Ethnic and Religious Identities in Russian Penal Institutions - Rustam Urinboyev (11.4.21)

CREECA Lecture Series Podcast

"Ethnic and Religious Identities in Russian Penal Institutions: A Case Study of Uzbek Transnational Prisoners" discusses how the arrival of a large number of transnational Muslim prisoners shapes the traditional hierarchies and power relations in Russian penal institutions. He will argue that the large-scale migratory processes have transformed Russian penal institutions into a legally plural environment where it is possible to glean the patterns of the coexistence and clash between various formal rules and informal sub-cultures: (a) colony regime, that is official regulations and everyday management practices at the institutional level, (b) traditional prison sub-culture, so-called the thieves’ law, (c) Muslim sub-culture based on Sharia law, and (d) sub-cultures based on ethnic solidarity norms. In doing so, this article challenges the widely held view among Russian criminologists and Western historians that penal institutions in Russia have traditionally been ethnically – (racially) and religiously- blind. The presentation will be based on Professor Urinboyev's extended ethnographic fieldwork in Moscow, Russia, and Fergana, Uzbekistan, conducted between January 2014 and September 2020. Video material has been removed from the recording to respect the privacy of those serving sentences in Russian prisons.