New neighbors

As in the days of Lenin, prisoners in Russia still sculpt chess from bread crumb. Recipe and several more stories from the new book of Oleg Navalny

Oleg Navalny photo: Alexander Ryumin/TASS

Despite all our isolation, Ruslan found a lot of pluses in the move. Well, not that the mass, in fact - is only one. Together, it was much calmer to sit. Of course, in a friendly team of forty robbers more fun: you can play cards for money, make moonshine, participate in conflicts, telly again look. But there is constant noise and gam around, you get tired of it.

In fact, you get tired of everything. While I am writing these lines, the 474th day of my complete loneliness is going on. I really want to get into the hut where thirty people are sitting. At the same time, each of these thirty would have changed places with me with great pleasure, since the remaining twenty -nine fear of how tired.

One way or another, after the story of the TE-Er delivery plan, our secade coexistence, in which we told each other our life stories, scolded the authorities and the adhesions of the criminalite with the security service of the Butyrka, and came to an end.

The day after the seizure of my notebook with Ruslan’s notes, it took the whole day. He assumed that to a lawyer. But he returned very pale. He said that he stood in boxing 2x2 for six hours, then he was led to the main operative, and he asked him that and why he told me about the trafficking of phones in a pre -trial detention center. Ruslan frowned (at least I imagine this that way) and said that he did not say anything to anyone.

If you read books about Russian prisons, you can guess that this will follow a story about torture. But this is an unusual story. Ruslan was taken back into the camera. When he returned, he managed to say that he would most likely be transferred, and the person who would be brought in his place should be treated with warily.

As soon as he uttered these words, Moldavana brought into the camera (you will be surprised, but he was from Moldova; a bad memory of the names does not allow you to reproduce how he was actually called - let Ignat will be), and Ruslan was told to gather. Later, when I was already in the colony, we periodically corresponded with him. Then he also went to the camp, from time to time gives me greetings. A week after the release, he called up with him. He has already come out for a year. He sat in sad Vladimir camps. Now there is no work, since the prisoners are not taken anywhere. Longing. Not by something specifically, but simply within the framework of standard ancient Russian longing. I am going to, when there will be time, drive to Suzdal and go to him on the road to eat barbecue.

As for my new neighbor, Moldova, then if there was some hidden meaning in his shared, I did not catch him. He said exactly the same about trading of phones. In the same way, he was a road worker, so he immediately established a connection to the prison neural network. In the boiler hut, his status “decent” was confirmed.

A day later, a more logical settlement took place: Seryoga and Seryoga arrived from the SIZO “Sailor Silence”. They were "newcomers" and could not tell about the local Butyrian corruption. But everyone knew about the "sailor". It turned out that it was better to sit there: phones are cheaper, a tariff grid for food delivery from a neighboring restaurant is more democratic, etc. Thieves in law go in prison, look into cameras, are interested in whether the prisoners are all right. But in general - all the same.

Now more about new neighbors.

Ignat Moldavan (for some reason, after I called him Ignat, I really want to rename him to Misha, all the more-I remembered that his name was so, so the second was driven by the bear, but I will manifest the firmness of the spirit and leave Ignat). He sat down for fraud. Its chief took industrial loaders under the lease agreements, Ignat distilled them, and then the boss then shamelessly sold them. As Ignat himself said - and this is indirectly confirmed by the fact that, taking the equipment, he presented his real passport - he was not very much in the subject of the whole scheme and did not think that he could go to jail for this. They took it after the twelfth loader.

Sergey Kubanoid. In his own words, the victim of the arbitrariness of the FSKN. He was a manager at a construction site. He told some extremely implausible story about how he was thrown by 600 ecstasy tablets. Well, they throw drugs - everything is very believable here, they do it. But why so much ecstasy instead of, for example, five grams of heroin? Kubanoid made a very honest face to this question and shook his hands: "I do not know."

Seryoga Old Man. The nickname was assigned to him because of the Belarusian roots. Professional site: out of 46 lived years, 23 seized. Together with us, the firstsides, he sat like a criminal record in Russia. But he managed to sit back in the time of the USSR. He visited the Arkhangelsk region and in Kazakhstan. All the deadlines were small, crimes such as the robbery of the Selpo. But a bunch of prison tanks and words.

He reported the following about his current conclusion:

- In life I did not think that he would sit in Russia;

- Never again in Belarus (such a desire is easy

understand);

- Even in Belarus they do not plant for what he is sitting in Russia.

Here is the story of his crime. He stole a bottle of vodka from the Pyaterochka store. Naturally, he was drunk. As a previously sitting, he knows the Criminal Code well, or rather some of his provisions. Serega suggested that the price of a bottle of vodka does not imply criminal liability. When he left the store, the saleswoman shouted to him: "Man, man!" And he did not react. The investigator interpreted this not as the theft, but as a robbery. Theft is a hidden theft, robbery is open. For a person, the difference, perhaps, may not be obvious. Therefore, I inform you that for the hidden theft of a bottle of vodka - a fine, for open - up to four years. Here you need to make a reservation. The law and the provisions of the Supreme Court give the impression that no, it is impossible to give four years for a bottle of vodka. But the practice of courts approves the opposite.

One way or another, when choosing a preventive measure, the judge did not arrest the father (which, in fact, was correctly shocked by the investigator), but released a non -departure subscription.

After a couple of weeks, the Old Man fell under the car. Having come to his senses and having reached, he decided not to appear with the investigator, but to continue to live, as he thought earlier. Soon he came across in a store on the theft of a bottle of cognac. Then the investigator decided not to wise with the form of theft, but simply attributed to him the first crime of this bottle of cognac to make the size of the robbery significant. This time, the court sent the father to the pre -trial detention center.

In general, he was lucky. Shortly before the crime, he thumped with a random fellow traveler in the Sokolniki park, and he stuffed him and surrounded him with something. The old man woke up without money, the phone, partially without clothes and with signs of frostbite. That is why, after long trips between the Moscow pre -trial detention center, which refused to accept it, the Old Man eventually got into the "sailor silence" - the Moscow prison hospital, where they left. In general, the normal company has matched.

And this is what our camera looked like.

Illustration: Oleg Navalny

Two people cannot disperse in the aisle. Along one wall, there are two bunk bunks, along the other there is a table, a washbasin and a toilet. Probably twelve meters of the total area.

It would seem that it should be unbearably crowded and smelly, taking into account the fact that the door to the toilet and normal ventilation. In fact - nothing like that. The first couple of days it seems that it is cramped, and then even spacious. It is amazing that the toilet also did not cause much concern. With the advent of the dads in the cell, everyone took his joke and always threw the sitting on the toilet: "Do not tear, come in handy." In prison, they generally love jokes about the ass and toilet humor: “At night, the ass is the queen” and all that.

The new arrivals just saw my struggle about the notebook with an unmanned plan. Well, that is, it is difficult to call it a struggle. Just in the morning I wrote a few complaints, after which new cellmates joined me. There are no phones, there is no telik, there is still nothing to lose.

With the mattress of Ignat, when moving, a reverse of my metamorphosis occurred. Ignat thought that he was going to the punishment cell, so he gave his chubby, assembled in the year of sitting the mattress, and he took another - consisting of almost one fabric. In a week he managed to achieve a new one.

I sagited the cellmates for the mass filing of complaints, and with their help, for example, we got that we were repaired by the inspector’s call button. She lit a light bulb on the remote control. True, the inspector did not respond to the light bulb, I had to pound the doorbell, so the working button was not needed for FIG. But the process itself was important for us-to force the administration to do something.

In the same way, we fixed the radio. It was an epoch -making event. The radio either worked, then no, then they forgot to turn it on. Actually, in the entire building, the working radio worried only us - everyone else had teliks and mobile devices.

I used non -working radio as the main means of blackmail. I complained about him to every human rights group that visited us, and it happened almost once a week. As a result, the radio was done, but as part of a hard stalk, the deputy chief ordered the “business fm” to put. In principle, this is a normal station. The main thing is not to listen to it for more than an hour in a row, because then repetitions begin.

Fortunately, the subordinates mixed up and set up the Echo of Moscow. This, of course, is better, but not very much - to listen to news radio for days is hard.

And to all this meanness of the administration on the radio (when it, of course, it worked), DFM played. In my opinion, they have only ten songs in rotation. All my beloved was "this is not a joke, we met in a minibus." She was sang in chorus and dancing. Later, in IK-5 “Naryshkino”, she pursued me in a schizo and on Susa.

On Echo of Moscow, music is extremely rare. Once I heard the announcement that in the evening there would be some kind of celebrity visiting and will put her favorite music. I begged the warden to leave the radio for an hour. This was enough to have time to hear the first song of the program: "Ah-ah-and a green parrot!" My indignation knew no bounds.

I have a good relationship with each of the sidelski. Mostly sitting peacefully. Of course, everyone managed to quarrel with each-after all, the tightness of the space had to do this. But everything passed quite Light, without dancing death.

Above Moldova, I constantly joked jokes about Moldavian. Well, you know, like: "From Moldova, an application for inclusion of apples in the program of the Olympic Games has received." But he joked mostly kindly, he was not offended. And then, when coal arrived in the program, I drew him on the sheet with which he curtained his place, such a drawing.

Illustration: Oleg Navalny

He was very happy. With Kubanoid, we played chess. In a pre -trial detention center, one set of dominoes, checkers or chess on a camera or ten people is laid in a pre -trial detention center. We got dominoes. In Domino, we also chopped cheerfully, but what a prison without chess? We decided to make their own, from a bread crumb. In a pre -trial detention center, everything is made from bread crumb: there are actually no restrictions on coming from relatives, so they did not even eat bread even close. When you go along the Butyrka, you can see the mountains of the Bukhanki bricks that the prisoners throw out in the morning. But in the camp, on the contrary, there is always not enough bread. Of course, there are no wars for soldering, but there is no excess either.

To sculpt from the crumb is quite easy. Everything, of course, greatly depends on bread. Sometimes they brought so raw that it was possible to immediately sculpt. But usually the crumb still needs to be softened in the water and wrinkle it for a long time. Then add salt or sugar. Then even wrinkle. Then squeeze through the toe. The result is a pure fabric. Items from it are almost glass. Accordingly, adding various ingredients, you can change color: ashes - gray, many ashes - black, toothpaste - white, etc.

But we did not have a goal to do chess for centuries. For a couple of days, Kubanoid and Batei took turns crushing the crumb, added salt and for some reason dry cream, after which we took up a figure modeling. The figures were approximately like that.

Illustration: Oleg Navalny

We painted white with toothpaste, black - paste mixed with coal. It turned out very high, directly a work of art.

Once I got a draw. I lost all the rest. Kubanoid was noticeably stronger than me in chess. Actually, like a dad. Ignat did not know how to play chess at all, and Kubanoid began to teach him. It was hilariously funny.

The Kubanoid then carried these chess with him from the hut to the hut along the Butyrka and surprised them with all - he already told me after the liberation: he called from the Rostov zone where he was looking at the dining room. But at the stage, of course, I didn’t take it, and the chesss would not have suffered hardships.

Batya poisoned us stories about his prison life and all kinds of vital and vicissitudes. For example, about how he was hiding from criminal prosecution in the alienation zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Or about how I robbed Selpo: I stole a bunch of cans with a condensed milk from there, then carried them with some kind of Marukha, they arranged a halt ... But how to open canned food, if there is no cerebral knife, but there is only a drunken Marouha? Well, all sorts of stories about sexual adventures.

By the way, I noticed an unnatural correlation: the more time the ZEK spent in places of imprisonment, the more he has shoes on the topic of sex. Some bati bikes were absolutely wild - such as the robbery of the St. Petersburg transgender (the story consisted of several actions with the intermission!). There was also a textbook, I heard it several times later: the prisoner to get acquainted with the chick, back and forth, they are with her, and at some point he notices a police tunic in the bathroom (for some reason always in the bathroom). It turns out that the chick is a cop. After that, the prisoner asks the heifer to put on the tunic, sexual intercourse (of course, anal) should be, during which the ZEK is saying (who knows, let's in chorus): “Hero, in your face I am the whole Soviet police.”

Well, everything is like that.

At the same time, it turned out that all sorts of stories about implanting extraneous objects into their childbearing organ (somewhere I read, that even mouse ears implant)-this is all absolutely true. Bati, for example, had two balls (blurred from what material). At first there were three, but one over the years it was rejected by the body. The kid in shock examined this case in the bath. And I did not become something, strange somehow.

In general, we did not miss much and, as it seemed to me, became slightly friends. Although, of course, there is no friendship in prison. This is not the place where it would be smart to make friends. But in constrained circumstances you quickly become attached. And when I left for the stage, we had a rather sentimental atmosphere in our cell.

Well, then all my cellmates were absolutely adequate characters. With the exception of Bati, I would not call any of them criminals. Yes, and Dad himself - he served half his life and, out of habit, he would constantly go to jail.

Fate.

Oleg Navalny. “3 1/2. With prisoner respect and fraternal warmth. ” Moscow, publishing house Individuum, 2018.