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Tattoos on the hands and fingers were common, and for women, palm tattoos showing insults were popular in the 1940s and 50s. [35] A church with three cupolas – "eternal prisoner" applied to someone with at least three convictions. [36] An eagle – denotes an authoritative thief, or an escapee from a camp. [37]
A Russian gopnik sits in a stairwell in a khrushchyovka building (2016) A gopnik [a] is a member of a delinquent subculture in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and in other former Soviet republics—a young man (or a woman, a gopnitsa) of working-class background who usually lives in suburban areas. [2] [3] The collective noun is gopota (Russian ...
The Chechen mafia is one of the largest ethnic organized crime groups operating in the former Soviet Union next to established Russian mafia groups. The Georgian mafia is regarded as one of the biggest, powerful and influential criminal networks in Europe, which has produced the biggest number of thieves in law in all former USSR countries.
N. Banerjee wrote in 1992 for The Wall Street Journal about tattoos in Russian prisons: "...the pain does deter even the most macho convict from covering his body, all at once, with meaningful pictures. Tattoos are created by instilling pigment in the skin with thousands of needle pricks.
Fenya (Russian: феня, IPA: [ˈfʲenʲə]) or fen'ka (Russian: фенька, IPA: [ˈfʲenʲkə]) is a Russian cant language originated among the travelling peddlers and currently used in the Russian criminal underworld and among former detainees of Russian penal establishments ("prison slang").
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Tattoo designs often reflected the culture of the day and in 1923 Harris's small parlour experienced an increase in the number of women getting tattoos. Another popular trend was for women to have their legs tattooed so the designs could be seen through their stockings. [89]
A thief in law (or thief with code, Russian: вор в зако́не, romanized: vor v zakone) in the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet states, and their respective diasporas is a formal and special status of "criminal authority", a professional criminal who follows certain criminal traditions and enjoys an elite position among other members within organized crime and correctional facility ...