Thread by @navalny

1/12 I'm reading a book by Anatoly Marchenko, a Soviet dissident who spent half his life in prison and died in 1986 after a hunger strike. He describes his time behind bars in the '60s.

2/12 Every page strikes me not even by how similar the systems are, but by the fact that it is actually one and the same system.

For example, here's a quote from a chapter about the SHIZO:

3/12 "Terms there are limited - no more than 15 days. But this rule is easy for the administration to circumvent. They let you out in the evening, and then the next day you have to go back in for another 15 days."

4/12 "What for? There is always a reason: blocking the peephole while standing in the cell, picking up a cigarette butt while walking, rude replies to the warden. They will give you 15 more days for nothing."

5/12 "Once in Karaganda they kept me in the SHIZO for 48 days and would only let me out only to read another resolution on "placement in the punishment cell". Writer Yuri Daniel was given two consecutive punishments in Dubravlag for being "rude to a guard"."

6/12 Compare that to my four months in the SHIZO - the pattern is the same. It's the same with everything. Hunger, food, cigarettes, visits, parcels and kiosks - that's what a convict's world revolves around.

7/12 The only significant change is that now there is plumbing in the cells, and the "reduced food ration" - an official hunger torture - has been abolished. Well, and there's now more corruption.

8/12 Some may say: "They have also abolished the punishment of deprivation of parcels and visits." But I mean, look at me. I've been in Melekhovo for seven months, and during that time I've had 1 (one) call, 1 (one) parcel, and 0 (zero) visits.

9/12 Yes, the Soviet prison system had undergone some humanization after the death of Stalin, under whom there were actual death camps, but after that it has remained unchanged, having nothing to do with the re-education of criminals.

10/12 Its only aim is to dehumanize the prisoner, bully him and serve the illegal instructions of the country's political leadership.

11/12 They'll let the right people out, they'll easily find a reason to increase anyone's sentence, and they'll kill anyone they're asked to and report the cause of death as pneumonia.

12/12 So the Russian prison system is the same as the Soviet Gulag, except that there's now a church in every prison. This system cannot be reformed in any way, and must be completely rebuilt in the Beautiful Russia of the Future.