This final volume of previously unpublished drawings and photographs completes the Russian
Criminal Tattoo Encyclopadia trilogy. Danzig Baldaevs unparalleled ethnographic achievement
documenting over 3 000 tattoo drawings was made during a lifetime working as a prison guard.
The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes ranging from
violence and pornography to politics and alcohol. In this title a medieval knight is
surrounded by the severed heads of his enemies a naked woman simultaneously services a man and
two dwarfs a crying President Gorbachev grips a human bone between sabre-like fangs a group
of angels drinks vodka with God on a cloud and the meanings of these arresting images are
explained to the uninitiated eye. Accompanied by graphic photographs showing the grim reality
of the Russian prison system and some of the alarming characters that inhabit it the
illustrated criminals of Russia tell the tale of their closed society.
