[lg policy] Linguistic Hygiene in Russian Prisons

[Harold Schiffman]

ew Prison Rule in Russia: No Swearing

By ANDREW E. KRAMERJAN. 14, 2016


MOSCOW — Russia’s prison system, the successor to the notoriously harsh
gulag, has issued an edict that would have shocked even the victims of
Stalin’s purges: From now on, officials say, some prisoners will be
forbidden to swear.

Under a new rule, detainees in pretrial detention centers will be banned
from addressing either one another or their guards in the traditional,
foul-mouthed slang of the Russian prison system, known as “fenya.”

It is a rich and filthy language, one that the Ministry of Justice has been
trying to crack down on for some time.

The ban, reported by the Interfax news agency, prohibits inmates from
“socializing with other individuals using lewd, threatening, demeaning or
slanderous expressions or slang.”

There was no immediate indication of how the authorities intended to
enforce the rule. Russian prisoners generally live in large, barracks-style
communal cells with as many as 80 inmates to a room, where guards have
little sway on what goes on.

They are typically left alone at night, locked in and largely left to
enforce their own rules of behavior.

Under President Vladimir V. Putin, Russian politics have taken a hard
conservative turn. A 2014 law banned swearing in the arts, whether in
novels or at the theater, unless properly labeled for adults.

That ban left literary types scratching their heads. Russian dictionaries
of cursing draw on a rich tradition: Some words have thousands of variants
and are woven into Russian literature and culture, particularly in works
concerning the prisons and the army.

Dostoyevsky wrote that it is possible to express “even deep analytical
thoughts” with one common, versatile Russian word for penis.

The prison cursing ban is a new twist in a larger effort to overhaul
Russia’s prisons, moving away from the large, common barracks of the gulag,
which are seen as contributing to recidivism. The authorities are now
focused on building smaller cells and strengthening discipline inside penal
colonies.

The swearing ban for inmates in pretrial detention follows an effort begun
in 2013 to prohibit guards from speaking in fenya, the prison slang, to one
another and to inmates.

While banning swearing, the new regulation relaxed some other rules for
inmates in pretrial detention. Detainees, who sometimes await trial for
years, are now allowed to possess a larger range of personal items,
including shower gel, deodorant and electric kettles, but not cellphones or
cameras.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/world/europe/russia-bans-foul-language-in-some-prisons-no-word-on-enforcement.html?_r=0

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