The Bitch Wars, or Suka Wars (; ; or in singular: ) were armed confrontations occurred in the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Gulag labor-camp system between 1945 and 1953. The battles took place between groups of prisoners who agreed to collaborate with administration of labor camps and prisons ("Bitches") and "honest" criminals who followed a "thief's code" that prohibited any collaboration with the prison authorities. In this conflict rival sides were often identified by the system of tattoos common in Soviet prisons at the time.

Background

The Russian word ''suka'' (, literally " bitch") has a different negative connotation than its English equivalent. In Russian criminal

argot A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argo ...

, it specifically refers to a person from the criminal world who has "made oneself a bitch" () by cooperating in any way with

law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of the government or other social institutions who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by investigating, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms gove ...

or with the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

. Within the Soviet prison system, a social structure had existed since the Imperial era; one of its most important tenets decreed that members not serve or collaborate with the Tsarist (and later, Soviet) government. This rule encompassed all types of collaboration and not just " snitching" or "ratting out". It included simple communication, seeking emergency help from any authority figures, even factory foremen.

Second World War

As the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

progressed,

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

offered many prisoners a

pardon A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the j ...

or sentence reduction at war's end in exchange for

military service Military service is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, air forces, and naval forces, whether as a chosen job (volunteer military, volunteer) or as a result of an involuntary draft (conscription). Few nations, such ...

. After the war ended, many of those who had taken up the offer returned to prisons and

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see British and American spelling differences, spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are unfree labour, forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have ...

s, but were declared ''suki'' and placed at the lower end of the unofficial prisoner hierarchy. As a result, they sought to survive by collaborating with prison officials, in return getting some of the better jobs in the prison. This led to an internal prison war between the so-called ''suki'' and the Russian criminal underground led by " Thieves in Law". Many prisoners died in the Bitch War, but prison authorities turned a blind eye. By the end of the 1940s, a large influx in ''suki'' with previous combat experience began to weaken the dominance of the thieves in law, who found them to be more willing and able to fight back attempts to rob them than the intellectuals and political prisoners they had dealt with before. Large battles broke out between the ''suki'' and the thieves in law, with prison authorities sometimes arming the ''suki'' to break the hierarchy of the thieves in law. By the early 1950s, the ''suki'' had generally won the Bitch Wars, leading to a shift in Russian prison culture towards the tolerance of cooperation with prison authorities.

References

External links

* Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, ''Enemy of the people'', Moscow. Intellekt, 1996
"Bitch War"
Section, text online at the

Sakharov Center The Sakharov Center () was a museum and cultural center in Moscow devoted to protection of human rights in Russia and preserving the legacy of the prominent physicist and Nobel Prize winning human rights activist Andrei Sakharov. It was founded by ...

website {{Russian Conflicts 1940s in the Soviet Union 1950s in the Soviet Union Crime in the Soviet Union Gulag Prison gang violence Russian Mafia events Soviet phraseology Thieves in law

Background

Second World War

See also

References

Further reading

External links