Images of tattooed, toothless and scarred criminal recidivists regularly feature in films and TV shows about the Stalinist Gulag.
Descriptions of the horrific crimes of criminal gangs also fill the pages of memoirs written by former inmates imprisoned for suspected political crimes.
As the system developed into a vast network of camps during the 1930s, the violent actions of criminal gangs would have far reaching effects on Gulag inmate society. The impact of the gangs became particularly prominent following the Second World War, when the overall prisoner population peaked at roughly two and a half million leading up to the death of dictator Josef Stalin in early March 1953.
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