Not a historian, but a political scientists here 👋

The bitch wars (Сучьи войны) was a conflict within the Soviet prison system. It was the conflict for the status within the prison social hierarchy.

This social system was (and still is) reminiscent of casts and has formed during early years of Gulags, the highest cast was (блатные) who made a commitment to follow criminal law till the rest of their lives, the law included never cooperating with law enforcement, never serving in the military and not working for government by any means, in fact блатные would refuse to do any work in the labour camps and would force lower casts to do work for them as a demonstration of their power within the hierarchy. The prison enforcement would regularly make deals with блатные that would ensure they had the best conditions, in exchange блатные would enforce unwritten prison laws and force other prisoners into submission. Опущенные on the other hand were the lowest cast, similar to untouchable, if you shake hand with опущенный, you become one as well, same if you eat from one plate, also you become one if you were raped and your duties would be the dirtiest jobs like cleaning the toilets. (This is still being exploited by Russian law enforcement as showed by project Гулягу-нет (No-to-Gulag) in 2021, the prison guards would rape prisoners an video tape it, forcing the prisoner to cooperate in order for this video to remain secret and the prisoner not becoming a member of the lowest cast.

Back to bitch wars, they began when ww2 soviet soldiers got into the prisons. From the point of view of the блатная hierarchy, they could not be the highest cast, as they have served in the army and hence cooperated with the government. Thus, they were labelled as the third cast - суки (bitches) , behind блатные and мужики. Some man among returning ww2 soldiers already had prison sentences and, were блатные before they served in the military , but we're refused their status after returning. Thus, they decided that the old criminal law was outdated and created a new set of laws in 1948. It can be argued also, that the war was about the enforcement of this new set of criminal law and forcing old блатные into submission. The only force in the prison is physical force, the amount of soldiers who got sentence during the stalin's regime were constantly growing and easily outnumbered блатные. Moreover these were people who saw the horrors of war, knew how to fight and would create strong groups with fellow soldiers. Thus, they attracted мужики to "accept" the social system they offered , especially when the balance of power shifted within specific prisons. The old elites were offered to step down, by performing a ritual of kissing the knife and thus accepting new hierarchy, if refuced, they were either tricked into cooperating with law enforcement (automatically loosing their status) or brutality beaten up or killed.

Many parts of the conflict were never recorded, little written evidence were kept by the prisons. The prisons staff would sympathise with the returning solders and help them in this conflict, hoping for eradication of toxic criminal hierarchy and hoping that the new system would be based on open cooperation with the law enforcement. This unwritten support for the returning soldiers ended around 1952, and the new rules were - to separate the sides of the conflict and place them into different prisons, thus physically limiting the ability of clashes to happen, effectively stopping the fight for domination withing the prisons.

It can be argued that the bitches failed to force old блатные to give up the criminal code, despite being larger in numbers, having support of prison guards and other prison casts. It's hard to extrapolate the effects of this conflict onto today's Russia, it still remains that the worst prisons are run by блатные, but after generations of top criminals have changed , especially after the 90s ex soldiers are now able to become блатной as long as he commits to a life of crime.