"La Pi-Nan-Gi"

Oleg Sentsov's story about prison and will

This year, on September 7, an important event of the year occurred - 35 to 35 exchange of 35. The Ukrainian and Russian sides exchanged prisoners and convicts. Among those who have pardoned the President of Russia - Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov, sentenced to 20 years on wild false charges of terrorism. Sentsov spent five years in IK-8 in the city of Labytnangi, in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, on the Arctic Circle. Especially for this, the numbers of “New” Oleg Sentsov handed over his impressions of the Russian prison. Next year, the book of prison stories by Oleg Sentsov and the diary of 145 days of hunger strike will be published, now the publications are preparing for printing.

All prisons are similar to each other as mournful relatives. But this is only externally, they differ in the internal way of way: there are places where it is better, there are - where worse, but there are those where complete darkness. It is very difficult to see and understand these differences from the outside. When a commission arrives in prison or colony with an audit, then the institution is all decisively and accurately, the prisoners do not complain about anything, the administration is polite, the inspectors are satisfied. Real prison life at the time of the commission is pounded and layered. When the commission leaves, then everything returns to its own circles, sometimes to its circles of hell.

The difficult name of the small town at the polar circle for ordinary people will not say anything. For convicts, on the contrary, a lot. Labytnangs or in the common people, people sitting people know almost everything, as well as his no less sad neighbor - the village of Harp, the “polar owl”. Created in the 60s of the last century as a steam camps in the difficult natural conditions of the Far North, they remained so to this day. Their goal is not to correct people, not to attract prisoners to work (except to remove snow for eight months a year, there is nothing to do here), but to turn them into a herd of obedient cattle. And this task has been successfully fulfilled for many years with great success. In principle, any penitentiary institution in Russia is created precisely in order to break and destroy, grind human bodies and fate. It’s just that somewhere this issue is resolved more everyday and routinely, and somewhere it is placed on a stream and erected into an unthinkable perverted degree.

Here, from the threshold, you are made to understand that you were in purgatory, where you have no right, and it is useless and no one to complain. The arrivals of people who arrived are mercilessly only because they exist - this is the name of “acceptance”, a mandatory procedure, almost a ritual. Immediately they teach you to contact the administration employees exclusively “citizen boss” and ask permission to perform any action, including in order to pass by a person in uniform: “Let me go through, citizen boss”. The prisoners should greet loudly and in chorus, and no matter how many times you have already welcomed this employee on this day, be sure to clear and friendly: “Hello, citizen boss”.

After “acceptance”, you will be immediately offered to cooperate with the administration, explaining that there are no “men”, but only “red” and “roosters”, and you just need to choose who you will go to.

If you prefer your option to remain a decent prisoner, then with the help of applied tools they will explain that you are wrong. The large half of the newly arrived in quarantine runs to the “Reds”, the rest are trying to attach. With those who could not be broken on hot, they already work in advance, using psychological and physical pressure almost throughout the entire period.

While you are in quarantine for two weeks, you will be regularly pressed. Learning the rules of the internal routine, the singing of patriotic songs and the anthem of the Russian Federation, walking, minting a step, - mandatory elements of this initial re -education program. To deny this insanity, do not agree to cooperate and sign the necessary papers dare to be dared, but for them there are separate procedures carried out on the so -called "Petrovka". This is a small separate building with two cameras and three rooms of operational employees. Here with rebellious they act especially cruelly, as they say "Opera do not ride a cotton." Beating, humiliations, electric skiers, content in the cold chamber naked or in a wet robe is not the worst thing that can happen to you.

You can be twisted into the mattress for a day and throw you like a doll to wallow on the floor or even worse - to board the embryo pose in an iron box like a safe, where there is practically nothing to breathe and you have to urinate under yourself, because there are no breaks to the toilet and lunch in these attractions.

The threats to rape, “lower”, on the contrary, are unchanged accompaniment of bullying.

One way to struggle a prisoner against such torture is one - to open. A blade, a piece of glass or iron, teeth. Cut, tear your veins to find yourself in a prison hospital, where you can take a little breath of such a nightmare. But, "rising" to the camp after such a frying, the misadventures of the prisoner do not end. You find yourself in a kind of zombieland, where all official rules are strictly observed with senile and perverted punctuality, and besides them, there are also a bunch of their local “bells and whistles”, which was invented by the dawn administration. Fighting this system of daredevils is not enough, and if they do not reconcile, then they will be broken or substituted, glued with dirt, acting with the hands of other prisoners. Particularly persistent packs on the "Eshka" - the EPT, located in neighboring Harps, where the next circle of the underworld is located.

The “man” suffering all his term sees how the heads and their many henchmen, the so -called “goats”, who are not touching, do not beat and do not humiliate, “fly” nearby. Who, having sold their conscience for a slightly sweeter life, work for the colony administration, helping other prisoners to steal the regime. And many can’t stand it, give up and go to the “red”, where it is easier, warmer and there is a chance to free themselves early. The shift of ten employees working inside the camp is not able to hold five hundred convicts in such slave submission, so a system has been created in which half of the prisoners collaborates with the administration clearly or secretly, helping to maintain this regime, atmosphere of fear and distrust. You cannot do anything or say what will not be reported to employees.

Each “goat” leads its small list during the day - “scoundrel”, into which he brings all violations, all what he saw or heard,

All useful information about other convicts, including the informals like him. At the end of the day, the manager collects all these papers in a heap, forming a general report from the hut, and in the morning passes it to the operatives, who process all this and take appropriate measures. And someone was already led to an execution in the Petrovka building.

Among the “Reds” there is stringent internal competition - all of them are trying not only to the administration, but also to their manager to move up the local hierarchical ladder, building intrigues against each other, dragging other prisoners into these schemes and other prisoners. Not everyone can be so quick or cynical, so the system constantly calibrates the people she needs and throws out the wrong ones. This worked out human material is called “wool” or “scabies”, with which neither the “red” themselves do not want to have a relationship, and especially “men”.

The managers with their closest improvised ones are engaged not only in small extortion among other prisoners after receiving the transfer or caring in the store, there are schemes and larger. Not without the participation of operas and recruited agents from the total mass, unbearable conditions are created or a setup against the monetary sacrifice is mutated, which, under the threat of getting into the “roostseter”, begins to pay. Sometimes this is a one -time action, and when regular. And it is not a fact that such a “wild boar” really has money in the wild, then he begins to call home, beg, and cars are sold somewhere or loans are taken.

The global atmosphere of lawlessness, distrust, violence and fear in the framework of one camp, fenced by the ban, as a model of a small totalitarian state. Kafka and Orwell in one bottle. To exist in it, remaining a person, is very difficult. She does everything, turning you into an obedient slave, a zombie, an animal that will be ready to bite her relatives in order to make his life easier, and all questions of the inspectors - answering:

"There are no complaints, citizen boss!" Because the commission will leave, and "Petrovka" will remain.

You can endlessly describe prison horrors, torture and humiliation. You can once again list all those dead places of the Russian penitentiary system, which are already known by heart those who are engaged in this topic. You can send hundreds of inspections of the engagements of the human rights that are actually authorized by the administration, or so -called social activists commissions, consisting mainly of former employees who will not find any violations. This will not change anything. Any prison is just a reflection of the society that creates it. The country, standing a stone's throw from turning into a totalitarian state, is not able to have other prisons. You can erase Labytnangi from the face of the earth, but this boil will come out in another place, because this state is painful about from the inside.

Oleg Sentsov -
Especially for "new"