rusty boiling water
There is no hot water in our barracks. You wash yourself every day over the toilet bowl, pouring water from a plastic bucket over your cunt, the water warmed beforehand in a large vat.
When you’ve lived in the colony for a bit, you get hold of a washtub and a ladle. You have to write your name on it or someone will snatch it.
washtub and ladle
Major Ignatov had specific notions of beauty.
‘The colony should gleam and sparkle,’ he said, before the next human rights commission arrived.
In the unit, there were fifty iron bunks. Half of them were an inch higher than the others.
‘The beds must be level,’ the major insisted. ‘And clean up the mess!’
for every idea, there is a woman
We cleaned up the mess. We heaved half the beds on to their sides and, grabbing them by their iron legs, dragged them out to the warehouse. We got new beds there. They were the right height.
‘Where’s the warehouse?’ I had asked before I dragged the first bed.
‘In the bomb shelter,’ I was told. ‘You’ve been in the camp for half a year now, you should know that.’
‘Where?’ I asked in disbelief.
‘The bomb shelter!’ she yelled. ‘Got it?’
half a year
For extended visits, the women get ready like it’s their wedding day. ‘Have you got your purse with you? Have you remembered everything?’ they ask each other.
Husbands and children come for extended visits – the husbands that haven’t walked out, that is. When it sinks in that their wives will be stuck behind bars for years to come, they usually abandon their women.
Wives don’t abandon their husbands, though. Often, women bring enormous bales of goods they’ve hauled thousands of miles for their husbands in prison.
The rooms for the extended visits are tiny – a bedside table, a bed with an old bedcover, a window. A window with bars.
You can make lunch together. You can play with your child. You can sit and look at one another.
making lunch
‘What’s that?’
‘Sheets for sushi rolls.’
‘For what?’
‘Sushi rolls,’ I say. ‘You know, a yummy Japanese thing made with rice.’
The conversation is taking place in the kitchen. It’s spring. I have come back from an extended visit with a package of boiled rice and seaweed sheets.
Within five minutes, all the girls from the unit are there.
Pickles, peppers, avocado – all the vegetables my family brought me during the visit. I roll them up in the rice and seaweed sheets, arrange my sushi rolls on a board.
‘Why has everyone gathered in the kitchen?’ I ask my friend. She is standing next to me; we’re talking quietly.
‘Because most of them have never tasted sushi,’ she replies in a whisper.
‘Have you?’ I ask.
‘No. I haven’t, either.’
Do you see these walls? And all of us, inside? If we cannot destroy them
inside the walls
That evening, we listened to ‘L’Estaca’. The song would never have got past the censor if my poet friends had not hid it so well. They recorded it on a CD, and at the beginning and end put on some Bach and Beethoven. Sandwiched between the classics was this old Spanish revolutionary anthem, sung in Russian.
The Arkady Kotz band, old friends, first performed it on the day we were sentenced. Outside the court.
‘Let’s destroy this prison,
Tear down these unjust walls.
Let them tumble to the ground,
Let them fall, fall, fall!’
‘The guards took me to the office and told me they’ll make our lives a living hell because you’ve come back to the unit’ the monitor of unit No. 11 said. ‘Stay strong,’ she said, barely audibly, ‘It’s going to be rough.’
padlocks
Lena was in Unit No. 2 and I was in No. 11. There was a road between our barracks, and a square where they did rollcall. Twice a day, we formed a queue: morning and evening. In cold and heat, snow and rain.
Our block, like all the others in the colony, was cordoned off with perimeter wire fencing and gates with electric locks. Lena walked in formation with her unit, and I in mine. We barely met, but when we did – in the dining hall, the sick bay – she would pass me pay slips. Wages that were far below the minimum. The names of those dying of tuberculosis, the names of guards who had violated the prisoners’ rights.
wire fences
May 2013. Putin has been in the presidential chair for just over a year, and I have been behind bars for just over a year. I have filed for parole. Ahead of my hearing, Lena and I collected all the information we could about the colony so that I could broadcast it, using the court – which we both knew would never release me early – as a mouthpiece, a forum for our grievances.
lena
Lena was not afraid of risks. She laughed in Martsenyuk’s face when he screamed at her, threatening her with disciplinary measures. I wasn’t afraid, either. Not only was I unafraid, I was proud – of the improvements in the barracks, of the increase in wages. We were both proud that, over the previous six months, eight guards who had systematically robbed prisoners of their wages had been fired.
I kept the records at the very bottom of my box of belongings, tucked away in the storage room. Among the photographs of my son and my friends. Separate from photographs of her. Lena had given them to me as a memento.
records at the very bottom
I don’t know who betrayed us. There were dozens of women following our every move. The records disappeared in the first search after they had been hidden. From that day on, searches were carried out daily. All the women’s bags were turned inside out. Our unit head, Nikolayeva, was demoted. They hung padlocks on the perimeter gates of my and Lena’s units. Everyone would now suffer because of our record keeping. Everyone who came near us.
That month, they blocked the telephones. They stopped giving us our letters. They threw someone in solitary for eating at the same table as me.
i know in hell i will be
I was not brought to the court for my parole hearing. I participated via videoconference. From the club. Of course, I was denied parole. Life in the colony turned into hell. I declared a hunger strike.
When a prisoner goes on hunger strike, they have to put you in isolation by law, in the sick bay, and keep track of your health.
‘You have work to do, Maria Vladimirovna,’ Martsenyuk said to me with a half-smile. ‘And you have to be there for the full eight hours of your shift.’ He adds: ‘And no sanatorium.’
On the first day, I just had cramps in my stomach. On the second, my head started to spin. I sewed for eight hours straight. Straight stitches on the sleeves. Head spinning. I drank water directly from the tap. Icy-cold water and May sunshine.
drinking may sunshine
It takes no time to make a buttonhole. Those two rows of zigzag stitching you see if you examine a buttonhole – the sewing machine can do them in about ten seconds. Then a blade cuts the slot in the centre. After that you turn the fabric, and sew again. Zigzag up one side, zigzag down the other, then down comes the blade. Shift. Buttonhole, blade. Next piece. I make buttonholes in uniforms.
shift. buttonhole. blade.
Now, no one talks to me in the unit. If they do, they’ll end up in solitary. I drink water from a plastic mug in the corner of the kitchen. Someone holds me by the arm during roll call on the square.
‘Even if she achieves nothing,’ I hear the voice of the unit monitor behind me saying, ‘at least she’s trying.’
On the third day, my blood pressure falls to ninety.
‘She’ll work until she drops,’ Martsenyuk says. ‘Can’t you just say that she’s eating in the unit?’ he asks the unit head indignantly. ‘Why not? Why do you refuse to write that?’
the major with a braid
‘I declare a hunger
strike. I demand the removal of the padlocks from the fence gates of units No. 2 and No. 11. I demand the guards stop accompanying me.’
Major Nikolayeva wears a blond braid down to her waist. She has big eyes and a sturdy body. She is the head of my unit. The prisoners say, ‘She’s like a mother to us, don’t you understand?’ I do. Almost. One of Major Nikolayeva’s official tasks is to keep the Individual Prisoner’s Diaries, in which she describes in detail what she knows of each of my days. Every step I take goes into my personal file, which is bound with white thread when the notebook is full. It is the ninth day of my hunger strike. Major Nikolayeva summons me to her office, which looks like the room of a schoolgirl, and my prisoner’s diary looks like her homework. Major Nikolayeva, with her blond braid, is not like the other heads, and does not know how to behave like one. She speaks to me amiably.
‘Masha.’
She’s not sure where to begin. She has been entrusted with too much responsibility, and she is tired. Every guard is tired here, and I am, too. It’s my ninth day of hunger strike, and the press is writing about it.
‘Masha, you speak about human rights, don’t you? Do you know what my wages are?’
human rights
I know. I know what this question is leading up to, an appeal for my pity. Because enough is enough. $110 a month. Your salary is already low; and you have children, a family to care for. You have to pay utilities. You have a holiday coming up, and you should be getting a bonus. But I’m on a hunger strike and there will be no bonus for you, Major Nikolayeva. Never mind the bonus, there might not even be a pay cheque, there might not even be a job. You’ve already been demoted. You’re not able to manage. You can’t control the situation. You think there’s nothing you can do; that it’s not your fault. And I understand you. Big eyes. As blue as the sky in June in Berezniki.
‘Masha, why do you insist on these human rights, if we are all worse off? It’s worse for both of us. What do you want to change? What?’
no bonus, major
She doesn’t understand, and I don’t completely understand myself. Her eyes fill up with tears, but the tears stay in her eyes. You are not completely powerless, after all, Major Nikolayeva. But the prisoners, they do shed their tears.
But, Masha, they tell me: we don’t need wages; we don’t need washbasins; we don’t need food from the store. Your so-called human rights. Turn things back to the way they used to be, Masha. We managed to survive somehow; we may not have lived very well, but we lived. Go away, Masha. Go away. Leave Berezniki.
go away
Major Nikolayeva’s office has many books, even books about politics. There is one about President Yeltsin and the 1990s. I grew up in the 1990s, and Yeltsin spent his childhood in Berezniki. I look at the major and ask her forgiveness. I won’t stop my hunger strike.
I would like to live my life in such a way that whatever I leave behind has something to do with freedom and truth, and not with the emptiness that these words become as I speak them.
‘There’s not much time,’ I say to my friend on the phone. ‘They want to transfer me to another colony. They’ve asked Moscow for permission. Soon, they will get it. My meetings with human rights advocates cause them too much stress. That’s for sure. I know. I’m a problem for them. They want to solve this problem; they want to get rid of me, move on.’
i’m a problem
My friend doesn’t believe me. Because I have no evidence.
‘Maybe a transfer is better, Masha? They’ve almost broken you.’
What do they understand, people on the outside? ‘Almost broken you.’ They don’t understand a thing. It doesn’t matter whether I’m broken or not – the result is what matters. The thieves are being fired. Wages are going up. They’re improving the barracks. The ice is starting to crack. I had spent half a year in a single cell, which is no joke, and this is my third hunger strike. But whether it’s a joke or not, the results are real.
‘Blood pressure 80. To the sick bay for an injection.’
‘Hang up the phone!’
blood pressure 80
I don’t want to leave Berezniki, and I don’t really know why. The sky is lower here and, surprisingly, more dear to me. It’s hard here, of course. There are just over one thousand women prisoners. They’ve all been deprived of telephone calls for a month. They were told: shut Alyokhina up and you can use the phone again. Some were deprived of the chance to see their familes; some were denied early release. The price of this war, the war I declared on the jailers, has become too great. I feel the tears of the prisoners every day.
‘Blood pressure 70. No phone calls until you stop the hunger strike.’
blood pressure 70
Of course, in another colony, it would be easier. The story would begin again: the directive would come from Moscow, from the highest powers, to give me whatever I want. Anything I want: to work in the library, interact with the other prisoners. ‘Her term’s almost over. Shut her up.’ Shut me up. Enough with the human rights delegations, enough with the human rights. Or whatever you call it.
earlier
‘We never have any milk!’
‘The climate is harsh in the Urals. It’s winter for half the year. It’s dark; you don’t get the vitamins you need.’
‘Is this all?’ Martsenyuk says, sighing wearily.
‘No! Drinking coffee without milk is disgusting!’
‘The coffee itself is disgusting,’ he grumbles, closing the door.
A month later, milk appears in the store for the first time at Penal Colony No. 28.
milk in the urals
So much has been achieved. I won’t stop the hunger strike. Here’s a woman who won’t see her son for another three years. We’ve achieved so much, but she won’t see her son. She is from my unit. She sits on a bench, her head drooping – grey hair in the June breeze. She says:
‘Maybe it was better the way it was before, Masha?’
‘Don’t you see? People are suffering!’
‘Why do you need all this? Why do you care?’
Why?
a loan
‘Masha, could you lend me a pack of smokes until Friday?’ one of the girls in her blue prison uniform asks me.
‘Sure,’ I say.
As soon as she leaves the storage room, another girl, in a green uniform, approaches me. She says, ‘She went to the head of surveillance to report all your movements. She goes there every day and reports every single move you make. And you give her cigarettes,’ the girl says indignantly. ‘You should give them to me, instead,’ she adds.
‘Take them,’ I say.
The unit monitor tells me: ‘They talk behind your back. They say, “She doesn’t give a damn. She doesn’t give a damn about us. She just sits there reading Lenin.” Go and do something – show them what you’re made of. Otherwise, they’ll never shut up.’
never shut up
I do not refer to the guards in the colony other than as ‘the staff’. I show them respect.
Major Ignatov invites me to meet him in a large room. This is the guards’ club, where I won my court case. But the court is not in session today. He is sitting in an armchair at an oak table. He is sitting in an armchair, certain that the room is his domain, that the court case meant nothing at all. It is many days into my hunger strike.
Major Ignatov has received orders to persuade me to stop my hunger strike. He invites me to sit down at the negotiating table. My legs are shaking. The major has a red face. His eyes squint. The major speaks cautiously. Over the past half-year, we have both learned to choose our words carefully. The major doesn’t wish me harm. He doesn’t wish anything at all, except for me not to be here. Me and the lawyer, the journalists, the human rights advocates. He is tired, but he carries out the orders from Moscow. He asks me to join him at the table, starts negotiating.
the major has orders
He asks me what I want, though he already knows what I want. He put padlocks on the gates of my unit. He did it to
punish everyone around me. He showed the colony that my unit was being punished. He put a padlock on the door of my ward in the sick bay. He put padlocks on every door I have to enter or exit. He very much wants me not to be here at all. He threatens every prisoner who attempts to communicate with me. He threatens them with extending their sentence, with solitary confinement; he raises his voice and is quick to anger. He frightens the colony, he even scares himself; but for some reason he doesn’t frighten me. He has an order from Moscow, and he doesn’t know what to do. He must be the man in charge, he’s wearing the uniform. He must be the chief, he has the epaulettes. Major Ignatov invites me to sit at the negotiating table.
negotiating table
What kind of compromise can there be, Major? I can propose no compromise: you punished the women, they wept. They wept because of you. I hear them crying at night. I won’t stop my hunger strike until you take the padlocks away. He peers at me. Honestly cautious – a question: ‘Is it really only about the padlocks?’ No, Major, it is not only about the padlocks. It is a matter of principle.
Freedom in prison is an understanding you have to come to. Understanding their power, and living otherwise. Not being afraid to say no to them, taking a risk. Not being afraid to be alone in taking a risk. Not being afraid to make a mistake.
Riot Days Page 12