In the Soviet Union, desk drawers became sarcophagi; entombed within them were the creative endeavours of the most talented and perceptive Soviet citizens. Yet it is best not to idealise such hiding ...

FUEL / Sergei Vasiliev Russia's criminal tattoos have become a kind of art in Russia. Danzig Baldaev's drawings were a gateway into a secret world in which he acted as ethnographer, recording the ...

The Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia is a rare and astonishing book, a glimpse of a deeply secretive world that it has taken the author a lifetime to penetrate. It reveals more graphically than ...

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. DANZIG Baldaev grew up in a Russian children’s home, his father having been denounced as an enemy of the people. He was later ordered to ...