[Burkeman1]

There were many colorful gang names in the Soviet Gulag. But "the Blues" was almost always a reference to Gulag guards. To comply with the state was a major infraction of the "Thieves law" in Russia even before the Communist government. Stalin offered amenesty to many Gulag prisoners who volunteered to fight during WWII. Many "Thieves" did. But after the war they were sent back to the Gulag and their fellow Thieves, who didn't serve in the military (against their law), called them Suka (Bitch in Russian). Thus began the Bitches war in the Russian Gulag of which Solzhenitsyn wrote about. It was a war among Thieves who had broke the code of thieves and fought for the state and those who had not. It cost thousands of lives. But what emerged was a Thieves guild of Russia that became a part of the state- and we see it today in our country.

[wideminded]

I love the Internet.

I found this at: http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles1/nij/187085.txt

"Along with these developments, the vory v zakone began to expand their reach and power in the Sverdlovsk region in the 1980s. Throughout the former Soviet Union, the vory had long been regarded as the elite of the criminal world. They were hardcore professional criminals spawned by the gulag prison camps. To contrast them with the white-collar shadow businessmen, these professional criminals became known in criminal slang as the "blues," a name that some believe derived from the blue color of the tattoos that were associated with the vory v zakone. The vory were adherents of the traditional criminal mores developed in the camps and followed a strict thieves' code."