK-3 where Navalny met his end is like hell on earth) The link is here. 

11 June 2023: Gulagechoes researcher Mikhail Nakonechnyi appeared on the Finnish news channel MTV3 to give an interview about jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnyi and the similarities and differences between Stalin’s gulag system and Vladimir Putin’s contemporary prison system. The associated article is in Finnish, but the interview is carried out in Russian and can be found here.

22 May 2023: Professor Judith Pallot was invited to do a podcast for the American English language Meduza entitled “Russian Prison’s Today”. This 45 minute podcast was streamed on  May 22nd. It can be found at Russian prisons today — Meduza. 

8 March 2023: Judith Pallot published an article on Riddle about what official Russian prison statistics can tell us about prisoners’ recruitment to the Wagner paramilitary organisation. Link.

4 March 2023:  Judith Pallot was interviewed by YLE, Finland’s major public broadcaster, by for an article entitled “New features of Russian atrocities against civilians are revealed in Ukraine. Link.

3 March 2023: Judith Pallot took part in a 90-minute online seminar organised by Mark Brayne, formerly of Reuter (USSR) and the BCC (China) and now a therapist, entitled “The Russo-Ukraine War One Year On – Identity, History, Literature, Trauma.” The other participants were Michael Holman (formerly professor of Russian Literature, University of Leeds) and the poet Yulia Nemirovskaya (University if Oregon).  This had an online audience of 100 psychologists, psychotherapists and Russian specialists. Link.

14 February 2022: Judith Pallot gave an overview of Gulag Echoes research findings on a Meduza podcast about links between contemporary Russian prisons and the Gulag. Link.

5 December 2022: Yahoo! Sports interviewed Judith Pallot for a piece on Russian prison conditions in women’s colonies. Link.

29 November 2022: A Forbes article about Brittney Griner drew on the work of Judith Pallot and Olga Zeveleva . Link.

29 November 2022: Spanish newspaper El Español quoted Olga Zeveleva in an article about Brittney Griner. Link.

28 November 2022: Olga Zeveleva was quoted in The Guardian on the USA’s efforts to free Brittney Griner from Russian prison. Link.

28 November 2022: The Washington Free Beacon quoted Olga Zeveleva on the topic of Russian prison conditions in the context of Brittney Griner’s sentence. Link.

28 November 2022: India-based sports news website Essentially Sports drew on Judith Pallot’s comments in an analysis of prison conditions faced by Brittney Griner. Link.

28 November 2022: India-based sports news website Essentially Sports quoted Judith Pallot in a piece about Brittney Griner. Link.

26 November 2022: Olga Zeveleva was interviewed about her research on Russian prisons for the German-language podcast FOMO: Was hab ich heute verpasst? Link.

23 November 2022: Judith Pallot and Olga Zeveleva were quoted in the Wikipedia entry on Mordovia, in the section on penal colonies. Link.

22 November 2022: Judith Pallot and Olga Zeveleva were quoted in the latest edits to the Wikipedia entry on Corrective colony Number 2, Mordovia. Link.

18 November 2022: Judith Pallot was interviewed by VICE News about prison conditions in the facility where Brittney Griner was sent. Link.

18 November 2022: Judith Pallot and Olga Zeveleva commented on prison conditions in Russia’s women’s colonies for The Guardian. Link.

18 November 2022: Olga Zeveleva was featured on CNN‘s show The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, commenting on the conditions Brittney Griner faces in a Russian penal colony in Mordovia. Link.

15 November 2022: A Yahoo! News article about Brittney Griner and Russian prison conditions drew on the work of Olga Zeveleva. Link.

10 November 2022: Canada Today cited Olga Zeveleva on prison conditions in Russia in light of Brittney Griner’s departure from her remand center to a penal colony. Link.

9 November 2022: TIME interviewed Olga Zeveleva about what Brittney Griner may face in a Russian penal colony. Link.

28 October 2022: Judith Pallot was interviewed for on the Finnish broadcaster MTV on the programme Viiden Jälkeen about the forced relocations of Ukrainians to the Russian Federation since the invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022. Link.

25 October 2022: The German-language magazine KATAPULT, which popularizes social sciences research for broader audiences, published a review and infographic (see below) summarizing Olga Zeveleva’s article co-authored with José Ignacio Nazif-Muñoz about pandemic prison policy. Link.

Title: How many weeks did it take officials to limit prison visits after the first COVID-19 case in the country? Dark blue: 1 week;    Yellow: 4 weeks;    Dark green: 7 weeks; Handcuff symbol: Countries that made early release possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20 August 2022: Yahoo.com featured the Blavity News article based on Olga Zeveleva’s assessment of risks face by Brittney Griner in Russian prison. Link.

20 August 2022:  Blavity News (an American Internet media company created by and for black millennials) featured an article based on Olga Zeveleva’s comments about Brittney Griner’s imprisonment in Russia. Link.

19 August 2022: Olga Zeveleva was interviewed for VICE News on what American basketball player Brittney Griner may face if sent to a Russian penal colony. Link.

18 August 2022: Polish website Onet – Wiadomosci published a translation of Olga Zeveleva’s Meduza essay on the use of food as punishment in Russian prisons. Link.

12 August 2022: Meduza published Olga Zeveleva’s guest essay on prison food as punishment, and the use of incarceration to silence the anti-war movement in Russia. Link.

18 June 2022: Judith Pallot was interviewed by Finnish public broadcaster YLE about Russian filtration camps for Ukrainians. Link.

16 June 2022: Judith Pallot had a 90-minute interview with Sarah Rainsford, BBC foreign correspondent who reported the first weeks of the Russian invasion. The topics covered include Sarah’s reporting from Moscow after 2015, her being thrown out in 2019, and her experiences in Dnipro and Easter Ukraine after 24th February and her prognosis for the War in Ukraine. Link.

17 March 2022: Brendan Humphreys and Judith Pallot published an article in Riddle, an online journal on Russian affairs. The article is titled “Will Russia put Ukraine dissidents into camps?”.  Link.

15 March 2022: Judith Pallot published an article in The Guardian Newspaper. The article is titled “Marina Ovsyannikova risked jail by opposing Putin on TV. Here’s why we fear for her”. Link.

5 July 2021: The Bearr Trust, a London-based charity working on health and social welfare issues, has republished Judith Pallot’s blog post about Tuberculosis in Russia’s prisons on their website.

4 July 2021: Olga Zeveleva’s blog post about prison riots was included in a COVID-19 reading list on the Black Female Professors Forum.

18 March 2021: An interview with Olga Zeveleva about Navalny and Russian prisons was published by the Lithuanian news website 15min (which partnered with the Panama Papers team in the past). Link.

17 March 2021: The Russian news website INOSMI, which translates foreign news reports on Russia, published its own translation of Olga Zeveleva’s interview with Finnish public broadcaster YLE about Navalny’s prison sentence. Link.

15 March 2021: Olga Zeveleva was interviewed by the Finnish public broadcaster YLE on Navalny, his prison sentence, and comparisons to other prisoners in Russian and Soviet history. Link.

1 March 2021: Olga Zeveleva’s lecture on carcerality in Estonia was made available for public viewing on the UCL SSEES YouTube channel. Link.

25 February 2021: Olga Zeveleva was interviewed by the German media outlet RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) about COVID-19 in Russia. Link.

19 February 2021: Olga Zeveleva was interviewed by the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times about the politics and perceptions surrounding excess death rates in Russia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Link.

15 February 2021: Olga Zeveleva was interviewed by the Swedish-language news service of the Finnish public broadcaster YLE on political polarization, protests, and prison in Russia. Link.

3 February 2021: Olga Zeveleva was interviewed by the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat about police violence and detention of protesters in Russia. Link.

3 February 2021: Olga Zeveleva was interviewed by the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat about prison conditions in Russia in light of opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s arrest and prison sentence. Link.

20 December 2020: Olga Zeveleva spoke at the public civil society forum and YouTube channel Prostranstvo Politika (‘Politics Space’), tackling the topic of prisons in Russia and ethnicity construction in spaces of detention. YouTube Link.

20 November 2020: Judith Pallot published an article in OpenDemocracy on the imprisonment of Belarusian pro-democracy protesters and conditions of detention in Belarus. Link.

19 October 2020: Costanza Curro spoke at the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. Her talk, entitled “From Collective to Cellular? Common Spaces Between the Steet and Prison”, was part of the Biennial’s BIRZHASTATION highlight project, an archaeological exploration of the neo-liberal ideology of architectural transparency in the post-Socialist world. YouTube Link.

22 October 2020:  Larisa Kangaspuro gave the presentation “The Grand Duchy of Finland and “other” prison in the Russian Empire”. The event was organised by the Presidential Library in cooperation with the Federal Archival Agency, the Union of Russian Museums and the Russian Library Association), which is available for viewing on YouTube. YouTube Link. 

14 October 2020: Judith Pallot published an article in Riddle, an online journal on Russian Affairs, comparing the COVID-19 pandemic in prisons to other epidemics in Russia’s history. Links: available in Russian and in English.

18 September 2020: Olga Zeveleva published an article in Riddle, an online journal on Russian affairs. The article is titled “COVID has been devastating for Russia’s prisoners”. Links: available in Russian and in English.

14 August 2020: Costanza Curro spoke on a podcast episode of the Royal Institute for Anthropology in Great Britain and Ireland, in a series called Being Human. In the podcast, Noel Salazar (University of Leuven) and Julius-Cezar MacQuarie (UBB and CEU), and Costanza Curro discuss the implications and dynamics of being ‘socially distanced’ from the perspective of confinement, mobility, migration and night labour.  Link.

20 July 2020: Niina Into’s translation of Costanza Curro’s blog post about prison guards and the Georgian prison system has been published in Finnish in Politiikasta, a popular journal of the Finnish Political Science Association targeting a broad audience. Link.

7 July 2020:  Larisa Kangaspuro took part in the discussion “The Nordics and Identity”, the podcast of which is published on the website Nordics.info.  Despite a growing focus on national identity in and outside the Nordics, Nordic regional identity persists. The participants of this podcast explore what it takes to make a region consisting of numerous nation-states a success, comparing it to other areas, such as the Baltics and Eastern Europe. Link.

11 June 2020: The Helsinki Think Corner (Tiedekulma) and the Aleksanteri Institute hosted a public talk on “COVID-19 in Russian and Eurasian Societies”, which is available for viewing on YouTube. Olga Zeveleva of the Gulag Echoes project joined Margarita Zavadskaya and Sherzod Eraliev for a discussion moderated by Mikhail Nakonechnyi of Gulag Echoes. Link.

10 June 2020: The Kennan Institute published a post titled “Locked Up During Lockdown: Prisoners in Russia and the World During the Pandemic” by Olimpiada Usanova, Galina Starovoitova, Fellow on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, on its blog “The Russia File”. The post draws on Gulag Echoes research on the COVID-19 pandemic in a global context. Link.

9 June 2020: Radio Free, a hub for independent journalism, has translated Marharyta Tulup’s investigation on COVID-19 in Ukrainian prisons into English, citing Olga Zeveleva’s Gulag Echoes research. Link.

8 June 2020: OpenDemocracy published an English-language investigation by Marharyta Tulup on coronavirus in Ukrainian prisons, citing and interview she conducted with Olga Zeveleva on her Gulag Echoes research. Link.

2 June 2020: OpenDemocracy published an investigation on COVID-19 in Ukrainian prisons and cited Olga Zeveleva’s Gulag Echoes research (Russian language). Link.

21 May 2020: The Chilean Center for Journalistic Investigation CIPER published an op-ed about riots in Chilean prisons citing Olga Zeveleva’s Gulag Echoes blog post on prison riots. Link.

13 May 2020: The EURO-JUSTIS project, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR) in the UK, has translated Costanza Curro’s Gulag Echoes blog post into French and has published it on its website. The project is designed to provide EU institutions and Member States with new indicators for assessing public confidence in justice. Link.

7 May 2020: Penal Reform International published a blog post by Costanza Curro, titled “Living in prison: Responses to COVID-19 in Georgia’s penal system and implications for how we think about the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside'”. Link.

6 May 2020: Italian newspaper Il Riformista interviewed Olga Zeveleva about prisons in Russia for an article. Link.

6 May 2020: Italian prison nonprofit organization quoted Olga Zeveleva’s interview with newspaper Il Riformista on its website. Link.

5 May 2020: Olga Zeveleva interviewed on Swedish Radio about the Gulag Echoes COVID-19 prison database. Link.

4 May 2020: Mexican online newspaper Eje Central drew on Olga Zeveleva’s Gulag Echoes research on prison riots. Link.

30 April 2020: The European Data Journalism Network published a thematic newsletter on “Coronavirus and Fundamental Rights” and drew on Olga Zeveleva’s overview and Sofia Gavrilova’s map of coronavirus prison policies Link.

27 April 2020: Olga Zeveleva quoted in The Moscow Times with expertise about Russian prisons, in the Russian language. Link.

27 April 2020: Olga Zeveleva quoted in The Moscow Times with expertise about Russian prisons, in the English language. Link.

27 April 2020: Olga Zeveleva’s op-ed on prison riots was published in the print version of Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Link.

22 April 2020: Ukrainian public broadcaster Hromadske published an English-language analysis of coronavirus in Russian prisons with quotes and data from Gulag Echoes study. Link.

18 April 2020: Olga Zeveleva published an op-ed in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta about prison riots. Link.

15 April 2020: The Official Blog of the Law and Society Association CRN 27 Punishment and Society lists the Gulag Echoes website in its roundup of resources on jails, prisons, and COVID-19. Link.

15 April 2020: Olga Zeveleva interviewed on the English-language podcast “The Naked Pravda” (created by the news outlet Meduza) about prisons and coronavirus, on an episode about law and order in Russia during the pandemic. Link.

10 April 2020: Olga Zeveleva’s op-ed featured on a two-page spread of Novaya Gazeta’s print version, including an infographic made by Novaya Gazeta staff drawing on the database presented on the Gulag Echoes website.  Link.

9 April 2020: The Aleksanteri Institute published a press release announcing the launch of the Gulag Echoes prison database. Link.

08 April 2020: The English-language Novaya Gazeta newsletter “Russia Explained” included a summary of Olga Zeveleva’s Gulag Echoes research on prisons. Link.

07 April 2020: The Russian prison NGO “V zashchitu prav zakluchennykh” (trans. “In defense of prisoners’ rights”) posted the full text of Olga Zeveleva’s Novaya Gazeta op-ed on their website. Link.

06 April 2020: The Russian prison NGO “Rus’ sidyashchaya” included Olga Zeveleva’s Novaya Gazeta op-ed on their website in a section on COVID-19 in prisons. Link.

06 April 2020: Olga Zeveleva’s op-ed on prison riots published in Russian-language newspaper Novaya Gazeta, with map created by Sofia Gavrilova. Link.

04 April 2020: Lukas Lehner (of Oxford University’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention) created a list of COVID-19 research sources and included the Gulag Echoes blog post “Coronavirus in Prisons, a Global Perspective” in the list: Link.
Lehner’s list was included in LSE’s collection of COVID-19 social sciences research: Link.

03 April 2020: A translation of Olga Zeveleva’s and Judith Pallot’s Gulag Echoes research was included on the blog of Russian human rights defender Andrei Babushkin. Link.