Multiculturalism, Ethnicity, and Prisons: Russia, Georgia, and Estonia

This contribution analyses ethnic difference and ethnic identity construction in a 
prison setting. While a vast academic literature examines prisons as sites of ethnic 
and racial identity construction in the USA and in European countries, studies of 
Soviet and post-Soviet prisons have not been a part of this scholarly dialogue. In this 
contribution, we turn to ethnic identity negotiation in prisons in the former Soviet 
Union. We examine the Soviet legacies in policies and practices towards ethnic and 
religious difference in the prison services and the different trajectories away from the 
Soviet penal model in different jurisdictions after 1991. The section on Russia focuses 
on Muslim prisoners and the official and popular responses to moral panic about 
‘prison jihad’. The subsequent sections of the contribution turn to elements of Soviet 
legacies in two other post-Soviet country cases: Georgia, and Estonia. We identify 
new trends and reforms unique to each case (including the architectural and spatial 
organisation of carcerality), discuss the role of prison subcultures, and analyse how 
these prison systems reflect or refract overall trends of ethnic discrimination and 
marginalization in each country.