My Fellow Prisoners Read online

  MY FELLOW PRISONERS

  Mikhail Khodorkovsky

  Mikhail Khodorkovsky was Russia’s leading businessman and an outspoken Kremlin critic. Under his leadership, the oil company Yukos revived the Russian oil industry, and as the company thrived, he began sponsoring programs to encourage civil society and fight corruption.

  When he was arrested at gunpoint in 2003, Khodorkovsky became Russia’s most famous political prisoner. Sentenced to ten years in a Siberian penal colony on fraud and tax evasion charges, he was put on trial again in 2010 and sentenced to fourteen years, despite the fact that the new charges contradicted the earlier ones.

  While imprisoned, Khodorkovsky fought for the rights of his fellow prisoners, going on hunger strike four times. After he was pardoned in 2013, he vowed to continue fighting for prisoners’ rights, and My Fellow Prisoners is a tribute to that work. A moving portrait of the prisoners Khodorkovsky met, My Fellow Prisoners tells the story of lives destroyed by bureaucratic criminality. It is a passionate call to recognize a human tragedy.

  MY FELLOW PRISONERS

  Mikhail Khodorkovsky was Russia’s leading businessman and an outspoken Kremlin critic. Born in 1963 in Moscow, he founded one of Russia’s first private banks, Menatep. Group Menatep subsequently acquired a majority interest in the Yukos Oil Company. Under Khodorkovsky’s leadership, Yukos revived the Russian oil industry, becoming one of the largest oil companies in the country, and the most transparent. He began sponsoring programmes supporting civil society through the Open Russia Foundation, funded several opposition parties and publicly challenged the Kremlin on the issue of corruption.

  When he was arrested at gunpoint in 2003 he became Russia’s most famous political prisoner. In 2005, Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were convicted on fraud and tax evasion charges, sentenced to ten years and sent to Siberian penal colonies. Yukos was forced into bankruptcy and its assets were appropriated by a state oil company. Before becoming eligible for early release, new embezzlement charges emerged. Despite the fact that the charges contradicted those of the first trial, Khodorkovsky was put on trial again, and, in December 2010, sentenced to fourteen years in prison. The trials were heavily criticized by the international community. Intellectuals such as Elie Wiesel began to campaign for his release. Amnesty International declared Khodorkovsky and Lebedev prisoners of conscience, ‘trapped in a judicial vortex that answers to political not legal considerations’.

  While imprisoned, Khodorkovsky fought for the rights of his fellow prisoners, going on hunger strike four times. Despite risks to his own safety, Khodorkovsky continued to speak out and write extensively about both the injustices he saw around him and his vision for Russia. He was pardoned on 20 December 2013 and, upon his release, vowed to continue fighting for prisoners’ rights.

  This edition first published in hardcover in the United States in 2015 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

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  Copyright © MBK IP Limited, 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-4683-1161-7

  Contents

  My Fellow Prisoners

  Copyright

  Foreword

  ‘That’s them over there’

  Kolya

  Alexei’s Story

  ‘The investigation will get things straight’

  The Guards

  Guilty without Guilt: Volodya

  The Witness

  The Investigator

  The Grass

  The Down-and-out

  The Aggrieved

  Roma

  Betrayal

  The Nazi

  The Suicide

  The Rat

  The Father

  The Addict

  It Will Come Back to Haunt You

  The Thief

  Amnesty

  About the Author

  Foreword

  or

  How I wanted to write about my impressions of a classical music concert

  There were many times in prison, and later in the camp, and then again in prison, and then again in the camp, when I really wanted to listen to a live performance of classical music. Somehow it just never happened; life was a bit crazy, I suppose; there was a lot going on. I also yearned for a situation where I could read, and discuss what I had read with someone – a real person – instead of having to converse much of the time with a sheet of paper. And now it seems I have absolutely no desire to write about that other life of mine, the prison life.

  But a pertinacious editor has asked me to write a foreword to a book that was created in conditions far removed from those in which I find myself today.

  This has not proved the easiest of tasks, because, when reading through what I’ve written over the previous ten or more years that I was in prison, I involuntarily find myself re-experiencing that life over and over again, a life that once seemed as though it would go on for ever.

  On 25 October 2003, the day of my arrest, it would never have occurred to me that details of what I remembered, even the most trivial and mundane, would be of interest to anyone. So, I survived – what more is there to say? Besides, as an out-and-out technocrat, not in the least oriented on the humanities, I had always regarded reading as primarily an essential tool for obtaining the information I needed, or for forcing myself to think about something. In fact, even now, hand on heart, I can honestly say to myself: well what kind of writer are you, anyway?!

  Do I remember the details of my arrest? Not particularly. Or, rather, I do remember that I was thinking about something completely different from what all the wonderful books they give us to read in school say you should be thinking in such a situation.

  I remember I didn’t feel anger; I was too stubborn for that. Though it wasn’t a question of stubbornness either. Confusion, a sense of uncertainty – these are entirely alien feelings for me.

  I was thinking about my parents, my wife, my children. I was trying to figure out what would happen to the company. I was definitely thinking about how there might be interrogations using psychotropic drugs, as had happened to my colleague Alexei Pichugin – how they would slip something into my food, do a video recording. Which is why at first I tried not to eat, and to drink very carefully, although I wasn’t frightened – this I can say for sure …

  It is a strange and wonderful feeling to be able to type out letters and words on a computer, and abandon the habit of jotting things down on little pieces of paper at odd moments of the day or night.

  I was often asked – and continue to be asked – how many times a day, week, month or year I had the opportunity to use the internet, a computer, and other such blessings of technological progress. Well, I’ll tell you: for over ten years I never once had such an opportunity! Some of today’s opposition leaders were genuinely amazed at how well informed I was in our correspondence; they refused to believe that I didn’t have a computer or internet access in my cell. And they continued to be amazed, right up until that moment when they themselves ended up in a cell for a couple of weeks – then they understood …

  What you are now holding in your hands is an a
ttempt to show a world that is beyond the comprehension of most people – a world from the past, in which some live in comfort and others do not; a world that coexists in my country with the real world, but where it’s as though technological progress and the achievements of civilization have never happened. But everybody in Russia – irrespective of whether they have read Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov or have no idea who these great writers are – knows almost on a genetic level, deep in the subcortex of their brains, the saying ot sumy da ot tyurmy ne zarekaisya: you can’t prevail over begging bowl or jail.

  Relying on the internal discipline that my parents had instilled in me since childhood, not allowing myself to think about getting out anytime soon, I kept my mind occupied by writing numerous letters and engaging in intellectual disputes with distant opponents. And I wrote prison stories. About the things I saw myself or had learned about from others, things that can happen to anybody. I wrote about the country in which our remarkable people continue to live in penury and without rights. And I wrote about a future Russia that we will be able to feel proud of without a trace of shame – the Russia that will ultimately take the road of European civilization. A road we all share.

  ‘That’s them over there’

  It’s well known that prison is a place where you encounter the most unusual people. Over these past years a great swathe of humanity, with fascinating stories to tell, has crossed my path.

  The feeling of wasted lives being thrown on the dust-heap is often overpowering. Human destinies ravaged, whether by themselves or by the soul-destroying system. I’m going to try to tell you about a few of these people and their situations. I have inevitably changed names and some details, given the circumstances of the people I’m writing about, but the essence of their characters and the situations they find themselves in are kept as I heard and perceived them myself.

  After so long in prison I certainly have no illusions about the people I have come across. Nonetheless, many prisoners have their principles. Are they valid ones from society’s point of view? Some are, some aren’t. But they are principles, all the same, for which people are prepared to suffer. Really suffer.

  It so happened that prison brought me into contact with a thirty-year-old guy on trial for suspected drug dealing.

  Sergei is a long-term drug addict, though you wouldn’t know it from his appearance. He looks a bit younger than his years, very spry, educated. His mother is a Gypsy, his father Russian, which created an interesting situation, culturally speaking. His mother had to leave the Gypsy community, and she now works as a radiologist in a hospital.

  Sergei speaks Roma, he knows Gypsy traditions and socializes with other members of the community, but doesn’t feel part of it. He’s been a drug-user for a long time (like most of the young people in his small town), but because he comes from a family of medical professionals and is strong-willed he is meticulous about the purity of the ‘wares’; he also makes sure he eats properly and regularly detoxes – abstaining for several weeks to prevent a constant build-up of his tolerance levels.

  In fact, he asked to be put in my cell so that he could go through one of his detox sessions, since the rest of the prison, he says, is not ‘conducive to this’. For a few days he has a rough time, but then it eases up and he tells me his story, little different from dozens of others I’ve heard. As a user he would buy from one particular dealer; the police insisted that he grass on his supplier, he refused, so they fitted him up as a supposed dealer himself. Now he’s back and forth to court where they’ll likely give him between eight and twelve years even though he’s never dealt. They planted some ‘traced’ money on him; where the drugs came from isn’t clear.

  I’ve heard so many of these stories. I nod politely, and that’s the end of the conversation.

  A few days later Sergei suddenly comes back from court in a state of shock. It turns out that they produced as a witness the person who had set him up. This guy’s about fifty years old. He too was arrested, on some unrelated charge, and was given a medical in the prison hospital, where it was discovered that he had an incurable illness. This man gets into the witness box, recounts his situation, and declares that ‘with my sentence, I’ll die in jail. I’ll be dead soon. I’ve a lot of sins on my conscience and I don’t want to take on another one. So I’m going to tell the truth, and I’m not afraid even if they kill me.’

  And then for forty minutes he tells everything about the set-up, how he was dealing drugs on the orders of the police, how he gave them the money, how they got rid of competitors and their clients, and so on. People crowd into the courtroom from the corridor, everyone listening to this chilling confession in deadly silence. Then the witness points at the investigators sitting opposite and says, ‘That’s them over there.’ The investigators get up and try to leave, but the court usher doesn’t let them, saying ‘The judge may want to take you into custody.’ The judge then stops the proceedings and clears the courtroom.

  A few minutes later Sergei’s lawyer enters his cell and says that the judge is calling them back in. ‘What do you want me to ask for?’ the lawyer says.

  ‘My freedom, what else?’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ the lawyer replies and goes out.

  An hour later he comes back in. ‘They’re offering you six years.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  The lawyer leaves again, but returns almost immediately. ‘Three years. You’ve already done more than a year, you’ll be out on parole.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘What next?’ I ask Sergei.

  ‘Three years, I’m being sentenced tomorrow. Maybe I should have held out to the end?’

  ‘No, Sergei, you did the right thing. The system doesn’t work any other way.’

  With ‘tomorrow’ comes his ‘three-year’ sentence, and the application for parole. He assures me that he will go back to his job as a railway worker and quit the drugs. I wish him luck.

  So that’s the system. That’s the kind of people they are. They go to the very limit, to the edge. Which one day awaits us all.

  Kolya

  It so happened that I met a young man, Nikolai (Kolya), as he was about to be released. There was nothing particularly remarkable about Nikolai. He was doing time for a fairly straightforward crime, drug possession – like roughly half the rest of the country’s prison population.

  It was clear that he would be back. He’d already spent five of his twenty-three years behind barbed wire and showed little intention of changing his ways in the future. Although clearly not stupid, Kolya had grown up feeling rejected and unwanted. His life had been a constant battle with this feeling of rejection while being surrounded by similar outcasts.

  Six months later I met Kolya again, now with a grisly scar on his stomach.

  ‘Kolya, what happened?’

  ‘Ah well, they got me with some gear again.’

  For a moment Kolya hesitated, but then told me the full story, which is later corroborated by others who had witnessed it. Having taken in a repeat offender, the police investigators decided to charge him with an extra crime, for good measure. This kind of bargaining goes on all the time and is usually fairly open: you’ll only get an additional couple of years, they say, if we ask the judge, but you’ll have to carry the can for some robbery – and you’ll get extra visiting rights or choose where you end up. Generally it’s nothing more than a mobile phone robbery or some such. Kolya, after not much thought, agreed. But then for the identity parade they brought in an old woman whose purse, containing about 2,000 roubles, had been snatched by some scum. The pensioner clearly remembered little about it and quickly ‘identified’ the person indicated by the investigators.

  At which point Kolya suddenly dug in his heels. ‘I’ve never touched an elderly person in my life, only people my own age. Robbing an old woman of her last rouble – no, I didn’t sign up for that, and I won’t do it. Whatever you do to me!’ The investigators were dumbfounded. ‘Kolya, as far as the law’s conc
erned there’s no difference. The money is the same, so’s the sentence. Why are you getting so steamed up? We can’t go and turn all of this around just because you’re feeling sensitive about it.’

  ‘I won’t do it,’ said Kolya.

  So they sent him back to his cell, ‘to think it over’ – having first given him a bit of a beating, ‘as is only right and proper’.

  After a while he knocked on the cell door from inside; when they opened the food hatch – his guts came flying out. Kolya had ‘opened himself up’, and some. Full-on hara-kiri. The scar is as wide as a finger and stretches halfway across his belly.

  While the doctors were rushing across, others in the cell tried to stuff his entrails back in again.

  It was a miracle they saved him. Now he’s disabled, but he has no regrets. ‘If they’d gone and pinned that old woman’s purse on me, I’d have died anyway,’ says Kolya – meaning the loss of his self-respect, without which his life is unimaginable.

  I look at this man who has been sent down so often and think with a certain bitterness of the number of people on the outside who hold their honour far less dearly than he, who wouldn’t see anything particularly bad about robbing an old man or woman of a couple of thousand roubles. Although their crime would be clothed in clever words. They have no shame.

  And, like it or not, I feel proud of Kolya.

  Alexei’s Story

  These days there are very strong feelings against paedophiles among the public, which is not surprising. It’s an appalling crime, the result of a depraved and twisted mind that believes itself to be above the law.

  Politicians, as is their wont, will use any situation to try to boost their ratings. But the ‘quota system’ (whereby people are arrested to meet a predetermined level of arrests), given the lack of genuine judicial protection, has resulted in abuses that are no less appalling and have tragic outcomes.