--- title: Prigozhin Is Dead. The Culture He Represented Lives On description: Prigozhin was both a model for Russian criminals and a manifestation of a fundamental truth about Russia canonical: https://time.com/6309039/prigozhin-death-russian-prison-culture/ author: Peter Pomerantsev article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-08-29T08:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T16:20:15.147Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Prigozhin Is Dead. The Culture He Represented Lives On og:description: Prigozhin was both a model for Russian criminals and a manifestation of a fundamental truth about Russia og:url: https://time.com/6309039/prigozhin-death-russian-prison-culture/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt710e3752d835faa6/698a3fd7d075333a69e6e534/GettyImages-1622642889.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Tribute to Prigozhin in Moscow og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Prigozhin Is Dead. The Culture He Represented Lives On twitter:description: Prigozhin was both a model for Russian criminals and a manifestation of a fundamental truth about Russia twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt710e3752d835faa6/698a3fd7d075333a69e6e534/GettyImages-1622642889.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Prigozhin Is Dead. The Culture He Represented Lives On > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. by [Peter Pomerantsev](https://time.com/author/peter-pomerantsev/) ## Peter Pomerantsev Contributor Pomerantsev is a co-founder of The Reckoning Project and senior fellow at SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Aug 29, 2023 8:00 AM UTC  People lay carnations to a memorial as they pay tribute to Yevgeny Prigozhin who died in a plane crash, in Moscow, Russia on August 25, 2023. People lay carnations to a memorial as they pay tribute to Yevgeny Prigozhin who died in a plane crash, in Moscow, Russia on August 25, 2023. Pelagiya Tihonova-Anadolu Agency/Getty Images by [Peter Pomerantsev](https://time.com/author/peter-pomerantsev/) ## Peter Pomerantsev Contributor Pomerantsev is a co-founder of The Reckoning Project and senior fellow at SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Aug 29, 2023 8:00 AM UTC For a moment it seemed that an actual gangster could take on a gangster state. [Yevgeny Prigozhin](https://time.com/6308185/yevgeny-prigozhin-death-vladimir-putins-power/), a Russian criminal who had served time and spoke in prison slang, thought he could compete with the suit and tie lawyers of Russia’s criminal regime. Just two months ago he was leading his army of mercenaries in a [march](https://time.com/6289991/wagner-rebellion-russia-prigozhin-putin/) on Moscow, challenging the authority of the army leadership, claiming he could wage Russia’s imperial, [genocidal war](https://time.com/6219200/what-russia-wants-ukraine/) against Ukraine better than they could, implicitly questioning Putin’s power. Now, Prigozhin and his lieutenants have been assassinated, their plane [crashed](https://time.com/6308808/russia-says-it-confirmed-wagner-leader-prigozhin-died-in-a-plane-crash/) outside of Moscow. The assumption is this is Putin’s revenge. But Prigozhin, or rather what he represents, have a larger victory that will outlive the man. Prigozhin had been such a role model for your average Russian crim: he’d started in a Soviet prison cell for robbery and risen to a lifestyle of gold-plated riches and Kremlin access. Though he has been killed, the prison and gangster culture that Prigozhin is an expression of has consumed the state. A Soviet joke used to describe the gulag system of labour camps as the ‘little prison’ (_Malaya Zona_) and the Soviet Union as the ‘big prison’ (_Bolshaya Zona_)—now the small prison has swallowed the larger one. There’s a reason for this. In the ceaseless chopping and changing of Russian history—with its regular revolutions where the past is constantly re-written; where people are deported and moved across Eurasia in brutal population shifts; where whole peoples have been wiped out and their memories erased; where identity is constantly being remolded by the latest propaganda—prison culture is one of the few constants. From the time of the tsars to the Soviet Union and Putin’s post-modern dictatorship one thing you can rely is getting banged up in a fortress-prison; banished to a labour camp in Siberia; sentenced to the gulag. Today Russia has the highest rates of [prisoners](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/03/russia-jails-the-most-people-in-europe-monitor-says-a67581) in Europe. While other things in Russia change, prison culture maintains its traditions: hierarchy; codes of loyalty; adherence to authority. At the top of the _avtoretiti_ (authorities), the 'thieves in law’ (_bltaniye_), under which come the "friars," and all the way down to the lowest of the low, the "cockerels", who have their own hierarchies. It has its own rules (_zakoni_) which you dare break, its own ways to deal with tensions, its own economy based around a sort of criminal sovereign wealth fund (_obschyak)_. It has its own elaborate slang (_Fenya_). When Prigozhyn launched his quickly abandoned march on Moscow in June his mercenaries, many of whom were convicts he had offered the chance to escape prison by serving in the "meatgrinder" of Ukraine, expressed their support to his _avtoritet_ in _Fenya_. In the 1990s, when Russian society was in flux, where the status and solidity of old Soviet social categories, professions, and role models collapsed, criminals were one of the few groups who knew who they were. They could organise, they had a code of violence that passed for structure. In the absence of cops and courts they became the guarantors of business deals (and if you didn’t cut them in they would kill you). From being the dregs of society they became figures of aspiration: kids from nice families aped the way they talked and walked. **_Read More:_** [**_What Prigozhin's Death Reveals About Putin's Power_**](https://time.com/6308185/yevgeny-prigozhin-death-vladimir-putins-power/) When Putin came to power the state resumed the role of master criminal. Just as it had been in the Soviet Union. The secret services took over curating the gangster’s businesses—and took their cut. But the cultural cachet of gangsters continued. Putin—an uncharismatic spy with a law degree who had become a corrupt bureaucrat managing relations with St Petersburg gangsters—imitated their slang when he talked of taking out terrorists "in the shitter." He talked to his governors and ministers down a long table like a mafia boss running a meeting of the Five Families. When he announced he had ideology he called it "conservativism,"—but one of the few true conservative, as in constant, traditions in Russia is prison culture. Putin’s attacks on LGBTQ people is not informed by religion, Russia is among the least church-going nations. But the passive gay man is the lowest in the prison hierarchy, "the cockerel." So Putin’s anti-LGBT media drives resonated in a nation infused with prison "values." Even Putin’s idea of international relations reflects prison. For Putin you are either a country that dominates or is dominated by others, a thief-in-law or a cockerel. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine attempts to export this prison culture, to expand the Zona. When Russia occupies new territory it appoints local criminals as de facto administrators. Take Vovchansk, a small Ukrainian town just a few kilometres from the border with Russia that was occupied between February and September 2022—and where I was when the news of Prigozhyn’s death came through. When the Russians arrived in Vovchansk a local criminal, nicknamed Chizh, volunteered to be their enforcer. Recently released from prison, he used the new found power to extract money from the locals. The Russian occupiers used him for a while, then sidelined him as they sealed their grip, and proceeded to imprison, torture, and maim anyone they felt like—just to show who was really in charge. The FSB, the successor to the KGB, soon became the most important authority in the occupied territories. The tradition of the secret police who arrest and oppress ordinary people is almost as constant as that of prisoners—from the tsarist okhranka through the Cheka and the NKVD. In the Gulag the prisoner slang for a particularly effective prison administrator was ‘Old Chekist’. The Old Chekists are still ultimately in charge. But Putin still had to pay his respects to Prigozhin even after having likely killed him, calling him a “talented businessman” who had “made mistakes.” While many other social groups have atrophied or been rendered powerless, Russia’s secret police and their gangster-prisoners remain, winking at each other in mutual recognition across the centuries. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6309039/prigozhin-death-russian-prison-culture/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6309039/prigozhin-death-russian-prison-culture/"},"headline":"Prigozhin Is Dead. 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