ON THE IDEA OF LABOR, LABOR LAW, AND FORCED LABOR SELECTED REMARKS IN THE SOVIET UNION (1917-1945)

In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, work was compulsory according to the 1918 labor code. This stemmed from the ideas of Marx. This position was also held by Lenin, Trotsky and others. The Communist Party could assign anyone any work. Evading work was a counter-revolutionary crime. Likewise, it was a crime to arbitrarily change one’s place of work. The compulsion to work required the use of terror. Terror was an everyday phenomenon in the USSR. Low labor productivity was a constant affliction. Prison labor was used en masse from the beginning. The GULAG system (forced labor camps) expanded. Prison labor was becoming less and less productive. In 1956, the GULAG camps were renamed “penal colonies,” which still exist in Russia today.

For a global history of penal colonies and convict labor

Review of: ANDERSON, Clare (ed.). A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 408 p.

Artistic Work of Polish Exiles in the Trans-Baikal Region of Russia in the Second Half of the 19th Century

Polish political exiles to Siberia of the latter half of the 1800s were involved in many aspects of the social and cultural life of the time in the Trans-Baikal Region of Russia. However, in contrast to their scholarly research conducted while in exile, their artistic activities have never been a topic of independent studies. The objective of this paper is to study artistic work of Polish exiles in the context of penal labor and penal settlements. When developing the topic of this study, the author relied on fundamental research principles and methods. Using a broad range of archive materials and private sources, the author describes the artistic journeys of the most famous Polish artists in exile who left a prominent legacy in the Trans-Baikal artistic life of the time. When working on the topic of the article, the author used the following methods of historical research: analysis of written sources, bibliographic method, historical and genetic method. While being formally convicted to penal labor in the mines and factories of Nerchinsk mining region, some Polish exiles were not actually required to engage in hard labor. The most artistically minded among them were looking for the opportunities to selfeducate themselves and engage in artistic activities. The author identified several previously unknown facts associated with the artistic legacy of Polish exiles. Against the backdrop of Polish deportation in the 1800s, the author reconstructed the artistic work of Jozef Baerkman and Stanislaw Wronski. During their time in the Siberian penal system, Polish artists created paintings, taxidermic works, and illustrations to the scholarly works of Benedykt Dybowski. However, their most active creative period began when they were released from hard labor and settled in penal colonies. Today, some works of Polish artists in exile created during the second half of the 19th century are part of collections of regional museums. Keywords: Polish exiles, Polish artists, artistic activity, Trans-Baikal region, Stanislaw Wronski, Jozef Baerkman

The Galápagos as penal colony: Exile, peonage, and state control at the Hacienda El Progreso, 1878–1904

Transportation to remote islands has been a way that authorities have dealt with criminals since well before the birth of the modern state. What happens to those exiles once on the islands has varied greatly in different times and places. This paper explores the Galápagos plantation run from 1878 to 1904 by Manuel J. Cobos. His operation demonstrates that the patriarchal concept of the hacienda continued to play a key role in the disciplining of perceived criminality in Latin America in the late 19th century, outside of the roles of the military, the police, and penal institutions. The Galápagos example shows the overlaps and tensions between capitalist plantations and state penal colonies in their treatment of transported convicts in the 19th century.

Geopolitics of the colonial prison island: The case of Poulo Condor (Con Dao)

This article takes up the specific example of Poulo Condor (the Con Dao archipelago in Vietnam) as colonial prison island in order to examine this persistence of colonial island imaginaries built around the imagined project of the prison island well into the middle of the 20th century. Such imaginaries appear to run counter to dominant political discourse of the period along with ongoing media campaigns calling for the end to penal transportation and overseas penal colonies. This article contends that closer attention needs to be paid to the disjuncts and gaps between the official discourse of the French colonial authorities located in France and the enactment of such discourse in the colonies themselves. The central focus of the article is a close analysis of correspondence between colonial officials stationed in French Indochina from 1925 onwards; these documents will be contextualised with reference to the longer histories of both the Con Dao archipelago and France’s use of prison islands. An understanding of Poulo Condor as a complex extralegal space will be framed by Ann Laura Stoler’s concept of the ‘colony’ as it develops Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the ‘state of exception’ and Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘security’. What emerges is an ongoing colonial pathology which continues to fixate on the prison island as a key colonial stake even after such a stake has become increasing untenable.

The Role of Apathy in the Formation of Depression Syndrome in Male Prisoners

The article presents the results of a research work on the role of apathy in the formation of depression syndrome in male prisoners. Basing on the questionnaire polling results of men (N = 151) serving their sentences in one of the maximum security penal colonies in Omsk, an empirical model was built indicating that the formation of depression syndrome in male prisoners is a complex step-by-step process with early stages involving manifestation of hopelessness, boredom and loneliness and with apathy joining in at later stages. The analysis of social and demographic characteristics revealed that a prisoner's age, family situation, children, education, the sentence served or the charges of which he was convicted have no effect on his psychological symptoms (the prisoners' educational level is only found to influence the way hopelessness is experienced). The data obtained suggest that there is a necessity for educational activities in prisons and also indicate a potential utility of the results in the field of anti-crysis therapy for prisoners in Russia.

EDUCATIONAL WORK AS A MEANS OF CORRECTING CONVICTS SERVING THEIR SENTENCES IN PENAL COLONIES

В статье раскрываются особенности организации воспитательной работы с осужденными в колониях-поселениях. Основной целью уголовно-исполнительного закона является исправление осужденных. Исправление осужденных - это формирование у них уважительного отношения к человеку, обществу, труду, нормам, правилам и традициям человеческого общежития и стимулирование правопослушного поведения. Воспитательная работа с осужденными является одним из основных средств исправления. Воспитательная функция возложена законодателем на всех сотрудников исправительного учреждения. Воспитательная работа с осужденными организуется дифференцированно с учетом категорий осужденных, отбывающих наказание в виде лишения свободы, срока наказания, условий отбывания наказаний. Значимость дифференциации условий отбывания наказания заключается в организации различного воспитательного воздействия на осужденных. Постановка конкретных педагогических задач, пути их достижения и содержание воспитательной работы меняются в зависимости от условий отбывания наказания. На основании опроса осужденных выявлены и обозначены основные проблемы, возникающие при организации воспитательной работы с осужденными в колонии-поселении, и намечены пути их решения. The article reveals the features of the organization of educational work with convicts in penal settlements. The main purpose of the penal law is to correct convicted persons. Correction of convicts is the formation of a respectful attitude towards the person, society, work, norms, rules and traditions of the human community and the promotion of law-abiding behavior. Educational work with convicts is one of the main means of correction. The educational function is assigned by the legislator to all officers of the correctional institution. Educational work with convicts is organized in a differentiated manner, taking into account the categories of convicts serving prison sentences, the term of punishment, and the conditions for serving sentences. The significance of differentiating the conditions of serving a sentence lies in the organization of various educational effects on convicts. The formulation of specific pedagogical tasks, the ways to achieve them, and the content of educational work change depending on the conditions of serving a sentence. Based on the survey of convicts, the main problems that arise in the organization of educational work with convicts in the colony-settlement are revealed and identified, and ways to solve them are outlined.

The identity of the penitentiary criminal, his / her behaviour in places of detention

The significance of the study consists in describing and enlarging the concept “penitentiary criminal in places of detention” as well as determining the impact of the criminal’s environment on his / her personality and behaviour. The paper analyses the identity of the penitentiary criminal and identifies his / her illegal actions in relation to the administration of penal colonies. The purpose of this study is to analyse a criminal who is in prison and has committed violent crimes against the staff of penitentiary institutions. In the article, the author uses the following methods of research: empirical (observation, description) and theoretical (analysis, questionnaires, generalisations). The content of the study is based on the information about the criminal. The article sets out the necessary criteria for investigation the identity of the criminal. The factors influencing the development of criminal’s personality and his / her behaviour have been defined. The informal levels of control are conditionally divided into three types as follows: highest, intermediate and lowest. The highest level is the elite managerial one. It is headed by the «thief-in-law» (code-bound thief), and if there is not any – by the «watcher» (criminal kingpin). The intermediate level is made up of «men» (PIs – Prison Industries), i.e. people who work in prison, although they may not work. The lowest level is represented by the «offended» (punks), morally and physically humiliated people. The author examines socio-demographic (social origin and status, marital and job status, level of material welfare, nationality, gender, age); psychological (emotions and will); criminal-legal and social role-related characteristics of the convicts who have committed violent crimes against the staff of penitentiary institutions. The author assumes that a socio-demographic characteristic of criminal’s personality is one of the most important existing ones demonstrated by the criminals who have committed violent crimes against the staff of penitentiary institutions. Age is one of its indicators. Social status is one of the most important indicators that characterises the identity of the criminal. These data show in which social strata and groups, in which spheres of public life and production, certain crimes are most common. The results indicate that a deep and comprehensive study of the identity of the criminal will increase personal safety of the staff of penal colonies and will allow both reacting more quickly and preventing a crime.

Forced Separations

The British Empire’s global expansion during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to considerable cross-cultural pollination, which in turn significantly influenced social, political, and legal decision-making across the colonies. To maintain law and order, Mauritius, a British colonial possession in the Indian Ocean, introduced intra-colonial convict transportation, adding to the coerced labour pool circulating between colonies. For families of transported convicts, the separation was enduring and most often permanent. The Mauritian convicts shipped to the Australian penal colonies also lost their cultural and social frameworks. Subsequently, their experiences and life trajectories in the penal colonies often depended on their ability to forge new social connections, form personal relationships, or find patronage.