Behind Russia’s Most Fearsome Prisons: A New Gulag
The majority of Americans believe that the United States has the most brutal prisons in the world — packed, violent, and dehumanizing. But the reality is, American prisons are no closer to the horror that happens inside the walls of Russia’s penal colonies.
Within Russia’s prison system, brutality is not only the norm — it’s standard operating procedure. Violence, bribery, and terror rule the day-to-day experience. Survival is never assured. To see why Russia’s prisons rank as some of the world’s most brutal, we must follow their origins — all the way back to Stalin’s Gulags.
From Gulag to Penal Colony
Between 1929 and 1953, during Joseph Stalin’s rule, some 18 million individuals went through the Soviet Union’s system of forced labor camps — the Gulags. Prisoners toiled in subzero Siberian wasteland, starving, working too many hours, and ill. Up to 1.7 million perished. When Stalin died, the Gulag regime dissipated, but its essence never went away.
Russia now has a total of about 870 prisons and labor colonies that hold close to half a million prisoners. Over 700 are “correctional labor colonies,” where the prisoners continue to toil long hours for near-nothing. Seven are “special regime” colonies for life terms — facilities that are intended to erase people.
Even today, Russia’s prisons are the Gulag’s direct inheritors — the same style, the same mentality, and the same message: submission through suffering.
Life Inside the Colonies
Prisoners are typically shipped by train — packed into small, dark cells, barred and sealed off from the world. Families are often lost contact with, for prisoners are shipped thousands of miles out into distant backwaters.
There are four main types of colonies: open, general, strict, and special. The “open” ones allow limited freedom if inmates work, but escape is impossible — you’re surrounded by nothing but forests, swamps, and snow.
In 2012, punk band members Pussy Riot were jailed for “hooliganism.” They later called their experience “harsh,” but in fact, they were spared the worst. In comparison to what others go through, their experience was near-leniency.
Prisoners are organized into “detachments” of about 100 individuals, under a senior prisoner. Women wear uniforms and headscarves continuously. They rise early, labor all day — sewing up military uniforms, scrubbing, or producing souvenirs — for a few dollars a month. Well-behaved ones can reduce their sentences. Recalcitrants are broken.
But behind these “tamer” colonies are the infernal ones.
The Black Dolphin: Russia’s Maximum-Security Hell
The Black Dolphin Prison, officially Penal Colony No. 6, houses serial killers, terrorists, and cannibals. Prisoners are kept in total isolation — no human contact, 24-hour surveillance, and 16-hour days without sitting. Exercise happens in cages. The silence itself becomes a weapon.
Compared to this, America’s ADX Florence, known as “the Alcatraz of the Rockies,” almost seems humane.
Enemies of the State
While others are criminals, some of the inmates are political prisoners or civilians from occupied territories. Journalists and aid workers, as well as thousands of Ukrainians, have been held since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
An international outcry focused on one case: Viktoriia Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist, went missing in 2023. Russia would subsequently confess that she had been detained at Penal Colony No. 77, Taganrog — perhaps the most notorious of Russia’s prisons. Months after, she was dead. Her corpse exhibited signs of electrocution and strangulation. When returned to her relatives, her eyes and brain had been removed.
Taganrog, and dozens of underground prisons, operate more as a torture camp than a place of incarceration. Accounts speak of electric shocks, beatings, simulated executions, and sexual assault. Inmates are humiliated, blindfolded, and stripped of identity. Balaclava-clad guards use code names such as “Wolf” or “Death.”
One prisoner remembered being told, “If you don’t pass this polygraph test, you’re going to a place where you will curse the day you were born.” He was taken to Taganrog.
The “Phone Call to Putin”
One of the most infamous torture techniques is one called the “phone call to Putin.” The victims are bound in the fetal position, hung from bars, and shocked with an antique Soviet field telephone. The electrodes are applied to the nose, ears, and genitals. The wails reverberate through the barracks.
Others face baton beatings, waterboarding, or simulated executions — psychological abuse meant to break them into false confessions.
Starvation and Death
Russian prison rations are sparse: fish heads, cabbage soup, and pieces of moldy pasta. Prisoners lose an average of 25 kilograms (55 pounds) within a few months. Many starve to death, freeze to death, or die of untreated wounds. Guards are seldom punished. When they are, charges are generally reduced to “negligence.”
When Guards Become Gods
Guards govern through fear in most prisons. Others are dominated by the prisoners themselves. Russian prisons are classified into two categories — the “Red” (administered) and the “Black” (administered by prisoners themselves).
Inside the Black prisons, their own code is enforced by the Russian Mafia and high-level criminals referred to as Blatnye. They refuse to work or comply with guards. Below these stand the regular prisoners — workers who maintain the colony in operation.
At the very lowest rung of this system are the “roosters” — the losers, usually victims of sexual attack or perceived as being weak. Nobody talks to them. Even handling their possessions is forbidden. It’s a strict caste system — a perverted order that supplants law and humanity.
Westerners Behind Bars
Foreigners taken prisoner in Russia are usually treated just as brutally. Shaun Pinner, a British volunteer soldier for Ukraine, had the following experience: “hell on Earth.” He was beaten, shocked, and sleep-deprived and subjected to non-stop 24/7 ABBA music. Guards would regularly mock-pedigree him, saying that each day would be his last.
Torture and Impunity
Human rights organizations have revealed hundreds of instances of abuse — inmates beaten to death, mutilated, or disabled for life. In Angarsk Penal Colony No. 6, prisoner Khezhik Ondar was tortured so brutally his leg was broken and his body was burned with hot metal rods. Attorneys were refused access.
In 2020, following a riot in prison, guards punished prisoners with brutal means — one man’s face was stripped by sticky tape left on him for days. Officials, in spite of obvious evidence, categorized the acts as “negligence.”
A System Based on Fear
Russia’s jails are correctional institutions, yes — but more importantly, they’re instruments of control. Where fear supplants justice, and punishment supplants rehabilitation. Prisoners become lost in a massive, hidden system where torture is endemic, and death frequently goes unreported.
A dark reminder that the Gulag never really disappeared — it merely changed form.
Which country treats its prisoners the best?
Countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany are often cited as having some of the best prison systems due to their focus on rehabilitation, humane conditions, and successful reintegration programs.
What is the highest punishment in Russia?
The current Penal Code permits the death penalty for five crimes: murder, with certain aggravating circumstances (article 105.2) attempted murder of a judge (article 295) attempted murder of a police officer (article 317)
How long is life imprisonment in Russia?
After 25 years or 30 years (if a male offender is aged 65 years and over), a criminal sentenced to life imprisonment may apply to a court for “conditional early release” (условно-досрочное освобождение) if the prisoner has made no serious violations of prison rules, and has not committed a serious crime during …
What happened to German prisoners in Russia?
German PoWs were more than twenty-five times more likely to die in Soviet captivity than in American or British PoW camps. Many were worked to death as slave labor. Over a third of the Germans who went into Soviet captivity died. Soviet treatment of their prisoners of war was appalling.
Who has the best jail system in the world?
Correctional facilities in Norway focus on maintaining custody of the offender and attempting to make them functioning members of society. Norway’s prison system is renowned as one of the most effective and humane in the world.
Which country has the lowest prisoners?
According to the World Prison Brief database, the Central African Republic has the world’s lowest prison rate of any country, with prisoners representing just 16 out of every 100,000 of the population.
Why doesn’t Russia have a death penalty?
But in 1996, to win admission to the Council of Europe, a human rights group, President Boris N. Yeltsin, Mr. Putin’s predecessor, agreed to place a moratorium on the death penalty and to completely abolish it within three years. Russia’s Parliament did not go along with the plan.
What did the British do with German prisoners?
During 1946, up to one fifth of all farm work in Britain was being done by German POWs, and they were also employed on road works and building sites. Fraternisation between the soldiers and the local population was strictly forbidden by the British government, and repatriation progressed extremely slowly
What is safer, the USA or Russia?
Homicide/murder rate in Russia has fallen dramatically in the last two decades. The homicide rate in Russia more than tripled between 1988 and 1994 and was among the highest in the world. However, by 2020, the murder rate in Russia was significantly lower than in the US
When was the death penalty last used in Russia?
The drive to abolish capital punishment was also associated with the gradual humanization of law enforcement and the country’s intention to join the institutions of the West. Russia last executed a human in 1996.
Closing Thoughts
In the West, violence in prison is typically perpetrated by prisoners. In Russia, it is perpetrated by the state. The prison system reflects the state that designed it — authoritarian, closed, and brutal.
And just as it was during Stalin’s reign, Russia’s prisons have one ultimate function: silencing the regime’s opponents.
