The Insider, 7/26/22, English translation via Google translate.
If accurate, this is a sad thing. This shouldn’t be happening in any country. whether it’s the U.S. (e.g. convict firefighters in California), Russia or anywhere else. – Natylie
The GUFSIN held an exhibition of products made by prisoners in Yekaterinburg. As stated in the department, production is actively developing in the [penal] colonies, which are ready to replace companies leaving the Russian market. The Regional Newspaper writes that correctional institutions signed contracts for the manufacture of furniture for 3.5 million rubles over the two days of the exhibition.
“The colonies may well take the place of IKEA. If we compare furniture, we have better quality and lower prices. We are not businessmen,” said Ivan Sharkov, head of the labor adaptation department for convicts of the Main Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Sverdlovsk Region.
The government of the Sverdlovsk region and the GUFSIN are planning to create a woodworking workshop in the Middle Urals for the production of sheets for the manufacture of furniture. In the Kamensk-Urals IK-47 at the end of April, as part of the import substitution program, the production of double-glazed windows was opened.
As Alexander Levchenko, head of the press service of the GUFSIN of Russia for the Sverdlovsk region, said, most of the furniture produced in the colonies is supplied to state customers.
“The authorities, the courts, the investigative committee, the bailiff service order a lot. Recently, IK-10 completed a large order for the Sverdlovsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office. We supply furniture for schools, kindergartens, rest houses, sanatoriums. Good dynamics in municipal orders – last year they earned more than half a billion rubles, including 114 million – on orders for the Sverdlovsk region, ”says Levchenko.
Previously, prisoners have repeatedly told human rights activists about the problem of the use of forced and low-paid (essentially free) labor of prisoners in colonies throughout the country. In fact, Russia still has a system of hard labor, the conditions of which can be equated with torture. Prisoners work in the sewing industry, assemble furniture, make icons and weapons.
The Insider wrote about how they work in a clothing factory in a women’s colony. One of the prisoners complained about working conditions in IK-2 in the Mordovian village of Yavas. She said that the administration had set a task: to sew 600 suits for Russian Railways workers in a week, that is, about 120 suits a day with the help of 160-170 prisoners.
In January, the founder of Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin , published a conversation with a former prisoner of correctional colony No. 7 in the Omsk region, who told that convicts were forced to work in hazardous production in clandestine workshops, including making military weapons as gifts to high-ranking security officials from the FSB , TFR, FSIN and prosecutor’s office. He himself painted military weapons, made congratulatory inscriptions on them.
“The maximum salary is 300 rubles per month. But that’s only happened to me once or twice. The minimum is 30 rubles. They worked every day, Saturday and Sunday too. They did not work only in those moments when some kind of commission came, ”said the former prisoner.
According to the former convict, in the industrial zone IK-7, the convicts built a yacht for the supervising prosecutor from an old tugboat.
Hmmmm? Natylie is right to bring this to our attention. It is quite possible, especially where “privatization” and the profit motive become incentives. Nevertheless, it is not a gulag. In fact, the iconic writer of the Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, was known to have fascist sympathies that undoubtedly colored his vision of the Nazi invasion of Russia during World War II. https://www.autistici.org/poderobrero/articulos/solzhenitsyn-the-rotten-legacy-of-a-fascist
Yes, labor for profit exists in the overcrowded prisons of California and we know privatization of the prison industry in Alabama and elsewhere has been underreported here in the US. We also know that refugees from US backed regimes in Central America have systematically supported child labor, while their internment here in the US has done nothing to improve their living conditions.
The article seems to involve the proverbial pot calling attention to the soiled kettle. Whenever prison labor is involved we need to ask certain questions:
Are the prisoners political or common criminals?
Is their labor voluntary?
Does their labor afford an opportunity toward employment upon release?
Otherwise we are dealing with a propaganda war where truth becomes subordinate to a political narrative.
I really appreciate getting this article. It helps to remember that we all have a long way to go, and the only way to go up is to have reminders of the correct direction.
This is just comedy -The US has well over 2 million! prison slaves with all military contractors, fortune 500 ,fashion brands etc exploiting this gigantic gulag of poor people. They actually have exemption rules for even feeding these prisoners food fit for human consumption! This food can be animal feed, condemned food -even containing toxins -that is how wonderful the US prison slave labour system is. Harris the vice president was providing poor people to this massive slave labour system in California and even refused to release people from these slave camps when court ordered to
I clearly acknowledged all of that in my introductory comment. But just because the US engages in this despicable practice doesn’t mean that it’s good to see it in Russia or anywhere else.
NATYLIESB. I apologise I appreciate your website and very obviously your not making millions out of this. My response was going to be much more elaborate , but with the censorship going on in the 5 eyes slave colonies I could get dragged out of my house and black sited. The WEF and private equity are the true evil we face – keep up the great work
The US is the world leader in prison labour. When I was a professor at the University of Colorado we weren’t allowed to buy bookshelves or any other piece of furniture. Everything had to be ordered from CORP, a prison furniture business. Consortiumnews recently ran an article about the GEO Group, the biggest prison labour business in the USA.
As I understand it, President Putin was until recently a neoliberal along the lines of the Clintons and Tony Blair. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Russia has joined the race to the bottom by approving prison slavery. But it’s very sad.
I may be missing something here but it looks like the contractors/recipients are state organizations.