Gdansk Sergeyevich Baldayev

Gdansk Sergeyevich Baldajew ( Russian Данциг Сергеевич Балдаев , as Dancik Sergeyevich Baldajew transcribed; * 19th December 1925 in Verkhneudinsk ; † 23. January 2005 in St. Petersburg ) was a Russian militia - officer and author of several forensic scientific books. His specialty was researching and deciphering Russian prison tattoos .

Life

Baldayev, the son of a linguist from Buryatia , grew up in Moscow from 1930. His mother died in 1935, his father was arrested and deported in 1938. Baldayev was sent to an orphanage for children of " enemies of the people " near Tulun in Siberia for two years .

In January 1943 he was drafted into the Red Army and served on the border with Manchuria . After the end of the war and demobilization , he moved with his father to Leningrad in 1948, where he was employed by the MWD , initially as a fire fighter, and from 1951 as a guard in Kresty prison . From 1957 he attended a militia school in the Caucasus, from which he graduated with honors, and then worked for the Leningrad criminal militia until he retired in 1981 with the rank of major .

Baldayev spent almost half a century deciphering the language and the symbolism of the tattoos of prisoners and camp inmates and recorded his impressions of the GULag prisons in numerous graphics.

plant

In almost 50 years Baldayev collected around 3,600 self-drawn images of the tattoos of inmates in Russian prisons and penal camps, many of which have been deciphered. The tattoos provided insights into life stories, views, criminal experiences, length of imprisonment, attitudes towards state power and positions in the criminal hierarchy . Baldayev's work contributed to the understanding of the tattooing tradition of " thieves in the law ".

literature

GULag drawings. Edited by Hans-Peter Böffgen, Thees Klahn and Andrzej Klant. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt / M. 1993, ISBN 3-86150-001-9 .
Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia. 3 volumes. Steidl et al., Göttingen et al. 2003-2008, ISBN 3-88243-920-3 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-9550061-2-0 (vol. 2), ISBN 978-0-9550061-9-7 (vol. 3).

Web links

Данциг БАЛДАЕВ picture, publications, autobiography (Russian)

Individual evidence

^ Heiko Haumann: Remembrance of tyranny: self-testimonies - analyzes - methods . Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-59427-8 ( google.de [accessed November 4, 2018]).

personal data
SURNAME	Baldayev, Danzig Sergejewitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Балдаев, Данциг Сергеевич (Russian spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian militia officer and author of several forensic books
DATE OF BIRTH	December 19, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH	Verkhneudinsk
DATE OF DEATH	January 23, 2005
Place of death	St. Petersburg

[1] Heiko Haumann: Remembrance of tyranny: self-testimonies - analyzes - methods . Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-59427-8 ( google.de [accessed November 4, 2018]).