Criminals, Nazis, and Islamists: Competition for Power in Former Soviet Union Prisons

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Vera Mironova (Associate Fellow, Davis Center, Associate Fellow, Davis Center, Harvard University)

Criminals, Nazis, and Islamists

Competition for Power in Former Soviet Union Prisons

Vera Mironova (Associate Fellow, Davis Center, Associate Fellow, Davis Center, Harvard University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
27 September 2023

Penology & punishment; Offenders

In Criminals, Nazis, and Islamists, Vera Mironova examines conflicts and cooperation between inmates in male prisons in the former Soviet Union. She begins by focusing on the earliest prisoner groups, in particular the Vory criminal organization, which began in the 1930s. The Vory were able to develop rules, norms, and unique criminal ideology to ensure their monopoly in prison internal governance. Not only did they establish control over inmates, the Vory also successfully stood up against prison authorities to make inmates life behind bars as comfortable as possible, and as a consequence ensured its own survival in power. Mironova also explains how the Vory uses different methods, from strikes to bloody riots, to put pressure on prison leadership.

The fall of Soviet Union in 1990 saw an explosion of entrepreneurial criminal organizations, and the Vory started losing their grip on prisons. This book reviews how Islamists, Neo Nazis, and other major organizations behind bars across the former Soviet Union are currently challenging the Vory and what happens when they take power inside particular prisons and have to govern themselves. By focusing on the margins of Russian life, Mironova offers a unique perspective on the social transformations impacting both the USSR and the post-Soviet space from the 1930s to the Putin era.

By: Vera Mironova (Associate Fellow Davis Center Associate Fellow Davis Center Harvard University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 156mm, Width: 236mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 388g
ISBN: 9780197645666
ISBN 10: 0197645666
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 27 September 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Vera Mironova, PhD, is an Associate Fellow at Harvard University and is famous for her extensive in-depth ethnographic fieldwork with armed groups in active conflict zones, terrorist sleeping cells, and criminal organizations. She conducted fieldwork in numerous active conflict zones and post-conflict regions all over the world including in Syria, Iraq, Sudan, DRC Congo, and Azerbaijan. From 2016 to 2017, she was embedded with Iraqi Special Operations Forces during the Mosul Operation and before that, with ultra-right Ukrainian armed groups in Donbas. And since 2018 she conducted extensive interviews with members of criminal organizations in former Soviet Union. She is an author of the award-winning book From Freedom Fighters to Jihadists. Human Resources of Non-State Armed Groups (Oxford 2019).