Brief History of Tattoos & Criminality
The art of marking the skin is an integral part of human culture, many peoples and civilizations across the world have developed some form of what we broadly call tattoos. These practices were historically done through scarring with sharp objects on the skin to form various patterns; an enduring practice among many African tribal peoples. Another form that we are more familiar with today was the creation of homemade ink which was then embedded under the skin—both being methods to permanently mark the body as a form of expression, ritual, and belonging. These tattoos carry various meanings across cultures and peoples but occurred most often in primitive tribal societies as a form of art for protection in battle, milestones of manhood, priestly classes, blessings of various gods, or protection from disease.
The ancient Picts of Scotland were thought to have used woad leaf ground down to create ink, giving them their distinctive bluish tattoos identified by the Romans. The practice of tattooing is especially common amongst Polynesian groups, most notably the Samoan and Mauri, most of which used it as a right of passage, status, and social unity earned through shared suffering. The Japanese are notorious for their highly detailed colorful tattoos worn by Samurai, which have now become synonymous with the criminal underclass—often reflecting motifs personal to the wearer, including various elements of Japanese history and culture. The Japanese—unlike the Romans—did not find the naked human form inherently beautiful, therefore the body ought to have beauty carved into the flesh through tattoos. Irezumi (pattering the body), is traditionally the laborious hand process of stabbing the ink deep into the skin with metal needles attached to a wooden stick; the ultimate goal being the notorious body suit. This was a display of courage, strength, wealth, and later Yakuza affiliation, as well as rank, brought on by the Irezumi Kei (tattoo punishment) for criminals in the Edo period.
The tattoo’s widespread usage speaks to its innate part of human nature at the heart of tribal culture. It is illustrative to see that tattoos in the confines of civilizations become used in a highly formulaic way, typically by a state or government body as means to mark prisoners—this is especially useful in the social shame culture of Japan. In an age before complex arrest records and advanced computer filing systems tattoos were an effective way to identify criminal offenders, their punishments, and their specific crimes. It is from this practical usage of tattoos that the correlation between criminal and tattoo is forever interlinked, a feedback loop in which the criminal and the increasingly fringe warrior caste both inform the practice and culture of tattoos against the wider acceptable society.
Thief in Law by M. Bullen (2016), explains that the word tattoo originates from the Samoan word “Tatau” first identified and written about by Captain James Cook, which introduced the concept to his fellow sailors. The primitive tribe, criminals, and sailors are the most recognizable groups who practice tattooing, heavily influencing the modern culture of tattoos as an art form. Today tattoos have expanded outside their normal populations; civilized societies have dissolved much of their apprehension towards tattoos—normalizing them among many millions of people, the majority of which are not military, criminal, or tribal. Now let us take a look at Russia.
Bullen (2016) suggests that Russian tattooing is first identified most commonly in various maritime cities, particularly the western facing St. Petersburg, it is here that contact with sailors was most evident—likely responsible for spreading tattoos into developed areas. In this same period, until the mid-19th century, it was common in Tsarist Russia to brand or tattoo criminals as a permanent record of their criminal activities. The three primary quadrants of the face were to be marked: the forehead, left cheek, and right cheek would have a single letter carved to spell out the offender’s status. VOR (thief) and KAT (hard labor convict) were the two classical identifiers used in Tsarist Russia, it was through these practices that tattoos became associated with criminals; the cultural legacy for the future Vory-v-Zakone (Thieves in Law).
The Rising of the Vory-v-Zakone
The largest growth in both tattoos and criminal activity in Russia occurred after WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution, it is this period between world wars that marked a significant increase in organized crime (Bullen, 2016). Over the next couple of decades, the crime rate would fluctuate wildly as conditions would dictate—until the devastating crescendo in the 1990s following the collapse of the USSR. Several factors can be identified to explain such growth, and many of them would be correct, but chiefly among them is the political leadership of Joseph Stalin—coming to power in 1922—including the devastating conditions in post-WWII Russia. It is through the mass imprisonment of counter-revolutionaries, enemies of the state, criminals, old academics, and highly restrictive laws that would result in millions being imprisoned; sent to Gulags and labor colonies all over the vast Russian Soviet empire. The terrible conditions in Russia combined with the mass criminalization process would naturally result in the artificial ballooning of the criminal population, thus fueling the growth of a criminal class and organized crime.
Bullen writes in the section A History of Russian Crime and Tattoos:
On the 11th of July 1929, a decree from the Soviet government was issued, it stated a new prison network with the intent to “correct through labor” all counter-revolutionary and criminal elements in the new society. This of course included the professional criminal class and the social underclass of “layabouts and parasites” who survived through petty crime, millions were eventually sent to the new Gulag network.1
An increasingly tyrannical communist state and a mass purging of the population effectively created millions of “criminals” overnight, people deemed enemies of the regime both formerly law-abiding and career criminals. It is in these Gulags and labor colonies that the Vory—colloquially called the Russian Mafia—grew and dominated. It was quickly understood that not everyone inside the Gulag was equally considered to have the status associated with a criminal prisoner (zeks), the career criminal or “Thief in Law” was much different from the newly imprisoned political and educated white-collar masses (Bullen, 2016). This latter group was not made up of hardened criminals, but normal citizens, individuals with little experience of the criminal underworld and not defensively organized; in contrast, the Vory was highly organized with a strict set of rules, “The code of the Vor” (Bullen, 2016). It is ironic, that inside the Gulags and labor colony boundaries, with maximal state control, there existed those who were mostly separate from the regime’s politics on the outside, and therefore allowed dissident opinions and peoples to flourish on the inside. Many found a useful rebellion and satisfaction in shirking any law, politics, authority, or policy that the state implemented as a means to acquire some notion of freedom while imprisoned.
The tattoos of the Vory are not merely designed for intimidation, these tattoos cover the entire criminal history, troubles, desires, dreams, and beliefs of the wearer—they are earned through a life of crime and loyalty to the Vory. This is such an integral part of the early Russian mafia, that those with tattoos not authorized or first identified as official members would be severely punished. Most often these fraudulent inmates would be beaten, raped, and then have their tattoos burnt, carved, or tattooed over with lurid themes marking them for life as “bitches” (Bullen, 2016). Tattoos at this time were not innumerable, they only existed among criminals or sailors, to have tattoos was, therefore, a mark of your status as a criminal apart from civil society, to pretend to be part of a class you were not, was to be a "bitch—this is not like today where every 40-year-old woman has at least a couple tattoos.
To the untrained eye, the tattoos pictured above seem random, but to a member of the Vory or someone familiar with this underground tattoo language, it is clear. The Nazi armband may signify his political affiliation, or it could be a kind of “fuck you” to the communist regime—a frequent theme among many of the Vory. The stars on both front deltoids, refer to his status among the Vory—this individual is an officer (8-pointed-star); a Godfather would have a 16-pointed-star to signify his status. The mermaid (or cupid) on his stomach could mean that he is a convicted rapist or a pedophile, most of which would have been hated by the other Vory and routinely “lowered in status” through rape and forced tattoos2
Bullen (2016) describes a constant tension among the criminal and political classes inside the Gulags due to Stalin’s strict political purges of “state enemies” following his ascension to power in 1922. Those political prisoners were seen, by the Vory, to be weak and soft individuals who were not respectable criminals—white-collar squares, low status in the criminal world. As such the Vory spent much of their time victimizing the political half of the prison population, routinely involving beatings, theft, and gang rape; with the overt acknowledgment of prison staff as a means of keeping the political prisoners from rising and organizing. The Vory became unofficial guards at the top of the hierarchy, not only ruling over the political prisoners but keeping other Thieves in Law in check with extreme brutality and a strict code of oppression.
It is important to understand that the conditions that created the Vory acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy—in an attempt to destroy dissenters and enforce laws with extremely harsh sentences, the prison population exploded, meaning more members added to the ranks of the disaffected criminal world. The wars only further destroyed material conditions in Russia along with the radical revolutions of state centralization. The act of transitioning a former peasant class of serfs into a proletariat of workers—post-Bolshevik revolution—was not possible without the complete reworking of Russian society. It then follows that the economic shock of a collectivized and centralized economy is plagued with inefficiencies—largely due to price-fixing, vast geography, and predetermined quotas—this creates further material collapse, only ameliorated by the creation of the criminal peasant as a serf.
According to Bullen (2016) the strict Article 58—one of many introduced during Stalin’s reign—helped solve some issues for the regime: firstly, it got rid of the regime’s enemies, many of which were educated and in positions of power that could potentially thwart the new regime. Secondly, it created a new mass of workers, a re-instantiation of the peasant class of serfs that existed pre-revolution. It is through this that the economy was able to continually produce much of its raw material goods, mostly done through hard labor colonies, at a very low cost—the ongoing industrialization of the economy during this period could not supplant a cheap “criminal” slave labor force.
The Gulags provided the following resources as a percentage of the Soviet production: Gold (60%), Nickel (46.5%), Tin (76%), Iron-Ore (40%), and Timber (25%).
This trend only escalated during WWII as the slave population of prisoners where now expected to produce millions of uniforms, bullets, and war supplies needed at the front (Bullen, 2016). Russia did not have to introduce women, or worker campaigns to get workers into factories for military production like the USA or England. They already had this mass of people—as a function of the regime—to do this work. Bullen (2016) suggests that the population of prisoners in Gulags around Russia by 1941, was between 1.2 million and 1.9 million inmates—this is in stark contrast to the population of about 500k inmates before Stalin’s reign. This is not to mention the millions of men who volunteered or were drafted into the military to face off with the Germans on the eastern front—many millions of which would not return home. The emancipation of the Serf classes in Tsarist Russia seems to have only succeeded in indebting millions more.
The circumstances surrounding the revolution, state centralization, corruption, two world wars, and Stalin’s draconian measures led to the creation of a notorious and powerful criminal organization: the Thieves in Law (Russian Mafia). The culture of identification through tattoos is deeply important to understanding the psychology and history of the new Russian state and its criminal underworld. It is through this culture that grew out of the depths of the Gulags and forced labor camps that subsequently supplied the Vory with an army of disaffected men—ultimately leading to their proliferation and power. It is important to lay this cultural and historical framework before we go on to talk about the specifics of the Russian Mafia as well as the progression of the Soviet state post-Stalin. This will be in the second part of Thieves in Law: Russian Mafia Part 2.
Bullen, M. (2016). Thief in law: A guide to Russian prison tattoos and Russian-speaking organized crime. Schiffer Publishing.
Baldeav, D., Vasiliev, S., Plut︠s︡er-Sarno A., Luard, H., & Bromfield, A. (2003). Russian criminal tattoo encyclopedia. Steidl/Fuel.