My Fellow Prisoners

by Mikhail Khodorkovsky

  But where does Volodya come into this?

  He was admitted to the same hospital as the man who died. But the hospital of the first prison!

  A prison hospital (for those fortunate enough not to know) is essentially the same prison with the same cells, and, if you are recuperating in one cell, you might only find out what’s going on in the other cells through prison correspondence.

  The deceased man and our new cellmate never met – on this all the doctors and supervisors agreed unanimously. But this is by no means the biggest absurdity. The report stated that Volodya broke nineteen of the man’s ribs with two punches. Anyone who has ever done any boxing or karate will tell you that this is impossible. It is quite possible, however, to break the ribs of a sick prisoner lying helplessly on the floor by stamping on them with heavy special-forces jackboots.

  It’s also impossible to transfer someone who’s taken such a beating from one remand centre to another, moreover from one hospital to another, without anybody noticing anything. But then, as it turned out, it’s entirely possible to ascribe the incident to another remand centre and thereby muddle everything up completely.

  The case hung around for almost two years until circumstances aligned: a request not to release a man, and an old unsolved investigation …

  After that it was just down to technicalities. You only need a couple of seasoned lags, one of whom had shared a cell with the guy who was killed, while the other had been in the neighbouring cell – and you explain their options in the simplest terms (either they pin it on the relevant person, or else …).

  And so of course one of them ‘saw’ it happen, the other ‘heard’ it. And there you have it, bang to rights. Off to court!

  The judge doesn’t ‘trust’ the evidence of the doctors or the supervisors, or the log-book entries detailing transfers from cell to cell. Nor does he give any credibility to the doctors’ notes and testimony that the deceased was transferred to the second prison without the injuries from a savage beating. But he believes sure enough the people who ‘saw’ and ‘heard’ it. They were specially brought in from a prison colony. So that’s it. Guilty.

  Over the past few days Volodya had been in a dire state. The investigators were trying to persuade him to confess, saying he wouldn’t get much added to his sentence. But if he didn’t, he’d get the full works.

  He asked my advice. I confirmed that they weren’t bluffing. But, beyond that, it was a matter for his conscience. And so Volodya refused to confess to the crime. He said to me: ‘I wouldn’t be able to look into the eyes of my friends, my family.’

  My trial ended soon afterwards, so I only heard about the outcome of his case when I was already in Karelia. It was as predicted.

  You might think that nothing like this could ever happen to you. After all, you don’t go around stealing from supermarkets or siphoning money out of the accounts of police bureaucrats. But then, as our country’s history goes to show, many have thought just the same, until it so happens that their highly desirable apartment has caught the eye of their neighbour-informer.

  When people can be kicked to death, when courts are prepared to cover up crimes and convict the innocent, decent conduct is not the most convincing defence.

  The Witness

  I often find my thoughts returning to the question: what is conscience? How do we define what is ‘good’, and what do we feel ashamed of for the rest of our lives? When does conscience overcome fear, and when does fear overrule conscience?

  Lyosha Badayev is an ordinary young Buryat guy from a remote village. He has a round, wide face and black narrow eyes, as if permanently squinting. He doesn’t remember his parents; he was raised by his aunt. He only went to school for two years and then worked as a shepherd tending the communal flock.

  One ill-fated day he tackled a thief who was trying to steal a ram. He threw a rock at him and hit his head, but the thief turned out to be a tough cookie and quickly came round. Lyosha, who had just run up to him, got frightened; he panicked and did something fatal – he hit him with the rock again. And then again.

  Realizing what he had done, he abandoned the flock and made a run for it.

  He was caught by chance a few months later, a thousand kilometres from home, when he tried to steal something to eat.

  At his trial he was convicted of homicide – he got six and a half years. A fair sentence, given all the circumstances. He was sent to a juvenile penal colony and then to adult prison.

  I met Lyosha in the sewing workshop, where he’d found himself a refuge. He was a hard-working guy, quiet, inconspicuous.

  A short time after, I was given a reprimand and I filed a charge against the administration. I was surprised to discover that Lyosha was summoned as a witness. I had no doubt that he would say whatever was expected of him. There are many methods of ‘persuasion’ available in the camp.

  And so, the day of the trial. All the principal characters are assembled: the head of the camp, the head of operations, their deputies, with the chairman of the city court presiding.

  Lyosha is called to the witness stand. He is clearly confused and frightened. He speaks hesitantly … but he speaks the truth! My lawyer and I exchange glances, not understanding what’s going on. Our opponents look equally nonplussed.

  The judge lets Lyosha stand down. He goes out of the door, but a moment later comes back in.

  Lyosha points at the head of operations: ‘He gave me two packs of cigarettes and told me to lie.’

  I look at those sitting across from me. The screw is calm and composed on the outside, whereas his boss is slowly turning puce.

  ‘But I wasn’t going to lie, I told the truth. As for the cigarettes, here they are.’

  And he hands the judge a pack of L&Ms, admitting, ‘I smoked the other pack. I’ve never had cigarettes like these before.’

  Everyone is struck dumb.

  ‘So, I’ll be going then, or do you need anything else?’

  ‘Just go, you’ve said quite enough already,’ bellows the boss.

  Lyosha leaves; the dumb show continues.

  At last the court chairman pronounces: ‘Everything is in the court record. If anything should happen to this fellow, I’ll make sure the record is made public.’

  After the trial I go up to Lyosha.

  ‘Why on earth did you do that? You know only too well there’ll be trouble.’

  He raises his squinting eyes. ‘You haven’t done anything bad to me. I couldn’t do it.’

  And he walks off.

  Back to camp life and the inevitable payback. Sometimes, when coming out of the isolation wing, I’d learn that Lyosha was in there too. He’d been barred from the workshop. But whenever we happened to meet, he would smile and say, ‘Everything’s fine.’

  Soon enough everyone in the camp came to hear all about what had happened. And when I asked to be informed immediately if anyone should try at any point to beat Lyosha (this being the usual practice), I got an astonished reply: ‘Who would want to do that? The administration’s afraid, other prisoners now respect him …’

  Six months later I was moved to another prison. Lyosha’s term has now ended. What became of him? I don’t know, and I don’t want to enquire in case I cause him any trouble. But I hope very much that he goes through life with dignity and without fear.

  We make a deal with our conscience: we lie, keep quiet, don’t ‘notice’ things for the sake of a quiet life, we hide behind the interests of our nearest and dearest. We justify ourselves, saying that ‘these are the times we live in’, that ‘everyone else is the same’.

  But whom, in fact, are we striking that deal with? And how will we know when ‘the other party’ – our conscience – has refused it? Is it only when we end up facing adversity ourselves?

  Or is it when we’re near the end and we make that final reckoning of our lives, agonizingly aware that the time for ‘dodging the raindrops’ is over and all we have left is memory? But surely by then it is too late to change anyt
hing.

  The Investigator

  One of the most important people in the life of every prisoner is the investigator, the person on whom, given the realities of our judicial proceedings, your fate depends.

  It’s the investigator who uncovers or fails to uncover evidence demonstrating that a crime might have been committed; who designates whether you’re the accused or the witness; who decides whether to arrest you or allow you bail on condition of not leaving the town; who even determines whether to allow a visit from relatives. And as a general rule all of this (and a great deal besides) is in the hands of a very young (under thirty), newly qualified law-school graduate.

  According to the law the investigator is independent, almost as much as the judge. But in actual fact he is just a cog in the law-enforcement hierarchy – a small-time bureaucrat, who often doesn’t even have a say in some of the key aspects of his work.

  For four years, almost continuously, I have had to deal with these people. In fact, there was no requirement on their part to look as though they were investigating anything at all, but we were still required to spend many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in the same room. It wasn’t possible to avoid these meetings altogether, nor was there any particular reason to do so.

  I encountered all kinds of investigators: those who were indifferent and felt burdened by their role, those who tried to understand something of the case, and those who were simply putting in the hours.

  I bear no ill feeling towards any of them, so this story is loosely based on discussions with those who are no longer part of the system.

  Yury Ivanovich was an unusual person in ‘my’ investigation team, most of whom were of non-Russian ethnicity. People like him are always a problem for their bosses because they’re independent, or as independent as they can be within the parameters of the system. For Yury, a sense of his own worth was bolstered by a recognition of a certain self-sufficiency in his professional and daily life. A good education, an apartment inherited from his parents, and a lively mind allowed him sometimes to express his own opinion about operations he was involved in that were unrelated to my own case.

  Occasionally he would even share these opinions with me.

  One day Yury Ivanovich could barely contain himself. ‘Can you imagine, Mikhail Borisovich, yesterday we had a police raid on illegal timber extraction!’

  I could quite easily imagine such a thing. Forests are being decimated in a barbaric way, as close as possible to towns and roads, with the best trees being felled any old how and, of course, without proper permits which would have to be paid for. The timber is then smuggled across the border. This is how most of the local elite make their living.

  ‘They call us in for the briefing,’ he continued, ‘and show us on a map where the plots of the police and other bosses are (i.e. where not to stick our noses in), allocate our areas of responsibility, and off we go. We get there and they’re sawing away, ignoring us completely; they don’t have proper licences, trees are being felled willy-nilly. We detain them and impound their equipment. The foreman just laughs and says, “I’ve already made a call to the right place, by the way.” Half an hour later, we get a call: release the men, release the equipment, tear up the reports. The poachers laugh at us as we head off, totally humiliated. It turns out this “strip” belongs to the governor, and he hadn’t even marked it on the briefing map. And then we get back to find all hell’s broken loose, they’re threatening to withhold our bonuses and so on. How can you do something like that? This is Siberian pine, after all, and there’s so few left now …’

  I hear genuine hurt and indignation in the investigator’s voice. What’s particularly pleasing is that it’s not the potential loss of his bonus that’s upsetting him. It’s the humiliation he’s been through, and the genuine concerns of a local inhabitant for his part of the world, that have pierced the armour of indifference to unfettered corruption.

  We discuss the reasons for what has happened, and possible responses. I can tell that he has already thought this through a number of times, and now it’s all just spilled out. Or maybe he’s hoping that I’ll come up with some unexpected answer.

  Unfortunately I don’t have such an answer. You either come to terms with it and enjoy the benefits, and feel like a piece of shit, or else you fight it, in the realization that they’ll cover you with shit from head to toe.

  Those are the rules of the game, in our system.

  But there is another way out, and Yury Ivanovich took it. He handed in his resignation. Is this really the solution though? Because this raises another important issue: the process of ‘negative selection’, whereby gradually only the worst people remain in the system. Those who don’t have the intelligence to understand what’s going on, and those who do understand but don’t have enough of a conscience to refuse to become part of it.

  So idiots and lowlife – great material for building up the machinery of state.

  And yet this is indeed our state.

  The Grass

  Arkady Bondar is a tall young guy with a broad smile that lights up his handsome face. He’ll go up to every newcomer, when they’re sitting dejectedly on their bed in the new arrivals’ barracks, and strike up a conversation about life, or the reason they’ve ended up at the camp … Only a very naïve person will keep up the conversation. But the new arrival feels a need to talk, and there are plenty of naïve people around.

  Other detainees in the barracks will watch what’s going on with disapproval, but they don’t get involved.

  For Arkady is an ‘official’ grass; he works as an orderly in the Operations Division. Which means that he’s nominally responsible for ensuring that the building is kept clean and tidy. But, in fact, he does something else entirely. He’s a ‘tongue-loosener’ who tries to extract information about any crimes or accomplices the new arrival might have kept quiet about during his investigation.

  But even this isn’t his main task. His core ‘business’ is finding out who has banned stuff in their possession. Anything hidden during the search – money, playing cards, a sweater – lands the unsuspecting owner fifteen days in the isolation cell, and earns Arkady a carton of cigarettes or permission to use an otherwise banned iPod.

  It’s not a good idea to cross him. You might just find that, when it comes to the next routine search, those same playing cards mysteriously turn up in your bag.

  So everyone keeps their mouths shut, exchanging meaningful looks instead. An experienced detainee will understand, while the rookie – well, what can you do, such is his fate. A bit later, when everyone’s got to know each other and worked out who’s who, we discuss Arkady and point out a further three grasses, operating further undercover than him …

  But for now Bondar disengages himself from his victim, having had his fill. Result! He’s found something out, the leech. And now he’ll run off to grass on the guy. Sure enough, there he goes …

  Incidentally, for a small fee Arkady will fetch you something from the visiting room, or even buy back from the officers something that’s been confiscated.

  He usually gives me a wide berth. But now I see him whispering something to my neighbour, who then comes up to me.

  ‘Borisich, how do you spell “discrediting”?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Bondar’s asking.’

  ‘Bondar, come here, will you?’

  He comes over, avoiding eye contact. He’s clearly scared. His parole is coming up and getting into an argument with me is the last thing he needs.

  ‘Why do you want to know this?’

  ‘The officers asked me.’

  ‘Asked you what?’

  ‘To write that you are discrediting the administration. But I don’t know the word.’

  ‘Get out of my sight.’

  That evening I go and see the officers.

  ‘You should at least think about whom you’re giving these errands to.’

  ‘Come on, Mikhail Borisovich, you know the ki
nd of people we have in here,’ they reply, not embarrassed in the least. ‘We have to work with what we’ve got.’

  We part with a few facetious remarks. I’ve won this round. But they’re not in any hurry.

  To most Russians, grassing people up is a deeply immoral business. Unlike the Germans or Americans, who regard ‘informing the authorities’ as something sacred. In our country informers have devastated millions of innocent lives. Almost every family has its victim of the repressions. The hatred of informers is engrained, sometimes even subconscious. Like coals covered with a dusting of ash, just blow on them and they’ll flare up again …

  In the camps, though, such behaviour is made the norm. In some cases it works, in others less so. These kinds of people are useful for the administration. But how on earth are they going to live when they’re released? With values that society finds unacceptable.

  We all know that sometimes you have to report what you’ve seen for everyone’s safety, and sometimes in order to ensure justice.

  But to inform on someone for a handout – that’s worse than stealing. In Russia the informer’s true reward is the utter contempt of those around him.

  And you know something? I’m very glad my country is still like that.

  As for Bondar, I heard of him again about two years later, in Chita. In that time he’d been released and already got himself put away again. He was transported 650 kilometres from his camp to take part in my trial and give evidence against me. Remarkably he never did appear in the courtroom.

  The Down-and-out

  They brought him in and shoved him into the cell. He was a terrible sight, with a face the colour of mud, hands still black even after decontamination, and a thicket of hair that seemed to stick out uniformly all over his face and head. You couldn’t get a good look at his eyes as they were swollen, either from a beating or a beating combined with a hangover. He looked, at first glance, about sixty to sixty-five years old. He shuffled in, peering around, and wound his way to the bed which one of us pointed out to him.