“Now you will always be punished” Lenta.ru publishes a letter from Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from a Mordovian correctional colony

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, July 26, 2013. Photo: Andrey Stenin / RIA Novosti

On the morning of September 23, Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, serving a sentence in IK-14 (the village of Partsa, Mordovia), announced that she was starting a hunger strike and refusing to work in the sewing workshop of the colony - due to the massive violation of the rights of convicted women at work. At the same time, Tolokonnikova filed an appeal to the Investigative Committee regarding the fact that the deputy head of the colony was threatening to kill her. Lenta.ru publishes a letter from Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, in which she explains why she entered into open confrontation with the management of the correctional institution.

On Monday, September 23, I am going on a hunger strike. This is an extreme method, but I am absolutely sure that this is the only possible way out of this situation for me.

The colony administration refuses to hear me. But I will not give up my demands, I will not sit silently, resignedly looking at how people fall off their feet from the slave conditions of life in the colony. I demand respect for human rights in the colony, I demand respect for the law in the Mordovian camp. I demand that we be treated as people, not as slaves.

A year has already passed since I arrived at IK-14 in the Mordovian village of Partsa. As the prisoners say, “whoever did not serve time in Mordovia did not serve time at all.” They started telling me about the Mordovian zones back in pre-trial detention center No. 6 in Moscow. The toughest regime, the longest working day, the most blatant lack of rights. They escort you to the stage in Mordovia as if you were going to execution. Until the last moment they hope: “Maybe you’re not going to Mordovia after all? Maybe it will pass? I was not carried away, and in the fall of 2012 I arrived at the camp area on the banks of the Partsa River.

Mordovia greeted me with the words of the deputy head of the colony, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, who in fact commands our IK-14: “And know: in my political views I am a Stalinist.” Another commander (and the colony is ruled in tandem), Colonel Kulagin, on the very first day called me for a conversation, the purpose of which was to force me to admit guilt. “You have experienced grief in your life. It is so? You were given two years in prison. And when grief occurs in a person’s life, he usually changes his views. You need to admit guilt in order to get parole early. And if you don’t admit it, there won’t be parole.” I immediately told my boss that I was going to work only the eight hours a day required by the Labor Code. “The code is a code, but the main thing is compliance with production standards. If you don’t comply, you stay for an extended working day. And in general, we haven’t broken anything like that here yet!” - Colonel Kulagin answered.

My entire team in the sewing shop works 16-17 hours a day. From 7.30 to 0.30. Sleep is at best four hours a day. The day off happens once every month and a half. Almost all Sundays are working days. Convicts write applications to go to work on days off with the wording “at their own request.” In reality, of course, there is no desire. But these statements are written by order at the request of the authorities and prisoners, who convey the will of the authorities.

No one dares to disobey (not write an application to go to the industrial zone on Sunday, that is, not go to work until one in the morning). A 50-year-old woman asked to go to the living area not at 0.30, but at 20.00, so that she could go to bed at 22.00 and get eight hours of sleep at least once a week. She felt unwell and had high blood pressure. In response, a detachment meeting was convened, where the woman was reprimanded, spat on, humiliated, and branded a parasite. “Do you want to sleep more than anyone else? Yes, you need to be plowed, horse!” When someone from the team does not go to work to free the doctor, he is also put under pressure. “I had a temperature of 40, no big deal. But have you thought about who will sew for you?!”

IK-14 (Partsa village, Mordovia)
Photo: @gruppa_voina / twitter

My housing unit in the camp greeted me with the words of one convict who was finishing her nine-year sentence: “They’ll be afraid to compact your garbage. They want to do it with the hands of prisoners!” The regime in the colony is really designed in such a way that the suppression of a person’s will, intimidation of him, turning him into a dumb slave is carried out by the hands of convicts who occupy the posts of brigade masters and detachment foremen, receiving instructions from their superiors.

To maintain discipline and obedience, a system of informal punishments is widely used: “to sit in the lokalka until lights out” (a ban on entering the barracks - autumn or winter; in the 2nd detachment, a detachment of disabled people and pensioners, there lives a woman who, for the day of sitting in the lokalka frostbitten her hands and feet so much that she had to amputate one leg and fingers), “close hygiene” (prohibition of washing and going to the toilet), “close the food store and teahouse” (prohibition of eating your own food, drinking drinks). It’s both funny and scary when an adult woman of about forty says: “So, today we are punished! I wonder, will we be punished tomorrow too?” She cannot leave the workshop to pee, she cannot take candy from her bag. Forbidden.

Dreaming only of sleep and a sip of tea, exhausted, twitchy, dirty, condemned, she becomes obedient material in the hands of the administration, which views us exclusively as free labor. So, in June 2013, my salary was 29 (twenty-nine!) rubles. At the same time, the team sews 150 police suits per day. Where does the money received for them go?

The camp was allocated money several times to completely replace equipment. However, the authorities only repainted the sewing machines with the hands of the convicts. We sew on morally and physically outdated equipment. According to the Labor Code, if the level of equipment does not meet modern industrial standards, production standards should be reduced compared to standard industry standards. But the standards are only increasing. Abruptly and suddenly. “If you show them that you can give 100 suits, they will increase the base to 120!” - say experienced motorists. But you can’t refuse, otherwise the whole detachment, the whole brigade will be punished. Punished, for example, by standing on the parade ground for many hours. No right to go to the toilet. Without the right to take a sip of water.

Two weeks ago, the production rate for all brigades in the colony was arbitrarily increased by 50 units. And if before this the base was 100 suits per day, now it is equal to 150 police suits. According to the Labor Code, employees must be notified of changes in production standards no later than two months in advance. In IK-14, we simply wake up one fine day with a new normal, because that’s what the authorities of our “sweatshop” (that’s what the convicts call the colony) decided to do. The number of people in the team decreases (they are released or leave), and the norm increases - accordingly, those remaining have to work more and more. Mechanics say that there are no parts needed to repair the equipment and there won’t be any: “No parts! When will they be? Don’t you live in Russia to ask such questions?” During the first months at the industrial zone, I practically mastered the profession of a mechanic. Forced and independently. I rushed at the car with a screwdriver in my hands in a desperate hope of fixing it. Your hands are pierced with needles and scratched, blood is smeared on the table, but you still try to sew. Because you are part of a conveyor production line, and you need to carry out your operation along with experienced seamstresses. And the damn car breaks down and breaks down. Because you are new, and in camp conditions with a lack of quality equipment, you naturally get the most worthless motor on the tape. And then the engine breaks down again - and you again run to look for a mechanic (who is impossible to find). And they shout at you, they push you for disrupting the plan. There is no training course in sewing skills in the colony. New recruits are immediately put in front of a typewriter and given an operation.

“If you weren’t Tolokonnikova, you would have been ********* long ago,” say the prisoners close to the bosses. That’s right, others are beaten. For failure. On the kidneys, on the face. The convicts themselves beat, and not a single beating in the women's camp occurs without the approval and knowledge of the administration. A year ago, before my arrival, a gypsy woman in the 3rd detachment was beaten to death (the 3rd detachment is a press detachment, those who need to be beaten daily are placed there). She died in the medical unit of IK-14. The administration managed to hide the fact of death from beatings: the cause was stated to be a stroke. In another unit, underachieving new seamstresses were stripped and forced to sew naked. No one dares to make a complaint to the administration, because the administration will smile in response and let you go back to the detachment, where the “snitch” will be beaten on the orders of the same administration. The administration of the colony is comfortable with controlled hazing as a way to force convicts to completely submit to a regime of lawlessness.

There is a dangerously nervous atmosphere in the industrial zone. Always sleep-deprived and exhausted by the endless pursuit of fulfilling the inhumanly huge production quota, the prisoners are ready to break loose, scream out loud, and fight over the most insignificant reason. Just recently, a young girl was stabbed in the head with scissors because she did not hand over her trousers on time. Another one the other day tried to stab herself in the stomach with a hacksaw. She was stopped.

Those who were caught in IK-14 in 2010, the year of fires and smoke, said that while the fire was approaching the walls of the colony, convicts continued to go out to the industrial area and give the norm. The man was hard to see two meters away because of the smoke, but they tied wet scarves over their faces and sewed. Due to the state of emergency, we were not allowed into the dining room for lunch. Several women told how, monstrously hungry, they kept diaries at that time, where they tried to record the horror of what was happening. When the fires ended, the security department of the colony carefully removed these diaries so that nothing would leak to freedom.

The sanitary conditions of the colony are designed so that the prisoner feels like a powerless, dirty animal. And although the detachments have hygiene rooms, for educational and punitive purposes a single “general hygiene” has been created in the colony, that is, a room with a capacity of five people, where 800 people from the entire colony must come to wash themselves. We shouldn’t wash ourselves in the hygiene rooms set up in our barracks, it would be too convenient. In “general hygiene” there is a constant crush, and girls with basins are trying to quickly wash “their nurse” (as they say in Mordovia), perched on each other’s heads. We use the right to wash our hair once a week. However, this bathing day is canceled from time to time. The reason is a pump failure or a blockage in the sewer. Sometimes the detachment could not wash themselves for two or three weeks.

When the sewage system becomes clogged, urine gushes from the hygiene rooms and feces fly in clusters. We learned how to clean the pipes ourselves, but it doesn’t last long - it gets clogged again. But the colony does not have a cable for cleaning. Washing - once a week. The laundress looks like a small room with three taps from which cold water flows in a thin stream.

For educational purposes, apparently, convicts are always given only stale bread, milk generously diluted with water, exclusively rancid millet and only rotten potatoes. This summer, bags of slimy black potato tubers were imported into the colony in bulk. What they fed us.

We can talk endlessly about domestic and industrial violations in IK-14. But my main, main complaint about the colony lies on a different plane. It is that the administration of the colony in the most severe way prevents any complaints and statements regarding IK-14 from leaving its walls. My main complaint against management is that they force people to remain silent. Not disdaining the most base and vile methods. All the others follow from this problem - an inflated base, a 16-hour working day, etc. The authorities feel impunity and boldly oppress the prisoners more and more. I could not understand the reasons why everyone was silent until I myself was faced with the mountain of obstacles that falls on a prisoner who decides to act. Complaints from the colony simply do not go away. The only chance is to file a complaint through relatives or a lawyer. The administration, petty and vindictive, uses all mechanisms of pressure on the convicted person so that he understands: his complaints will not make anyone better, but will only get worse. The method of collective punishment is used - you complained that there is no hot water - it is turned off completely.

Fragment of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s statement

In May 2013, my lawyer Dmitry Dinze contacted the prosecutor’s office with a complaint about the conditions in IK-14. The deputy head of the camp, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, instantly established unbearable conditions in the colony. Search after search, a flood of reports against all my friends, confiscation of warm clothes and the threat of confiscation of warm shoes. In production, they take revenge with complex sewing operations, increasing production standards and artificially created defects. The foreman of the detachment adjacent to mine, the right hand of Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, openly persuaded the convicts to cut up the products for which I was responsible in the industrial zone, so that for damaging “state property” there would be a reason to send me to a punishment cell. She ordered the convicts of her detachment to provoke a fight with me.

Everything can be endured. Everything that concerns only you. But the collective colonial method of education means something else. Your squad, the entire colony, endures with you. And, what’s most vile, those people who managed to become dear to you. One of my friends was deprived of parole, for which she had been working for seven years, diligently exceeding the norm at the industrial level. She was given a punishment for drinking tea with me. On the same day, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov transferred her to another detachment. Another good friend of mine, a very intelligent woman, was transferred to the press squad for daily beatings because she read and discussed with me a document from the Ministry of Justice entitled “Internal Rules of Correctional Institutions.” Reports were drawn up on all those who had contact with me. It hurt me that people close to me were suffering. Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, grinning, told me then: “Surely you already have no friends at all!” And he explained that everything that was happening was due to the complaints of lawyer Dinze.

Now I understand that I should have gone on a hunger strike back in May, back in that situation, but seeing the monstrous pressure that was applied to other prisoners, I suspended the process of complaints against the colony.

Three weeks ago, on August 30, I turned to Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov with a request to provide eight hours of sleep to all prisoners in the brigade in which I work. The talk was about reducing the working day from 16 hours to 12 hours. “Okay, from Monday the team will work even eight hours,” he replied. I know this is another trap, because it is physically impossible to cover our inflated quota in eight hours. Consequently, the brigade will not be able to keep up and will be punished. “And if they find out that this happened because of you,” the lieutenant colonel continued, “then you will definitely never feel bad again, because bad things don’t happen in the next world.” The lieutenant colonel paused. “And one more thing - you should never ask for everyone. Ask only for yourself. I have been working in camps for many years, and always the one who came to me to ask for others was sent from my office straight to the punishment cell. And you’re the first one to whom this won’t happen now.”

Over the next few weeks, an unbearable situation was created in the detachment and at the industrial site. The convicts close to their superiors began to incite the squad to commit reprisals: “You are punished by consuming tea and food, taking toilet breaks and smoking for a week. And now you will always be punished if you don’t start behaving differently with the new ones and especially with Tolokonnikova - the way the old-timers behaved with you in their time. Were you beaten? They beat me. Did they tear your mouths? They tore it up. Give them ***** too. You won’t get anything for this.”

Over and over again I was provoked into conflict and fight, but what is the point of conflicting with those who do not have their own will and act at the behest of the administration?

Mordovian convicts are afraid of their own shadow. They are completely intimidated. And if just yesterday they were all kind to you and begged - “do at least something about the 16-hour workday!”, then after the pressure from the authorities falls on me, they are all afraid to even talk to me.

I approached the administration with a proposal to resolve the conflict by freeing me from the pressure artificially created by the bosses from prisoners under their control, and the colony from slave labor, reducing the working day and bringing the norm that women must do in line with the law. But in response, the pressure only intensified. Therefore, from September 23, I am going on a hunger strike and refusing to participate in slave labor in the camp until the colony authorities begin to enforce the laws and treat the convicted women not as cattle thrown out of the legal field for the needs of clothing production, but as people.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova