DOI: 10.46340/eppd.2025.12.6.1
Dmytro Yagunov, D.Sc. in Political Science, Ph.D. in Public Administration, MSSc in Criminal Justice, Merited Lawyer of Ukraine
Eberhard Karls University, Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University
How to cite: Yagunov, D. (2025). Formal Empire, Informal Hierarchies, Carceral Violence, and ‘Naturalness’ of Russia’s Presence as Imperial Strategy (The Army And Prison as Tools of Russian Neo-Imperialism). Evropský politický a právní diskurz, 12, 6, 5-42. https://doi.org/10.46340/eppd.2025.12.6.1
Abstract
This article examines the Russian military and state apparatus through the lens of systemic violence, prison culture, and neo-imperial ideology. The author argues that Russian imperialism represents a continuous 500-year project of colonial expansion driven by a carceral logic permeating military organisation, governance, and society. The analysis traces how informal prison hierarchies (ponyatiya) and military hazing (dedovshchina) function as governance mechanisms, creating a ‘carceral-prison state’ where violence is not dysfunction but essential structure. The study documents Russia’s 200+ colonial wars, the weaponisation of ethnic minorities as ‘colonial infantry’, the systematic torture in filtration camps, and the transformation of the military into a predatory caste system during the Ukraine invasion. Key findings reveal how prisoner recruitment, private military companies (Wagner, Redut), and barrier troops maintain hierarchical control through extrajudicial executions, sexual violence, and forced conscription. The work demonstrates that the Russian Orthodox Church theology sanctifies warfare, creating ‘Z-Orthodoxy’ as imperial ideology. The author challenges Western as sumptions about Russian decline, arguing instead for adaptive imperialism that modernises control mechanisms through systematic violence. The conclusion advocates for comprehensive decolonisation – dismantling the Russian Federation’s territorial integrity – as the only viable security solution, since the system’s path-dependency on violence makes genuine liberalisation structurally impossible. The analysis synthesises historical sociology, institutional ethnography, postcolonial theory, and human rights documentation to reveal Russia not as a reformable nation-state but as a persistent imperial formation requiring fundamental transformation.
Keywords: Russian imperialism, torture culture, Wagner PMC, Russian World ideology, ethnic hierarchies, military hazing, systemic violence, colonial infantry, dedovshchina, ponyatiya.
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