The Two Tales of Forced Labour

Katorga and Reformed Prison in Imperial Russia (1879-1905)

Resumo

This article explores the advance of the prison reform in the Russian Empire.
It examines the governmental department that was the driver of this reform, the Main
Prison Administration, and focuses on its policy in the domain of the forced labour of
prisoners. Two types of forced labour are of particular interest here. One is the
traditional hard penal labour, or katorga, and the other is the obligatory labour for the
prisoners serving shorter terms. I outline here how this second type of labour came to
play the decisive role in the discourse on punishment in the late imperial period, what
kind of conceptions supported it, and how it was implemented throughout the empire.