"Featuring over 130 drawings and texts by Danzig Baldaev--author of the acclaimed Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume I, II, III--this book describes the history, horror and peculiarities of the Gulag system from its inception in 1918. Baldaev's work as a prison guard allowed him to travel across the former USSR where he witnessed scenes of everyday life in the Gulag first-hand, chronicling this previously closed world from both sides of the wire. The drawings, made during the Communist period, form a devastating document, a haunting echo of the works of Varlam Shalamov and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. With every vignette, Baldaev brings his characters to vivid life: from the lowest zek (inmate) to the most violent tattooed vor (thief), the practises and inhabitants of the Gulag system are revealed in incredible and shocking detail. He documents the contempt shown by the authorities to those imprisoned, and the transformation of these citizens into survivors or victims. This graphic depiction exposes the systematic methods of torture and mass murder of millions undertaken by the administration, as well as the atrocities committed by criminals on their fellow inmates."--Page 4 of cover

• Birth of the Gulag
• Arrest, interrogation and imprisonment
• Journey to the camp
• The Gulag system
• Life
• Death
• Hard labour
• Re-education
• Children
• Hunger
• The power of the criminals
• Subjugation and punishment
• Escapees and deniers
• The country becomes a Gulag
• Holocaust
• The settling of scores inside camps
• A comparison of Communist Party and criminal power structures
• Forms of humiliation, torture and murder practised in the Gulag
• Terms used to describe prisoners of the Gulag
• Prevalent diseases and illnesses among prisoners of the Gulag
• Prisoner's sadistic games, jokes and entertainment
• Terms used to describe the actions of the prison system administration