Russian Criminal Tattoo Police Files: Volume 1

A compendium of prison tattoos compiled from the collection of a detective working in the USSR, Arkady Bronnikov, this work provides an unparalleled look at criminal life in the Soviet Union, first through the art that the subjects chose to adorn on themselves, and secondly filtered through the police state that documented them. If you wanted some new ink inspo or to understand what it means to be a criminal in a socialist state, starting with these police files of the bodies of the so-called lumpenproletariat is a good bet.

Content warning: Some of the tattoos in this book are explicitly fascist or otherwise deeply offensive