The workshop "Carceral Frontiers: Penal Histories of the Russian Far East and Beyond" was hosted by our project in collaboration with the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe branch in Helsinki. The main organisers were PI MIKHAIL NAKONECHNYI and ANNA MAZANIK of the MWN Eastern Europe. The workshop brought together an international cohort of researchers from various disciplines working on carceral matters of the Russian Far East and beyond. The workshop was carried out both in-person but also with an online component, allowing for several attendees to participate virtually. The organisers challenged participants to reflect on the role that carceral experiences and infrastructures played in the history of the Far East and to situate the region in a global comparative perspective. The penal histories considered by the participants included colonial carceral frontiers from the Russian imperial period, exile settlements, deportations of nationalities, prisoners of war, and the history, memory, and experience of the Soviet Gulag from many different perspectives. Together the organisers and participants put forward an encompassing and complex understanding of the carcerality of the Russian Far East.
The workshop also gave PI MIKHAIL NAKONECHNYI an opportunity to introduce and explain the project to a group of around 35 attendees between the in-person and virtual contingents. Pictured here is PI MIKHAIL NAKONECHNYI giving an introduction to the workshop and to his project, giving closing remarks, as well as him chairing a panel on the Gulag. Overall, the workshop was successful in its aims and fostered informed and thoughtful debate. The project thanks the University of Helsinki for its hospitality and the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe for its collaboration.
Carceral Frontiers: Penal Histories of the Russian Far East and Beyond
29-30 January 2026, Helsinki
Organizers: Anna Mazanik (
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.
Archival trawls:
Fieldwork commenced in Kazakhstan by Dmitri Frolov in the Karaganda State Archive, working with files of the regional labour colonies of Kazakhstan OITK (May 2025).