The rules of the zone: a letter by the Pussy Riot member

This letter by Maria Alekhina (Pussy Riot) appeared in the Russian newspaper Newtimes last December (to read it in Russian and see the photos, please follow the link).

Typically I am proud to call myself Russian, but reading this letter made me feel truly upset and angry. In so many ways Russia has changed dramatically and moved forward recently, but the conditions in prisons and the zone stay the same as they were in the Stalinist times.

I have deliberately decided not to add any comments as the letter speaks for itself.

 

 

"My story has no beginning. There is no story as such either. There is an impossibility of what is happening, retold with the help of words.

I doubt that there will be anyone willing to confirm my words. And there will be many who will dispute them. First unenthusiastically, later in a more sprightly manner and in the end even lively they will tell you that everything is OK here. Or even ‘good’. Everything is fine in IK-28, -say the prisoners, the administration, the "human rights" experts.

IK-28 - a female penal colony in the Perm region surrounded by factories and taiga forest. There is some irony in the fact that I was once a part of the environmental movement and have ended up in the zone where we are all breathing in the emissions from the hazardous industry. Everything around me is grey, even if it is different in colour. It still contains shades of grey. Everything: the buildings, the food, the sky, the words. It is anti-life in an autonomous area of space.

People are brought here, in my case from Moscow via three transit prisons (prisons in Kirov, Perm, and Solikamsk). Three windowless (Stolypin) wagons and a multutide of police vans. When the last one of them arrived to the tall iron gate, it brought 19 people. 19 new prisoners, future electric sewing machine operators/seamstresses, fabric cutters and ancillary workers.

“Get released early on parole. To achieve this, you need to work 12 hours a day for a thousand rubles a month, do not complaint, frame, inform, be silent, and endure.”

We were walking from the gates to the place where we were going to be searched, bent under the weight of the bags. I have three of them, and the total weight is almost equal to my own.

We enter the building, surrounded by a stone wall – isolation cell and PKT [building of punishment type]-, here all our clothes will be taken away and we will be sent to the quarantine building in the same identical robes.

In quarantine building, prisoners adapt - or rather, learn to get used to the prison routine. Get used to jump up at half past five in the morning and run to the bathroom (except for me, noone calls it a “bathroom”): there are three sinks, two toilets, forty prisoners - we have to hurry and at six we run , in batches of ten, to the kitchen for breakfast. You need to get to the personal belonings storeroom, where all your things, including food, are kept- of course, if we want a cup of tea, in any case you must get there because your pajamas should not be kept under your pillow. After two weeks of washing my hands in the icy cold water my hands do not resemble hands any more.  I can wash them with the warm water , but there is a queue and we have to hurry. I will need to keep running continuously for another year and a half. I'm getting used to it. We all are getting used to it in the so-called living-room -- PVR.

PVR – stands for rules of internal order, it means that while in quarantine we should learn them by heart, and it is not a joke. Not exactly learn them by heart but every day we sit down to listen to them while somebody is reading them aloud. This is how this room got named PVR. There is even a corresponding sign at the entrance above the door. We enter the PVR to read the PVRs. Nothing absurd. In order not to fall asleep in the PVR (there is a video camera in the corner), I go to the yard to clear snow with a shovel. The yard is not exactly a yard but a small square of land surrounded by a wire attached to each barrack.

In order not to fall asleep, you have to invent tasks for yourself: to bind cigarettes together with a thread (packets are banned, they are thrown during the search, and all the cigarettes are dumped in one big sack), put matches back in to boxes, to sew name tags to the uniform, make an inventory of things. In order not to fall asleep. Falling asleep in PVR is a violation of rules, poorly attached name tags is a violation; single unbuttoned button on a coat during the roll call is a violation.

The triad "crime-punishment-correction" - any concept is insignificant around these terms. In fact, here they are just looking for violations. Main issue for manipulation is an early parole [UDO in Russian]. You ask, do you want UDO? Then, get adapted. About half of the conversations are about UDO. When is your UDO? "Do you think you get to leave early?" "What will you do after UDO on the outside?", "I wish it happened sooner "

To get released on parole UDO – it is not very difficult. To do this, sew for 12 hours a day for a maximum of one thousand rubles per month, do not write complaints, frame the others, inform, infringe on the last remains of your principles, be silent and endure—and for that you get adapted.

There is a notion of a system of “social lift" - a series of criteria which is used by the parole board to decide (by following or not following them) whether you have ‘reformed or not’. They are also read aloud:
Do not break the rules, work, attend events, visit the library, the psychologist, the prayer room (isn’t everybody tired of saying we have a secular state?). Have socially-external relationships, which means do not lose contact with your family.


As a result, all the set of prisoners actions is performed to tick the boxes for parole, and not because it is the result of your personal development. In my last conversation with the psychologist she compared this to career development, citing herself as an example. "We, the military, have the same system ", she said. This is the bitter truth: half of the country has the same set of rules as those who are convicted for crimes. The country does not need personalities, it needs those who get adapted. "And nothing will change," - say I and one of the prisoners in one voice. We only make a different choice in a hopeless situation.

“Following asleep in the PVR is a violation, poorly sewn name tag is a violation, unbuttoned button on the coat during the roll call is a violation”.

"It is hopeless to get used to it. it is hopeless to fight against it. I think - she continues - that terrorists seize an aircraft or a theatre, but never anywhere they do seize a prison."

Because nobody needs us, that is my automatic conclusion, in a whisper. At that moment, late in the night, when the next shift of workers arrives to the factory, for one second I sense a terrible unity between myself and the person who spent more than 20 years in prison, the unity in being not needed/rejected. In the eyes of "society," of the authorities, inside the world of the dead, which paradoxically gives birth to people of the ZONE."

(translated from Russian by Galina & Federico Varese)

If you are interested in reading more and can read in Italian, here is a in-depth article by Federico Varese.