Rumors apparently concerning the pilot’s troubled marriage reached his superiors long before the shoot-down, which the Prettyman inquiry addressed. A man whose identity was redacted but who had direct oversight of Powers, which may have been Colonel William M. Shelton, said, “I am confident in my own mind that this did not affect his flying.”46
Trying to occupy his time with reading, rug-making, and following the moves of an important chess tournament in the Soviet media, Dad frequently played chess against Zigurd, who tutored him on the finer points of the game. “He beat me one time blindfolded,” he said on his tapes. “Would sit with his back to the chess board and say, move such and such to here [and] I’d tell him where I’d moved. Still beat me.”47
Prison life required many adjustments and offered few distractions, but Dad quickly learned that he could have had it much worse.
US Interrogator: From what you saw in the prison, would you say you were treated better, worse, or about the same as the other prisoners?
Powers: Well I thought better. But I asked them about this. I told them I didn’t want to be treated any better than anyone else, and they said that they have three—what they call—three regimes, a severe regime, a normal regime, and a light regime. And they said that I was on the light regime and they treated all the prisoners who were on the light regime the same way. Now I don’t know whether this was true or not. But supposedly the prisoners on the light regime receive better food, but you couldn’t prove that by me. Two hours’ walk a day instead of one, get to keep your hair, they didn’t shave your head every 10 days or clip it all off, and you could shave daily if you had your own razor blades—and they let me keep razor blades in the cell, which surprised me. I heard that on the severe regime the people get 30 minutes’ walk a day—well, it’s a punishment—this severe. The normal prisoner received one hour[’s] walk a day, their hair was shaved off every ten days, the food was supposedly worse, but I really don’t know….48
In a journal entry, he explained his daily routine:
It is the rule for all prisoners; get up at six o’clock in the morning. I haven’t been a good keeper of this rule because I do not get up unless someone wakes me and it has been very seldom that anyone has awakened me in the mornings. I am usually up between six and seven but have sometimes slept longer. I don’t like to do this but if they want me to get up all they have to do is say so. I suppose the reason I sleep late in the mornings is that most of the time I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep at night. It seems that the minute I prepare for sleep it is an indication for my mind to become filled with thoughts. There have been many times that I do not get to sleep before two or three o’clock in the morning. The average time I get to sleep would probably be around midnight when the guards change.
My cell mate does not wake me up. He lets me sleep and usually takes advantage of my being in bed and his having more room to move about in, to do his morning exercises. He also cleans the floor which takes two or three minutes. I feel bad about this because he does it all the time but even when I wake up he tells me to stay in bed so I won’t be in his way while he is cleaning the floor. He says it is part of his exercise and won’t let me do it even if I am up.
Depending on the time, we either go to the toilet before or after breakfast. Most of the time it is before. There is only cold water there and that wakes me up completely. I wash from the waist up each morning in the ice cold water.
Usually we do not have time to shave before breakfast and if we do we usually do not get hot water until breakfast so most of the time we shave after breakfast.
Breakfast is served usually between seven-thirty and eight o’clock and consists of either a soup or a porridge. There are usually two kinds of soups for breakfast, either fish soup or a vegetable soup made primarily from dried peas etc. There are several different kinds of porridge, cream of wheat, barley, millet, wheat, and oats. Each morning we are offered one of the above mentioned items. We also receive the bread ration for the day. I only take half my ration because I do not eat bread as much as everyone else seems to do here. I am also able to get a better bread occasionally from the commissary. There are two kinds of bread given each day, rye and whole wheat.
After breakfast and washing our dishes we usually have about one hour and one-half before walk. We shave and I either spend the time until the walk reading or studying Russian. Many months went by when I was so down hearted that, I am sorry to say, I did not study at all, I only read. Lately since July I have been spending an average of more than two hours a day on my studying but haven’t made a tremendous amount of progress. I used to be a fairly good student but since I have been in prison I cannot seem to concentrate and have a lot of trouble in remembering the words which it is necessary to remember in order to learn a language. I do not only have the trouble in Russian but many times when I am reading unless it is an exceptionally good book I sometimes have to reread pages more than once for my mind wanders to other things and I completely lose the meaning of the words that I am reading. Prison in my case is not conducive to good studying.
Usually about ten o’clock we go for a walk. My cell mate and I are allowed two hours a day. We usually spend two hours in the summer and one in winter. The court yard we walk in is about twenty by twenty-five feet and we walk in a circle. In summer we took a chess board with us and had a game of chess in the fresh air and the sunshine. In the winter we walk one hour only stopping for a few minutes to feed the pigeons if we have any bread.
After the walk we are brought back to the cell where we either read or study until lunch time which is usually about twelve thirty. This is the best meal of the day and consists of an excellent soup, a little light on meat though, and either a plate of cabbage, noodles, rice, manna, or mashed potatoes, and 250 grams of milk (it used to be 350 grams but was cut recently also the bread ration was cut).
After lunch we now take a nap of an hour or two. Before when we were making envelopes we spent the time working and also spent part of the morning working. Now we have no work to do. After the nap it is read or study until supper which is about six thirty. This is the worst meal of the day and usually consists only of potatoes.
I very seldom eat the supper that is given. My cell mate and I are lucky in that we receive help from outside. He gets some smoked meat each month that we use to supplement the meals. He also gets about a kilo of butter. We can buy margarine here but it doesn’t take the place of butter.
After Supper we take another trip to the toilet and then either write letters, read or study until ten o’clock when it is time for bed.
At night there is always a light on in the cell. I have not slept in a dark room for over eighteen months. I usually put a towel or a handkerchief over my eyes. My cell mate most of the time goes right to sleep but I lay awake. This is sometimes the worst time of the day especially when I have some kind of bad news from home a little of which I constantly seem to have at all times.
It isn’t a very pleasant life but it is much better than I expected and I am sure most Americans think conditions are worse than they are. I have never seen a prisoner maltreated here which is more than can be said of some of our prisons especially in the southern part of the U.S.49
One of the few regular distractions was his ability to go to a prison room periodically and watch Soviet -made movies, but he quickly soured on the predictable socialist themes. “It was usually pretty low class, what we would call a B movie. Story usually set on a collective farm, with some pretty girl who always sings really nicely.”50