At home among strangers: Alexander Shestun described his life in a maximum security colony

About a month ago, the Council of Europe published its annual report on criminal statistics for 2020, which analyzes the state of European prisons.

According to this report, Russian prisons hold more people than prisons in other European countries, and the least amount of money is spent on a prisoner in Russia (2.8 euros per prisoner per day compared to an average cost of 64.4 euros). At the same time, the budget allocated for the provision of the Russian prison system in 2019 turned out to be the largest in Europe, amounting to 4.2 billion euros.

At the moment, Russia ranks first in terms of the number of prisoners in prisons (519,618 people).

As of January 31, 2020, there are 103.2 prisoners in Europe for every 100 thousand inhabitants. The country with the largest number of people in custody (per 100 thousand population), as of January 31, was Turkey (357). Russia is second with 356 prisoners (in 2019 - 386.1).

In Russia, there are 9.1 prisoners per employee of the penitentiary system, which is the highest figure among the countries studied. The total capacity of institutions for serving sentences in Russia amounted to 755,345 places.

In addition, according to the report, Russia is among the five countries with the largest proportion of women in prison (42,334 women, or 8.1% of the total number of prisoners). The authors of the report note a noticeable decrease in the number of juvenile prisoners in the country (1,060 people compared to 2,225 prisoners in 2019).

With regard to Russia, the report provides the following data:

120 thousand people received sentences for drug-related crimes; more than 84 thousand people - for murder; more than 64 thousand - for theft; more than 25 thousand - for assault and beating; more than 20 thousand - for rape; 20 159 - for robbery; 815 people are imprisoned for economic / financial crimes and 87,177 for other crimes.

On average, 27.2 deaths were recorded in European prisons in 2019, including 5.2 cases of suicide, which accounted for 10 thousand inmates. In Russia, 2,420 prisoners died during the same period, including 274 suicides.

But these are all abstract figures, but what actually happens in Russian "correctional" institutions is described in detail and regularly on his blog by one of the most famous (after Navalny) convicts, the ex-head of the Serpukhov district of the Moscow region, Alexander Shestun, who was sentenced in the past year after a loud and very controversial trial to 15 years in prison in a strict regime colony. Moreover, human rights activists were outraged that Shestun received a sentence for murder for an economic crime, citing the example of a historian-assistant professor Sokolov, whom the prosecutor's office requested 13 years for the murder and dismemberment of his graduate student!

It is interesting that during the time spent behind bars, 56-year-old Aleksandr Shestun has already managed to write a book called "The Defiant Prisoner" and become a "champion" in hunger strikes.

And just recently, a month and a half after Alexander Shestun was transferred from the capital's isolation ward "Matrosskaya Tishina" to SIZO-1 (detention center - editor's note) in the city of Tver and his stay in the prison hospital in Torzhok, it became known that he was transferred to a penal colony with a strict regime in the ancient Russian city of Bezhetsk.

Here are excerpts from Shestun's peculiar prison diary, from which it becomes very clear that the FSIN does not smell of any reforms and humanization, and therefore the report of the Council of Europe next year for Russia will not differ much from this one.

13 april

The fast of Ramadan began on April 13th. Muslims do not eat until sunset, observing the uraz. My cellmates, an Uzbek and a Tajik, are not allowed to eat at night and perform namaz at 5 am, which is grossly contrary to the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation. They refer to the opinion of the mullah from the Federal Penitentiary Service. After the rats in the Torzhok prison hospital, I am now at war with hordes of cockroaches in the Tver pre-trial detention center. Throughout April, they do not bring me the “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” written out to the post office. I wrote many applications for the library, but in a month and a half I did not receive a single book. But they entertain us with searches, holding us for an hour facing the wall and with their hands behind our backs. The day before, they conducted a search in violation of the law in our absence. The neighbors were dragged to the opera houses, and I was with the investigator. When they returned, all the things were lying in the corridor on the dirty floor. The armies of muggy guards have nothing to do. It would be better if they were sent to help the firefighters of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to extinguish grass fires.

May 4th

The disciplinary commission of IK-6 in Bezhetsk put me on a preventive record as a person prone to a malicious systematic violation of the internal order, attaching a blue stripe to my jacket, pants and even a cap, warning others about my danger. In addition to me with a similar stigma, there is another "terrorist" in the detachment - Irek Tagirov, a Tatar from Ufa. In concentration camps, the Nazis drew a circle on the back of the Jews as a target. Well at least Irek and I were not shot or burned in the stove. They gave me a bed near the entrance to check at night if I had run away. The most incomprehensible thing is that I was forcibly assigned to the economic unit, despite my active objections. Perhaps because of my unwillingness to be "red" and appealing against this decision, or because of my request to speak with my acquaintance, a prisoner, a Chechen Khasan Israfilov, who has not left the punishment cell and the BUR (high security barrack) for 14 years. My Lefortovo comrade in misfortune, Vyacheslav Gaizer, the ex-governor of Komi, will soon return to the utility unit after being loaded in court. In the near future, the same fate awaits me! I am against dividing convicts into castes, so to advance my position I need to be neutral

the 6th of May

IK-6 Bezhetsk, 130 km north of Tver, is a very poor area: without its own club, a full-fledged football field, with a weak industrial zone and subsidiary farming. Of the medicinal ointments in the medical unit, only streptocide, as in the GULAG. The most unpleasant thing is 4 checks a day, and everywhere only morning and evening. This takes a lot of time from FSIN officers and convicts. It just kills 4 times to pronounce the end of the term - 06/11/2033. Sounds like a scary tale. Quarantine in the same barrack with the punishment cell, BUR, PKT (prison in prison), where the Aryan order. The living area resembles something in between a pioneer camp and a gypsy camp: a laundry, a cafe, a temple, a woodcarving workshop, barracks, a dining room - the whole palette of smells.

May 7

After the prisons of Moscow, it is hard to get used to the order in the Tver "red" colonies. I got to IK-6 without food and at first ate only gruel. At the same table, the prisoners chewed pickles, when I drank tea and bread next to me, but almost no one offered to treat myself to it. I'm no stranger to hunger, but it's attitude. Day-slickers openly knock on the watchmen if I sit down on the bed or wash my thermal underwear. They don't make any comments to any of the others, but if I just sigh the wrong way ... In Moscow prisons, they would seriously ask for denunciation from prisoners-informants, but here it is in the order of things. Food regularly disappears in the kitchen, but the rat is not identified. The Red Zone, and even a super-mega-red utility unit.

There is not even a table for 100 people, why should I, as an acrobat, write on the nightstand?

Acting head of IK-6 Pavel Motin promised that he would allow my wife Yulia as a representative of the ECHR, approved by the court, but he did not keep his word. As a result, my wife had to use a short-term date, which I kept for my mother (I had not seen her for 3 years) and children, and I was supposed to have 1 date every 4 months. I asked Colonel Motin for permission to buy a telephone card - refusal ... The reference to the family code did not help - I have the right to raise young children. By law, in the colony, I can call without restrictions. Moreover, during the 3 years of my arrest, I was granted only once a petition for phone calls to my young children and my 84-year-old mother. As a result, the whole detachment went to the store, but they did not take me out. Without argumentation, they are not allowed to go to sports, to the library, to a cafe, to a bathhouse...

With difficulty I knocked out permission to participate in the day service of Bishop Filaret of Bezhetsk and Vesyegonsk. A rather nice wooden church of the Russian Orthodox Church gathered about 40 prisoners within its walls, waiting for the warm words of the shepherd. However, in half an hour, Vladyka spoke more about the health of Patriarch Kirill and the authorities of Russia than about the Resurrection of Christ. In the Moscow region, I have witnessed many times how Metropolitan Yuvenaly, despite his advanced age, captivated and inspired any audience with his prayers. Quite possibly, under the heavy impression of the “hospitality” of IK-6, I biasedly assess the holding of the main Christian holiday, but it seems to me that the prisoners are people who most need spiritual support. Dozens of blackened faces with eyes full of tears and longing for their loved ones were waiting for a balm for their wounded souls...

Today I read about a significant decrease in the number of Orthodox Christians attending churches in Russia, and a drop in the rating of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church against the background of a dynamically spreading Islam. It would be better if the colonies instructed the convicts on the right path, relying on the help of priests and Christian commandments, and not on the punitive methods of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). After all, the FSIN does not think to change a person with the help of a 5-minute lecture on a weekend ?! At the service, I talked to the guys from other units. It turns out that out of 640 convicts I am hardly the only one charged in an economic criminal case. The bulk of them were convicted of murder, rape, robbery and drug trafficking.