The author, who worked in Soviet labour camps for over 30 years, has created an encyclopedia of inmates' tattoos. Dozens of publishers rejected the project. Russia's NTV television station showed pictures of some of the tattoos, describing them as an esoteric language, whose secret symbols were until recently passed on by word of mouth. The author, Major Dantsig Baldmayev, says tattoos are a passport, an autobiography and a criminal record rolled into one.
Crosses say how many times an inmate was sentenced.
They are also the symbol of revenge, or signs of a thief's expertise. Talisman It was thought that guards would not shoot at Lenin or Stalin. But these political, often anti-Soviet tattoos, were the most difficult for the author to record. Prisoners with such tattoos don't want to be photographed. The television report said Russian prison body art was still developing.