Inside the exchange

Memorial chairman Oleg Orlov describes his ordeal in prison and the run up to last week’s prisoner swap

The oldest of the 16 prisoners released from Russian jails by the Kremlin last week in an exchange that saw many of the country’s best known political prisoners freed in return for an unsavoury group of spooks, hitmen and arms dealers, Oleg Orlov is a very young 71, with eyes that sparkle with a defiance that even a spell in a Russian penal colony has apparently been unable to extinguish.

A veteran human right activist, Orlov became politicised in the late 1970s following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and began printing and distributing his own illegal pamphlets critical of the war all over Moscow. Later, he risked imprisonment by distributing samizdat material about the rise of the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland in the early 1980s, though somehow managed to evade detection.

Since becoming one of the first members of Memorial in 1988, Orlov has devoted his life to the tireless documentation of human rights abuses in Russia and the former Soviet Union, and it’s fair to say that he’s had his work cut out for him, having led the documentation of dozens of atrocities, acts of police brutality and wars in Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Tajikistan and Ukraine.

The fateful year 2022 saw Memorial awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while also being deemed “an undesirable organisation” in Russia, which led to the group being liquidated. At the same time, an article Orlov wrote about the Russian invasion of Ukraine entitled “They wanted fascism. They got it.” attracted official scrutiny and saw him charged with “repeatedly discrediting the Russian military”. Initially fined 150,000 rubles (€1,500), Orlov was forced to endure a retrial after the Prosecutor General’s Office protested that his punishment had been too lenient. While he refused to take part in the second hearing — during which he theatrically read Kafka in protest — he was nevertheless handed a 2.5-year sentence in February, and spent five months in a penal colony before suddenly being freed in last week’s carefully brokered prisoner exchange between Russia and the West.

Orlov spoke to Novaya Gazeta Europe about what the prisoner exchange looked like from his vantage point, what helped in the “special block” and how to live a good life as a prisoner.

NGE: Could you tell us what your prison experience was like?

OO: It varied from place to place. In some places, it was very hard, and in others it was actually OK, and they treated people the way they should be treated, without humiliating them or making them suffer. One of the worst things in prison is when they’re full, i.e. there are significantly more people than beds. My first cell was a 5x5-metre room with a table, a toilet, 10 bunks and 12 people. It was different when I was transferred to what they call the “special” block, which every prison has, where people are kept under special surveillance. But things were much better: there was more space, no overcrowding, everyone had their own bed, everything was easier, even if the special block had no “road”, the system used to communicate with prisoners from other cells, pass notes, swap things such as tea or coffee. Sometimes you can even pass on a phone. The “road” is an important part of prison life that allows people to connect with others. It can sometimes even help protect their rights. So there’s no “road” on a special block, which is bad, but everything else is easier. You can take walks, which is wonderful, and buy things in a decent commissary.

NGE: Were you ever sent to a cell with violent criminals?

OO: I didn’t encounter physical violence the entire time I was in custody. It didn’t happen to me and I didn’t see it happen to anyone else. God had mercy on me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It happens. And I have heard of some bad cases.

NGE: What kept you going in prison?

OO: You get taken out for a walk for an hour and you don’t cross paths with other convicts. You can shout over the high fence in the courtyard. You think how will I bear this? But it turns out you can. You can swap books, though they’re thin on the ground. You give a book to someone in the next cell, and sooner or later you’ll get something in return. It’s the same if you share tea with a cell that needs it. You can count on the same thing happening the other way round when the time comes. That’s prisoner solidarity for you. It’s a very important source of support and help. Two of us lived in a small cell without a TV. We survived. Writing letters helped a lot. It’s important to know you haven’t been forgotten on the outside. Friends and strangers write, and that really helps occupy your mind. Corresponding with this person or that person is the most important thing in a prisoner’s life in general, but especially for political prisoners.

NGE: What did people write?

OO: People asked how I was, or wrote about films and plays they’d seen, trips they’d been on. They asked what films I like, what books I can recommend, argued with me about Mayakovsky’s poetry. That keeps the mind and soul of a person forced to sit in a small cell occupied. Not to mention politics and human rights. I wrote openly what I thought of the current regime. Can we expect it to fall? How much longer will it last? Why are people silent and will they wake up? What will happen if the regime allows any room for democracy at all?

NGE: Did prison staff read your letters? How did they react?

OO: Any letter I wrote went to the censor. I didn’t know what was in the letter after it’d been censored. Some letters were destroyed for very perfunctory reasons. The censorship wasn’t atrocious, but sometimes letters would disappear because I described the size of the cell, or how long our walks were. That’s not allowed. Neither is any nudity, I’m afraid — I was sent all sorts of pictures, photos of paintings from museums or nature. They took all that away immediately.

But most letters got through. I am grateful to everyone who wrote to me. There were so many. Sadly, I didn’t have time to answer them all or only much later. I sometimes had to destroy letters when being moved and had to leave a huge pile behind.

NGE: What did you think the future held while you were in prison?

OO: I didn’t see any future. The less you think about the future, the easier it is to live. Thinking “Will I get out on parole? Will I be pardoned? Might I be swapped?” is the last thing you want to do. I knew that I was a prisoner, I had two more years to serve, and I needed to live as decently as a prisoner can. And God only knows what might happen next. What will be, will be.

NGE: When did you find out about the exchange?

OO: I didn’t know anything until I was taken out of [Moscow’s notorious FSB-run] Lefortovo Prison. To be honest, when they put me in Lefortovo, I thought they’d opened a new case against me for justifying terrorism or something. They took us all from different places to Lefortovo, and each of us sat alone in a separate cell. We weren’t taken out for walks or to wash, which is a gross violation of the rules. We weren’t allowed to use the library, and I had no idea how long I was going to be there. I wrote to the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights to say my rights were being violated. I was shoved into a cell with almost no belongings and they never let me out. Nobody came in, nobody checked on me. They only opened the food hatch. Finally, on 1 August, when everything was ready, the door opened, a man in uniform came in and showed me the paperwork saying my sentence was complete as I had been pardoned. Then they put us on a bus and took us somewhere.

NGE: What was the atmosphere like on the bus?

OO: I was happy when I saw everyone else. They brought on Sasha Skochilenko. I don’t know her personally, but we knew each other from photos and from the news. I was so happy to see her. Then I saw Andrey Pivovarov sitting there. “Hi! Hi!” Then I saw the FSB guys sitting there. I realised then that this was a swap. Amazing. I saw Volodya Kara-Murza, though I’d been scared that as a personal enemy of Putin they wouldn’t let him go. But there he was. Then we all began wondering where Alexey Gorinov was? We started talking over each other. It turned out Yashin was sitting up front, but Alexey wasn’t. That was confusing. Maybe there was a second bus? God willing, there’d be a second bus, and he’d be on that one?

They could stop us from hugging, but they couldn’t force us to be silent.

Sasha Skochilenko said at one point: “Look, look, Mr Orlov, what wonderful clouds, 3D clouds!” We hadn’t seen clouds since our sentences began as we only took walks in closed courtyards. The special forces, or whoever they were, didn’t introduce themselves, and tried to shut us up. One of them, who must have been the boss, really had a go at me, telling me to stop talking, otherwise he’d handcuff me and I’d be smiling on the other side of my face. I told him what I thought of him and he shut up and left me alone. They understood we were no longer under their control. They could stop us hugging, but they couldn’t force us to be silent.

NGE: Did you see Krasikov or any other of the prisoners being swapped during the exchange?

OO: Yes, we saw them when we landed in Ankara. We realised we were waiting for a bus with the people we were being exchanged for. Then we saw their bus arrive, people approached, and they climbed the stairs to the plane. It was obvious we were being swapped for Krasikov. We saw that supposed journalist, González, who was actually a GRU officer. Yashin knew him by sight. At that point, the special forces got off our bus, and we were under German jurisdiction. We were taken to a room, where there was some sort of reception for us. There were sandwiches and fruit juice, but no alcohol, sadly. We finally got to smoke. Sasha Skochilenko made me a roll-up. I hadn’t smoked since being moved. Then we were given a phone to call home. We called our relatives and lawyers. And the next plane took us to Germany.

NGE: How have you been welcomed in Germany? What are your plans for the future?

OO: We were given a warm reception in Germany. Scholz met us off the plane and everyone shook his hand. Then it took quite a while to take down all our details. We only had our Russian IDs. I’ll stay here for now and am not allowed to leave Germany. I hope to receive documents that will allow me to travel soon. It all depends on a number of factors and I can’t yet say where I’ll be. I walk down the street and I don’t fully understand my own behaviour yet. I stood in the rain yesterday and was happy. I can only say that I already miss Russia. When I thought of freedom in prison, it was always connected to Russia. I’ll go back to Russia as soon as there’s the slightest opportunity. For now, I plan to work at Memorial. Memorial is alive and well and has not been destroyed. It is working and will continue to work.

NGE: What will you say to your colleagues who have stayed in Russia and work on Chechnya?

OO: Things are bleak in Chechnya, even when compared to the rest of Russia. But there’s always hope. I don’t know of any organisation now working in Chechnya, but I do know people who are working to help others living in the extremely difficult conditions there. What am I going to tell them? Work, brothers and sisters. These people have been working and will carry on working. The only thing I can say is take care of yourself, friends. Your work is much needed. And the new, free Russia will need you tоо.