If the definition of a third world kleptocracy is a country where the leaders get fat at the expense of the people and the nation, Putin’s Russia fits the bill.
CHAPTER 12
GULAG
The Kremlin took a rather touching amount of care in picking the labour camp to which I would be assigned. Despite having 766 penal colonies to choose from, and notwithstanding a provision in Russian law that prisoners should serve their term in a facility close to their home town, I was sent to camp IK14/10, 3,000 miles from Moscow, in the Chita region of Siberia. Chita has average temperatures of plus 45°C in summer and minus 45°C in winter. Our prison barracks were built next to the slagheaps of a uranium mine, where radiation levels were high. In Russian prisons, nine out of ten inmates suffer from at least one chronic disease, with one in three displaying symptoms of serious contagious infection. Platon Lebedev, if this were possible, had things even harder, being despatched to a remote prison colony near the town of Kharp in the Arctic Circle, where the distance from Moscow made it almost impossible for his family and legal team to visit him.
For the first few months, while we were awaiting our trial, I was held in remand prison 99/1 in Moscow. For much of the time, there were just three prisoners in a cell that was built for four. The cell was 4 metres by 5 metres, including the toilet area, which was separated with a partition and a curtain, although it didn’t reach up to the ceiling. As well as the toilet bowl, we had a sink with hot and cold water. Our cell was quite new and clean, with a small television, a fridge that was old but usually worked, and a fan. There were four bunks on two levels – like in a train compartment, only made of metal. The window was covered in non-transparent tape, and there were two metal grilles on either side of the glass, with a small ventilating window that we could open. We were taken to have a shower once a week.
There was a kiosk that we could visit once a month. It didn’t have any delicacies, but the essentials were all there – milk, kefir, sour cream, apples, carrots, oranges, etc. We also got parcels from home, but these didn’t help much. The prison authorities inspected everything and didn’t let much through; whatever did get through would be cut up into little pieces. The main thing was that the parcel came from home, which psychologically was very important and counted for a lot.
We were allowed out for exercise once a day for one hour. I used to take walks on the roof of the building, like a cat, because it was the closest to fresh air – but you never got to see the sun because there was a canopy over it. The radio was played all day and that drove me crazy – with pop music and the endless ‘letters from listeners’ that they broadcast. The light was kept on at night, but that’s something you get used to. Jail food is awful. I don’t doubt that the fat and carbohydrate contents match the officially prescribed norms, but the way it is cooked – I don’t even want to think about it.
I was allowed to work on my defence papers for our court appearance – the only problem was getting access to data and information. On days when I knew I was due in court, I wouldn’t eat anything before I went, as I didn’t want to have a problem during the endless hours they kept me in the prison van and then in court, when the guards often neglected to provide toilet breaks; I would eat in the evenings instead. There were searches every day, both personal and in the cell. The guards were polite, but thorough. Four to six searches every day – at least it provided a diversion.
Once we’d had our day in court and got our expected sentences, Platon and I were sent our separate ways to the camps. Where you’re going, and how you’re going, are kept secret. The guards put you in a special railway carriage, a sort of prison on wheels, divided up into cells with guards patrolling the corridor, and it’s only at some station stop en route that you hear an announcement, ‘The Moscow to Chita train will be leaving from track two.’ That’s when I knew where we were going. Six days later, having read a whole bag full of books, we arrived. I say ‘we’, but in fact I was the only prisoner in the whole carriage. They took me out of the train and bundled me into a paddy wagon to take me to the camp. There, I was made to walk the gauntlet between two lines of barking mongrels with soldiers holding them back. A group of officers ordered me to doff my hat. I knew the order was illegal, because I’d had plenty of time to learn the law, but I did it anyway. There was no point picking a fight over nothing. They confiscated all my possessions that they said were ‘not allowed’ and, again, I didn’t protest. The main thing was that they left me my books and notebooks, having had a good rummage through them.
Life in the camp is better than in prison. In prison, you’re locked in a small room with the same people all day; in the camp, you can walk around as much as you want. The sun, the sky, greenery in summer, which in prison you can’t see, is all important for a person’s wellbeing. After a year in prison, you really suffer from the lack of such simple things. And your health, of course, is undermined: your eyes, your muscles, your immune system. Human beings are not designed for a prison celclass="underline" your body protests.
A few days after arriving in the camp, I was called before a committee headed by the camp commander and was told that I had been assigned to work in the sewing workshop. I was immediately suspicious. Sewing professionally requires training. As soon as I saw the equipment, I knew it was a trap. It was simply impossible to meet the required production standards on such machines. Later, the young staff in the administration section told me they had actually been planning to put me in the bakery, which is considered safe, but they had received a phone call from Moscow telling them to put me in sewing.
I wrote a complaint – the first of several9 – claiming I had poor vision, and deliberately failed the workplace exam, having warned them that if they falsified the exam results, I’d kick up a fuss. My engineering training had allowed me to spot so many safety breaches in the way the camp workshops were run that they filled two whole sheets of paper, with a list of the most serious violations that legally require production to stop until they are rectified. I politely gave the list to the boss and two days later I received a notification: I was being transferred to work as a porter.
Shortly afterwards, the camp commander invited me in for a ‘talk’. He didn’t say so explicitly, but it was clear that he had received an order to treat me harshly. To put it bluntly, he’d been told to treat me ‘like dirt’ and it seemed like he wanted my help to show he was doing his job. He was on the point of striking a deal with me, but at the last minute he couldn’t bring himself to do it and we parted with matters unresolved.