Two members of the punk band Pussy Riot will serve their sentence in a penal colony far from Moscow. Although Russia’s prison system is a far cry from Stalin’s Gulag, the principle remains the same: to isolate people from their families and wear them down through “corrective labor.”
Women In Russian Penal Colonies
![A female prison guard watches over inmates in the yard of a prison camp in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.](https://gdb.rferl.org/3a8b500c-a836-478a-a6da-3fff9c80bc90_w1024_q10_s.jpg)
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A female prison guard watches over inmates in the yard of a prison camp in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.
![Inmates of a prison camp for women are seen through the razor wire before a "Lady Spring 2009" beauty contest in Selo Gornoye.](https://gdb.rferl.org/c6126007-5230-4785-b8e3-9f73a2418f45_w1024_q10_s.jpg)
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Inmates of a prison camp for women are seen through the razor wire before a "Lady Spring 2009" beauty contest in Selo Gornoye.
![Inmates walk with their children as a guard watches in the courtyard of a "children's home," located inside a female prison camp in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.](https://gdb.rferl.org/b45277c9-7cd7-4be2-867c-81551e24854c_w1024_q10_s.jpg)
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Inmates walk with their children as a guard watches in the courtyard of a "children's home," located inside a female prison camp in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.
![A detention center in Chita.](https://gdb.rferl.org/ea8b529d-feb2-42fc-9ccc-7323c4a72fb3_w1024_q10_s.jpg)
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A detention center in Chita.