The following is an exclusive translation of an article from the German newspaper Die Welt by Manfred Quiring, which takes a look at the current controversies over prison conditions and dying prisoners, and what President Medvedev is trying to do about it.
The remains of the Gulag
By Manfred QuiringRussian prisons have a notorious reputation, and many inmates die while being held in detention pending trial. Dmitry Medvedev, president and lawyer, wants to change this.
Moscow - In the narrow corridor between the steel door to the outside and the turnstile that opens the path into the prison, the correspondent meets, as if by fate, Father Constantine. The light scent of consecrated wine gently hovers over the tall, heavyset, bearded man in his black priest vestments. "You've come at a good time," he grumbles. "Today is a holiday in Butyrka. We're celebrating the patron saint of the prison."
Butyrka, Moscow's Detention Centre No. 2, constructed in 1771, enjoys an unsavory reputation. It must be said, however, that it hardly distinguishes itself from any other prison facility in this enormous country. Amnesty International has for years asserted that incarceration in Russian prisons and camps is the equivalent of torture. Visits by journalists to such facilities are therefore fraught with enormous difficulties.
Butyrka is no exception, although in this case, the visit is to the prison museum. It took almost three weeks to receive official permission. Things might have been slowed down by the fact that during this time the 37-year-old lawyer Sergei Magnitsky had died in a cell at Butyrka. The authorities claim it was due a heart attack, while Magnitsky's friends say it was a failure to render medical assistance. His diary entries confirm the latter version.
"It's too bad the holiday service is already over," says Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Polkin regretfully. He holds the position of deputy prison director for cadre and training - head of personnel, if you will - and serves as the occasional guide through the labyrinth of Butyrka. We quickly walk through the entrance hall, passing locked cell doors, and go up and down a maze of steps. Polkin is constantly pulling out his master key, locking us in along the way. The steel doors slam shut when locked. Polkin calls this the "sound of Butyrka."
The Lieutenant Colonel proudly shows us the entrance to the museum hidden behind a swiveling bookcase inside the Pugachov Tower. The museum, which displays three centuries worth of exponents, was set up in Soviet times and has hardly been altered since. The portrait of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, the Bolshevik's infamous secret police, and inmate here under the Tsar, occupies a central place. Stalin was held here twice, informs Polkin with the tone of a tour guide who is proud of a particular sightseeing attraction.
There is no indication, though, that on 1 August 1946, General Vlasov and twelve other high-ranking former Soviet officers were executed in the prison courtyard for fighting on the German side during the Great Patriotic War. Nor does the officer responsible for training prison guards mention that Stalin's henchmen shot people in the tiled ground floor of the Pugachov Tower. There is no evidence of prisoners such as Osip Mandelstam, Lydia Ginsburg, or Varlam Shalamov, one of the greatest Russian literary figures of the 20th century. "Shalamov?" asks Polkin, taken aback. "Never heard of him, but there were so many here."
He has, of course, heard of Alexej Magnitsky, but he doesn't want to talk about it. The Magnitsky case is typical of the Russian prison system, say experts in the field. They claim that it is not unusual to deny medical assistance to those in pre-sentencing detention facilities in order to extort the desired confession.
The living conditions for the approximately 875,000 inmates in Russian prisons and the country's 755 prison camps are so horrible that even the Ministry of Justice had to admit in a report that they are demeaning to human dignity, lead to physical and moral suffering, and violate the human right to health and personal safety." The figures speak for themselves: In 2005, there were a total of 540 deaths among 100,000 inmates and 686 became invalids. In 2010, the corresponding figures are expected to be lowered to 420 and 675, respectively.
President Dmitry Medvedev, himself a trained lawyer, had dozens of officials fired after the death of Magnitsky and is now calling for a fundamental reform of the prison system. Lieutenant General Alexander Reymer, recently appointed chief of Russia's penitentiary service, has stated that he is pursuing an ambitious goal, namely, to free the institution he now runs from its Stalinist legacy. "We have to do away with the remains of the Gulag," he said on television.
In its place, he wants to establish a modern, humane prison system. After the reform is completed, only two types of penal institutions should remain. Those convicted of minor or non-serious offences will have to work off their time in simple colonies or facilities with tighter conditions. Dangerous criminals will remain in prison. Reymer wants to keep both groups strictly divided from each other in order to prevent gangsters from recruiting a new generation while in jail.
Reymer, however, has no influence upon the justice system and its obsession to incarcerate people in detention facilities "to prevent escape or collusion," even in the case of relatively minor infractions. The accused often sit for years under inhuman conditions before being brought to trial.
The way out leads across the courtyard along a five-meter high wall that is secured with a barbed-wire entanglement. Escape seems impossible. The last escape attempt was in 2001. Three inmates serving life sentences dug a tunnel under the wall. They were all later captured.
