News

Carceral Frontiers: Penal Histories of the Russian Far East and Beyond

29-30 January 2026, Helsinki

Organizers: Anna Mazanik () and Mikhail Nakonechnyi (ERC Project DeathAndManipulation, University of Helsinki,)

The Russian Far East and the wider Pacific world have long been important to the history of exile, forced labor, and incarceration. From the Tsarist katorga and exile system to Stalin’s Gulag complexes, the region served both as a penal periphery and as a crucial arena for state projects of colonization, industrialization, and social control. Its remoteness, harsh frontier environments, and proximity to the Pacific also shaped distinctive practices of penal governance and record-keeping, particularly in how prisoner health, mortality, and mobility were documented, managed, or concealed. At the same time, the operation of penal institutions, although often excluded from the public history narratives, had a profound impact on the social composition, infrastructural development, economies, and ecologies of the Far East and is essential for understanding the past and present of the region.

This workshop seeks to bring together scholars working on the penal history of the Russian Far East and beyond, situating the region within a global comparative perspective. We welcome papers on all matters carceral, including the histories of penal systems, special settlements, and prisoners-of-war camps, histories of prison medicine, human-environment relations, and wider forms of penal modalities in the Russian Far East, Siberia, and neighboring regions. Comparative and transnational contributions extending to colonial, postcolonial, and Pacific contexts are especially encouraged. We particularly invite approaches that illuminate broader questions of state legitimacy, institutional accountability, and the global history of punishment through the lens of mortality, health, environment, and carceral experience.

• September 2024
  • PI Mikhail Nakonechnyi gave an interview for the University of Helsinki newspaper Yliopisto-lehti. To read the article, follow the link .  

• 21 July-25 July 2025
  • PI Mikhail Nakonechnyi  presented the project's  Soviet case study at XI ICCEES World Congress  hosted by University College London (UCL), and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). The title of his presentation was "Gaps, Understatements, and Distortions: New Sources on Mortality Statistics of the Soviet Penal System, 1917-1953." The full programme can be found
• 3 April 2025
  • PI Mikhail Nakonechnyi presented to the Max Weber International Workshop held in Helsinki. The title of the panel was "The Gulag as a Place of Illness, Death and Untold Stories: New Approaches to Research on Stalinist Camps." The full programme can be found .