Kolotushki
Kolotushki playing cards designed by Vitalii Buslovskikh, Russia, 2000.
Kolotushki is the jargon prison name for playing cards. This pack was published by L.G. Kosheleva in Novosibirsk in 2000. The artist is Vitalii Buslovskikh and the “consultant” is Colonel Golubev. Each of the 36 cards in this pack show an attractive colourful cartoon associated with crime or criminal activity. Many of the drawings are based on criminal tattoos. The background of the cards is a page of the Novosibirsk post-perestroika newspaper Gazetka.
Above: Kolotushki playing cards designed by Vitalii Buslovskikh, Russia, 2000
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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