Workshop München

Das Institut für Slavische Philologie lädt in Kooperation mit der Graduiertenschule für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien ein zum Workshop The Born and the Common Criminal. The Discourse of Criminality and the Practice of Punishment in the Late Russian Empire and the Early Soviet Union (1880-1941) [Der geborene und der gewöhnliche Verbrecher. Kriminalitätsdiskurs und Strafpraxis im späten Russland und in der frühen Sowjetunion (1880-1941)]. Der Workshop in englischer Sprache findet am 13./14. Februar 2015 in der Bibliothek der Graduiertenschule für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien (Maria-Theresia-Str. 21, München) statt.

The aim of this workshop is to develop new perspectives on the study of criminality in late Tsarist Russia and in the early Soviet Union by focusing on two criminal figures that have not been sufficiently researched until now: the born and the common criminal. In this way, new light will be shed on both continuities and disjunctions between the pre- and the postrevolutionary periods. The workshop will discuss the potential that these trends carry for the reconceptualization of the Russian and Soviet history of criminality. For this purpose, we intend to bring together two areas of research at the workshop that so far have been examined independently from each other: the discourse on criminality, that is, the conceptualization of criminality in a range of different disciplines and discourses – criminology, criminal anthropology, psychiatry, journalism, and literature – and the practice of punishment, that is, the laws and policies of punishment in all their aspects, from the code of law to the practice of prisons and penal camps. The workshop will assemble specialists from various disciplines (history, sociology, cultural and literary studies) in order to obtain new results through the interaction of different methodological approaches.