"I am a little bulk in the soul: if you can spread - why not!"

Meet: prisoner Alexander Paranuk. Thanks to him in one Russian colony, many began to read the texts of the "Medusa"

Yekaterinburger Alexander Paranuk hit the pre -trial detention center in 2014 - as he claims, on a fabricated accusation of drug distribution. Over the ten years of conclusion, Paranuk managed to become a video editor and a screenwriter, began to write poetry and stories, joined the skirmish with Evgeny Prigozhin, when he came to recruit the prisoners in Wagner's PMC, and also distributed a lot of Medusa publications in the Sverdlovsk colony, where he served part of the deadline. The specialor Lilia Yapparova talked with Paranuk about how war was perceived from the colony - and how ten years of lack of freedom influenced his attitude to what was happening in the country.

- How did you get to jail?

- I was framed by comrades from Moscow. In 2014, my main income was from a night hotel with beer-three points in Yekaterinburg. In parallel, I was engaged in logistics: Muscovites and I began to carry goods, then quarreled - and now they made me such a “gift”. They paid to familiar cops and brought me out of business.

I was detained at the house, brought me to the Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg, and there they already had a kilogram of powder in the box. In court, they then said that during the detention I held it in my hands, but refused to check the traces of DNA and fingerprints, although I asked for such an examination.

My court passed like a booth. When one of the Koltsovsky operatives began to be confused in the testimony, he just stopped answering my questions: “Why are you getting tired of me - I don’t remember anything!” It’s worth it and as if it scratches the cheek with the middle finger, but in fact, the fact is just showing me. And laughs.

For two episodes, according to the 228 article, they gave 14 years in total. And that operative two weeks after the trial, he crashed to death. They [the security forces involved in the verdict] Almost everyone died in general - do you know how in the "destination"? There is some kind of higher justice. I console myself like that.

- When were you sent to the colony?

-In 2017, after two years and nine months in a pre-trial detention center. During this time, I got confused and managed to win the ECHR. Do you know how the convicts lower each other on the rope through the notes and food? Once we were given tea, wrapped in a piece of paper with instructions, how to file a lawsuit in the European court. I was not at a loss: I collected written evidence from the cellmates that we have bad conditions here, but the leadership of the insulator is throwing all our complaints. And when I was transferred to the camp, in 2017, a notification came that Russia now owed me a compensation for 10.5 thousand euros-for being “under a long torture” in jail.

The overseer in the colony then told me that I had "betrayed his homeland." I answered him that he himself betrayed her, since he went to work in the Gufsin. I found the Putin’s classic camps - when they immediately hit and rape “offered”.

- Where did you sit?

-in IK-10 [Sverdlovsk region]. This is a strict regime, but for “first -time” - those who have not committed crimes before. At the acceptance there were all such polite ones: “Surname? Name? We take things, we pass. ” At first, everything seems to be clean, lawns. And when we went into the quarantine zone, they immediately beaten hard - to precipitate immediately.

[In the quarantine department] they forced to sign the paper that you undertake to "go to the operactel on everyone to knock" (this is so that those who adhere to criminal norms to become sad). Learned to yell the "master boss"; They forced to listen to some lectures on TV, after which you want to sleep. But if you start to peck with your nose, they immediately beat - and they are not the warders who seem to be at all in business, but the other convicts are Kapo .

The rest of the time we walked one after another to the courtyard - as in the picture "Walk of prisoners." She is a French artist - Van Gogh seems to be. After such a “quarantine” we were finally brought into the hut, they turned on the dubstep-and some kind of bacchanalia began. The seven Kapo man began to break us again: to beat, to mock. I immediately flew into my back, and then they told me to squat. Well, I get up between the beds, start to squat - and they forget about me. I just stood there and looked at this chaos: as one was dragging one by the legs, the other is forced to run in my arms. Someone cries, someone screams. Something satanic, but mixed with the children's game.

And suddenly it became so easy and good for me! I stand and think: “And the speakers are good here. And the tracks are not bad. " In prison, you rarely meet good music: in one cruel pre -trial detention center in Tagil, for example, they include children's radio for the whole day - and people are beaten.

It was impossible to talk at first, questions - you can’t look at the sky - you can’t look: "Do you look at the plane - maybe you want to run away?" As a result, I found something monastic in this [in bullying]-as if they were not forced to, and I myself hold such a ascetic. When I went to work, it became easier.

- Who did you work in the colony?

- I was sent to television studio. There is such not only in our colony - there is a warm place where you will not hammer the ice in the cold. They show their news there once a week - say, on Saturdays; And the rest of the time they broadcast Match-TV, Russia 24, the Home channel.

I conducted the news [for prisoners of the colony]: I shot myself, I learned to mount it myself. He released the newspaper. In general, he occupied one computer and provided cover for everyone else who was spinning there. A bunch of computers stood in the television studio, and all the other convicts were not engaged in news there, but worked for the colony: they programmed, tuned servers, and counted. There was a censor - he watched films, which then to show the convicts so that the chest would not flash anywhere.

Although I myself mounted the issues myself and no one after me checked them, I did not speak completely freely. Once, we almost got into a triangory with a demand to stop being beaten. Not even a rebellion, but a peaceful rally. Then the armored personnel carrier drove up, the special forces were adjusted, but [inside the colony] he was never brought up, because the convicts bargained with his superiors. In the news, I did not say anything about the riot. Therefore, I like that you are not lying at Medusa at Medusa. That you did not go to half measures when everyone began to turn it over under the Kremlin.

I drove the rest of the term as a computer scientist - I worked for the chief of the detachment. He tried to teach him that [to delete already written] it is not necessary to press Backspace 50 times - you can simply select [the previous text] and start printing. He asked me to "leave all these tricks for later."

In general, I worked at the computer instead of a detachment - and at the same time printed a press and books on my official printer. The detachment was not care about, because I then sold books, and with this money I took paper and paint - and if it weren’t for me, then he would have to get it all this.

[Among other things] he pumped up and printed the articles “Medusa”, read it calmly - well, and where I read it, I gave it to others. Not like in a revolutionary novel, of course, he ran with leaflets behind the bosom, but distributed your publication in a colony. I am a bully in the soul a little: if you can distribute the prohibited organization or book from this fucking federal list of extremist materials - why not! He gave it to read to trusted people who will not run to knock. Thank God, no one handed me away.

The news is interesting to everyone, the guys often asked to "give read." But there was one spherical quilted jacket in a vacuum, which every morning went to include Russia 24. When I sometimes slipped something to read something, he immediately spit with poison: "Printed for American money!"

The forbidden book of [Alexander] Litvinenko “FSB is exploding Russia” we all re -read. But the "Ulysses" [James] Joyce I gave no matter how much, no one read it. But the books on self -development were often asked to print - like how to turn on with money, about “successful success”. People want to forget.

I myself have read Solzhenitsyn almost everything, Dostoevsky in all. [Gary Jennings's historical novel] “Aztte” read, where everyone kills and rape each other, is well written.

Time flies quickly in prison, there are few impressions-and in 2018 I [myself] began to write all sorts of stories, rhymes; I even want to ask you to mention that "there is such a scribble." In the poems, I just have urban landscapes, in which something very simple happens-and at the same time, after all this, some beauty is lost. Did you read Boris Red? Here's something, maybe similar. And there are stories about the railway workers who thought that they had shot down a person, but in fact they just had an owl froze to the train. About soldiers who dropped an important object in the ice hole and cannot get it.

With me, the warders once selected poetry from a person in a few years - and simply threw it away. Therefore, I threw them away to my mother in order to be sure that it would remain. Mom laid out ; I even had fans. I tried not to be lost. And then, it happened, you think: "Did you have a year for a year?" But you look at the poetry-and there was something.

- Do you write now?

- The last month I get sick, so less often. But in general, they facilitated the regime for good behavior and transferred from the colony to exile to Kamyshlov [Sverdlovsk region], for forced labor at the plant. I am obliged to spend the night in a hostel, but I can go to the city. And here, phones and laptops are already allowed where you can write.

There are 30 thousand inhabitants in Kamyshlov - and everything is in sight. This is a town on the outskirts, here it remains only to sleep. And all local cones: security officials, judges, businessmen - hold a bunch. Everyone “strokes” each other and solve issues through gopniks and cops.

I feel myself here as in the film “Leviathan”: when he was sued in a local court at Udo, the chairman called the local menta-leader right with me. He told him: "Tell Paranuku to take the documents yourself." They never accepted them.

Judges of the Kamyshlovsky are a lazy casa of some moles. If now I will sue the factory where I work, it will be a problem. The production here is harmful, and they make me walk without a mask - right where welding is, where the sand is concrete. You yourself hear: my lungs are tilted [cough], I already want to spit them out. I even got a small video recorder to remove working conditions - suddenly I get a lawsuit to roll.

In the [himself] gufsin people do not go for the salary: she is small here, besides, they are very drugged for her. They go to feel at least a little by the tops of fate. I’m going to sign, and the wedding fell at the very beginning of the May holidays. Inspectors are worried that on May 9 someone is swelling-they put an increase in a week. And because of this strengthening, they tell me that "maybe we will not let you out [from the hostel] to marry-or let out with the cop to the arm." And laugh.

- How did you meet the bride?

- While I am sitting in Kamyshlov, I opened an unofficial business in a sublease business: I take off my monthly, I hand over the daily rent. She somehow rented an apartment from me, we talked with her-and after ten days we decided to get married. Yes, they quickly decided, but somehow converged-maybe what kind of love. At least something good Kamyshlov gave me.

- And how did you meet the beginning of the war in the zone?

- They rejoiced that “we will now capture Ukraine”, that a “little victorious war” will be held. There are always people who will repeat behind the TV.

And then Prigozhin came to our colony. The overseers were told by the DVR [from the chest] to remove, we were built on a parade ground, even some kind of helicopter flew by-it all seemed to me so cheap! And this speech is about the fact that "your criminal talents will be useful to the state." Some kind of film about [John] Rambo for the poor. But Prigozhin knew where to beat - how to call for base instincts. “It’s good that you are killers-we will give missiles, they will shoot them,” something twitched for people.

At the end of his recitative Prigozhin is this: "There will be questions?" And I decided that I would ask one. He asked: “You propose to go under the bullets, without pieces of paper [at the stage of sending to the front], believing that they will let us go in six months? This is when we were already inflated by everyone who could - both judges and investigators? " He is to me: yes, take your word. “Well, thanks then, all the best. Reluctance, ”I tell him.

When a bunch of our convicts broke in the PMC at once, I realized how this marketing works. Since childhood, we begin to play on these strings that "to die for their homeland is honorable." More than a hundred people left our colony, and when many of them remained alive, it worked as additional advertising. But from the new set of alive, much less remains.

The recruiting was connected to the colonels of supervision. Their attitude towards us was as if they had sold meat. And only when prisoners began to record in the PMCs who, in the colony, for the guards, worked in highly qualified positions like programmers or doctors, the administration began to pull them back to the camp - so as not to look for a replacement for them later.

Then Wagner's PMC stopped recruiting - and the Ministry of Defense began to ride. There was a very young guy, nicknamed "Holy" - he was killed in the first battle. Another acquaintance had only a year and a half remained before the call, but he still signed up [to the front], and his hand was torn off in the first battle.

- What else of the events in the outside world is reflected in the zone?

- Yes, even the war was not reflected in almost any way: those who have recruited left, and as if there were no them. In Russia, everyone doesn’t give a shit: the drones crash into Moscow, there will soon be nothing left of Belgorod at all - and everyone is just a desire to turn away. And in the zone the same thing. Well, a little more controversy has become, a crap Putin or a good one.

The terrorist attack in Crocus did not touch anyone here - here people are already without such a function as sympathy. Well, the guard at the factory [in Kamyshlov] shouted at me once, the Tajik illegal trains who work for us: "There was no one to walk, otherwise they blew up in Moscow!" Household racism was instead of sympathy.

The death of Navalny almost did not notice. I even spoke with some - they say: “Well, what? It was clear that they would kill him. ” You see, everything was clear to everyone. The man disappeared from the field of view - and that’s it.

On the eve of the elections, they gave a lecture “On the Prevention of Extremism” - as they did not even really explain in which “extremist communities” they could not be and which “extremist slogans” could not be allowed.

They drove us to vote through the forest, into some kind of booth, so that the “white people” do not embarrass. I ruined the ballot, I went out - they handed the calendar, which I immediately threw it away, and the iron anniversary medal "90 years of the Sverdlovsk region." All our convicts were very pleased with such a souvenir.

To be honest, when we were released to vote, first I escaped to the bride-I thought that they did not sleep, that I was not in the election. But still they burned, and I had to reach the site. I understood a little this system of ours: a lazy creature that grinds everyone ruthlessly, but may not notice.

I once easily took what was given to me for 14 years; When they beat in the camp, he convinced himself that the monk was holding on. But on February 9, 2023, when I was released from the colony, so that I myself got to forced labor in Kamyshlov, I became so bad that I wanted to kill myself.

Because for ten years there was some hope that "everything is around, because I am still in prison, but now I will free up and sigh, as I once sighed." And I left the colony, walked around Yekaterinburg - and it was a feeling as if I was just going to prison with an easier regime. In each allege, the camera is shone in the subway. Immediately disgusted.

Russia in its current form is just a larger prison. And if the overseer does not slow down and not upset, he will become more and more impudent: “Well, do something, be a little fish, but only you will be displayed-you will immediately understand what you are holding for a million threads.”

Remember, I told how we were beaten under Dubstep, but it became so good for me ... And it seems like Dubstep play ... It was also a protective reaction-like the whole of Russia now: “Well, somehow a flight. Reluctance to look there. ”

Talked by Lilia Yapparova