A partak means a lot “on the zone”

Grigory Pasko, journalist

Partak – that’s a tattoo in the language of jailbirds. The history of tattooing goes with the roots into the ages. They say that the fist to start doing it were the aborigines of the island of Tatu. Cook’s sailors saw and borrowed. Then tattooing, like a contagious disease, spread throughout the entire world and became particularly beloved by prisoners.

In the years of the Stalinshchina and the GULAG, zeks tattooed portraits of Stalin and Lenin: there existed a myth that the convoyers [transport guards–Trans.] are not going to start shooting at the leaders of the USSR and the revolution. The myth has remained just that, a myth.