Inmate, prisoner. Abbreviation of заключенный каналоармеец — a name from the 1930s referring to the prisoners forced to work on the White Sea Canal, the acronym initially referred to arrested soldiers of the red army (заключённый красноармеец) before its meaning was polit-corrected. Can also be written зэк or зека.
Упомянут Солженицыным в «Архипелаге» как почти единственный зек, успешно бежавший из магаданского лагеря.
Mentioned by Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” as almost the only prisoner to have successfully escaped from a camp in Magadan.
(Сергей Довлатов, Переводные картинки, 1990)
