Issue # 11-2007. Content
Issue as usual consists of three main blocks. The first one is dedicated to the normative documents, official statistics and juridical advices for prisoners.
Stanislav Markelov (an advocate, works at the Institute of Superiority of the Law). His article is titled: European fairy tale in the reality of Russian penitentiary colonies. The author compares the principles of the European Penitentiary Regulations signed by Russia with real situation in prisons. One of the main contradictions, in his opinion, consists in the fact, that European penitentiary system has as its aim to isolate the criminal during the period of imprisonment and to prevent him from criminal activities after the imprisonment, and Russian system traditionally has as its aim to re-educate the person not taking in attention the self-respect of prisoner. This tradition leads to traditional existence of opposition of prisoners to penitentiary personal whose activities are almost not limited by strict regulations. This leads to an eternal conflict because the personal tries to do its job by hands of "good" prisoners, and this is forbidden by the European Regulations. The conclusion of the author is: though between the Regulations, even having the word "recommendations" in their title, and the reality of Russian penitentiary system there is a wide gap, they are very useful as a beacon, as a legal basis for all kind of efforts for humanization of Russian prison.
The following material is abstracts from European Penitentiary Regulations for strengthen the previous article.
The articles of Aleksandr Konstatinov "The Complaint of Supervision -- a Serious Thing" and "The Special Order of Court Examination" are materials for prisoners and "simple" men where the authors explains terms, competence of courts of various levels, the rules of complaints and court examination and gives clear and useful juridical advices.
The statistical materials of the issue: The Criminal Situation in Russia in 2006 (data of Home Ministry), here are the number of crimes, the types of crimes, social position of criminals in comparison with 2005 (tables and diagrams); The Brief Characteristic of Penitentiary System in Russia (qualifying date 2007/01/01) (data of Federal Penitentiary Service), here the number of prisoners and penitentiary workers, number of institutions, categories of prisoners and so on.
Olga Afanasieva in her material "Prison in Fashion" analyzes the cultural phenomenon of modern Russia where the prison slang, prison theme enter the everyday life, language of advertising and even public politicians. The interest for the theme embrace all strata of population. The possible reasons of this fashion are the subject of attention of the author.
As a useful information we publish The Regulations of Inner Order in Colonies for Minor Criminals 2006.
This document is briefly commented in the material "New Regulations for Colonies" by Vitalii Poloziuk, the Director of Department of social, psychological and educative work of Fedraral Penitentiary System.
In the second block we publish the essay by Boris Panteleev based on the personal prison experience "Games of Memory, or Paradoxes of the education". Somehow his thoughts correlate with the first article of the issue by S. Markelov, because the central place of the essay is the problem of preserving human dignity of prisoners.
In the following material by a member of Public Chamber Oleg Zykov "It's Necessary to be More Clever and Artful than Executive Superiors" the author tells about his personal efforts to mobilize inner resources of the penitentiary workers in reforming the system of colonies for minor prisoners and their possibility to influence the executive power which is not co-operative with NGOs. Now he succeeded to organize the Association of colonies for minor criminals where the functionaries cooperate with Human Rights activists. The problems and difficulties of such cooperation is the focus of the material.
The third block consists of historical materials. Some time ago in Moscow was organized an exhibition "Presents for leaders". It is described by well-known journalist Aleksei Mokrousov, mentioning the gifts to Soviet leaders given by leaders of other countries and simple people. The ideology of such phenomenon is analyzed in the article.
The article by Aleksandr Sidorov, researcher of the prison culture, "The police novel of the locomotive", is dedicated to a very interesting story of one song which many of Russians know as folk-lore song. The analysis of its authorship may be read as a detective story.
The last material of the block by Rostislav Gorchakov "The ballad of Red Jack" is a serious research based on documents of the relation of the population to the workers of law-enforcing bodies in 1930--1950 with many concrete details of everyday life chiefly in Siberia where the most part of GULAG camps were concentrated.
The fourth block is a material in memoriam of recently deceased Human Rights activist Andrei Borisov. Here we publish an obituary and an abstract of his text "Could All be Unuseful Afresh?" where he compares modern Russian prison with its analogue of the 19th century basing on the memoirs of prisoners.
Nevolia. Issue # 11-2007. Print version (PDF, Russian, 1.7Mb)