‘Zhigany’ and “Urki”: From the White Guards to ‘Thieves-in-Law’

The modern self-designations of ‘thieves’ such as ‘law-abiding’, ‘lawful thieves’, and ‘thieves-in-law’ also originate from the pre-Revolutionary subculture of the ‘vagrants’. The category

Dmytro Yagunov: Informal prison hierarchies in the 21 century: subculture, trends and social control (The 2025 Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology)

In this study, we raise the issues of the origins of Soviet criminal and prison subculture, the corresponding informal prisoner hierarchies, and the

Dmytro Yagunov: The Wagner Phenomenon: Russian Neo-Imperialism and the Importation of Prison Subculture

The issue of Russian criminal and prison subculture and its spread is by no means historical or criminological in nature. In fact, assessing