Drawings from Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive
1. Text on the left reads ‘Glory to the Communist Party!!!’. Text at the top and bottom reads ‘The joy of a farmer from AgroGulag, the Honourable Worker of Socialist Labour’. Text on the award reads ‘Lenin’.
Corrective Labour Camp No.9. 1981. Hip.
Caricature of the Communist Party. The tattoo of an otritsala (a convict who refuses to submit to any kind of authority), who was frustrated with the length of his sentence (nine years). He was caught stealing food and gasoline from akolkhoz (collective farm) warehouse. According to the bearer, the tattoo symbolises ‘a kolkhoz farmer after paying taxes to the government’. Another popular interpretation is: ‘I turned in the meat, the skin, the fur, and the balls. Now I’ll just turn in my bones for recycling and that’ll be it.’ Variants of this tattoo depicting a skeleton were popular in the 1950s and 1960s among convicts opposed to the Communist Party.
2. Top: ‘Dig deeper, throw further, farting steam. 1931-33’. Text below reads ‘The White Sea – Baltic Canal’.
Morgue of the Obukhov Hospital, 47 Zagorodny Prospect, Leningrad. 1961.
Left shoulder blade.
A humorous semi-professional ‘grin’ (oskal) showing three skeletons working on the White Sea – Baltic Canal. The canal was commissioned by Stalin to be constructed entirely from GULAG labour. Work lasted for twenty months between 1931 and 1933, costing the lives of over 200,000 political and criminal prisoners. The elderly man who had this tattoo was found frozen to death on the bank of the Vvedensky Canal near Vitebsk Station. The autopsy was carried out by students at the Military Medical Academy.
Bottom: ‘The extra rations of a convict-hero of socialist labour’. The letters on the cup stand for ‘White Sea – Baltic Canal’.
Hospital No. 32, 4 Lazaretny Lane, Leningrad. 1956.
An artistic tattoo from a former convict who worked on the White Sea – Baltic Canal – a cup in the form of a star, a hammer and sickle, shackles, carnations (the flower of the revolution) and barbed wire. The wearer was pulled out of the Fontanka River by firemen from the 5th unit of the Frunzensky Region Fire Brigade Department. He was unconscious and had a serious head wound.
3. CPSU – Forward to communism! The GULAG plan at any price!’ The text on the scythe reads ‘The bright future’.
Morgue, 47 Zagorodny Lane, Leningrad. 1960.
A male convict’s tattoo belonging to a recidivist known as ‘The Professor’.
4. Tattoos signifying addictions.
Top left: ‘Kolpino City. VTK’
Top right: Male or female ‘flower’ youth tattoo.
Middle left: A lesbian addicts tattoo.
Middle centre: ‘My wings are battered and broken, my soul is cramped in silent pain. Drifts of cocaine’s silver powder have covered all my roads…’
Middle right: Text on the bottles reads ‘high’ or ‘buzz’.
Bottom left: ‘27.X.1924’. The date denotes the day the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was founded.
Bottom middle: Text on the label reads ‘Opium, Vodka, Pontalon’.
A male tattoo conveying: ‘This is what is destroying us’.
Underneath: ‘Drugs we will buy, and our grief we will forget!’
Bottom right: ‘All on high! Save your servant, God forbid!’
5. ‘My mother was convicted for gleaning grain and I was born in prison on the 25th October 1935. I was jailed on 21.XII.54 and I will die in prison from the Supreme Soviet Presidium decree of 4.VI.47 – a 25-year sentence’
Corrective Labour Colony, Ulan-Ude, Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. 1960s. Chest.
This thieves’ ‘talisman’, based on Raphael’s ‘Madonna from the Sistine Chapel’, was worn by a convict sentenced to twenty-five years for the group theft of food products from a military depot in the town of Irkutsk. He was known as ‘Bely’ (White). According to ‘Bely’, his mother was convicted under a decree of the Council of People’s Commissars from 7th August 1935, for gleaning ears of grain after the harvest had been collected.
6. Various cat tattoos. The cat is one of the oldest symbols of criminal world. They are the personification of the thieves’ fortune, prudence, patience, the speed of their actions, their ruthlessness and rage. At the same time they represent the expectations of their victims. The abbreviation KOT (tomcat), which is found in tattoos, is the language of thieves, it means: Korennoy Obitatel Tyurmy (Native prison inhabitant).
Top right: Text reads ‘NVOVDO’.
This is a rare acronym, understandable only to the initiated: NVOVDO – ‘Do not touch the thief, he will always make you surrender!’ 1950s.
Bottom left: The symbols on the hat worn by the cat signify the bearer of the tattoo is otritsaly – a thief who refuses to submit to, and is a malicious infringer of the prison rules.
Bottom right: Text reads ‘All power to the godfathers!’.1980s.
7. ‘Greetings from the Vorkuta Camps! 1947-1963. In the USSR labour is
a matter of honour, prowess and glory! Shelyabozh, Eletsky, Izhma, Kozhma, Khalmer-South’
Ilich Lane Bathhouse, Leningrad. 1964.
A ‘grin’ tattoo worn by a convict from the Vorkuta Camps. The wearer
evidently passed through five corrective labour colonies from 1947 to 1963. The tattoo was made in 1962, a year before he was released.
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