“Prisoners understand what is happening much better”: monologue of Vyacheslav Egorov, who has just been released from the colony

I left the colony a little over a week ago. In prison you live in such a way that it is simply impossible to think about release all the time, to plan something - you will go crazy. Therefore, everything goes as it goes. And the day of liberation is the same ordinary day as any other.

When you are met by friends, relatives, close people with whom we went all this way with the trash heap , even strangers come to support you - it’s incredible. When you hug everyone, talk, you feel a surge of positive emotions, and some of them traveled six hours from Moscow just to meet me.

I felt such support throughout my entire imprisonment, in fact. Both acquaintances and friends wrote to me, but I was especially struck by the number of letters from strangers. They learned about my case from human rights organizations and from posts on Facebook. Several people were constantly in touch with me: they wrote to me first in the pre-trial detention center, then in the colony once a week or two. When I left, I found out that some letters never reached me.

Throughout the first week after release, I acclimatized and communicated with relatives and friends. He immediately went to work at a real estate agency, where he had worked before. They really waited for me there and supported me the whole time I was in prison, both morally and financially.

I'm just getting back to work for now. This is a long process, because the market has changed, and many unresolved problems have accumulated over the year. But I need to earn money, so I’m now in a fighting mood - I’ve taken over all the remaining tasks and am getting used to new processes.