In everyday life you can often hear people say: “This is my world”. The simple phrase comes out of your mouth easily. Usually people don’t give much thought to what exactly they mean by saying ‘my’ or ‘our’ world. For some it might imply usual things they see and use every day, for others - a view from the window so familiar that they stop noticing it but begin to miss terribly when they are away from home.

It is often difficult to make out why people keep old things that have long ago become useless. But for them they are not just things, they are recollections and dreams of the past. Children mock their parents for being so fussy about old dusty things failing to understand that they are part of their past lives. The older the people the more attached they are to the old things, the more difficult it is to part with them. They cling to the useless objects as if they are their whole life. Each is a recollection of a moment, an event, a day, a year… All those things would be meaningless if they weren’t somebody’s belongings, part of somebody’s life, somebody’s world. So people are the core of the concept, it is they who make a life’s journey either a paradise or a road to hell.

I very well remember my first day in prison where I was transferred from SPD. After a chain of humiliating procedures (a 90 minutes long search, finger prints taking, photographing and medical examination) I was brought to a spacious corridor and left alone. The warden just said indifferently: “Go ahead” and disappeared.

A few months at SPD made me forget that such huge empty spaces exist. That’s exactly what prison corridor seemed to me then. I started walking slowly surprised by the absence of handcuffs or guards. I could see rays of the sun light coming through the barred windows above me. On the left there were heavy metal doors of the cells. Not a single sound was coming from behind them. In the deafening silence I could hear my every step. I have never experienced such an acute feeling of cold and astonishment. I thought I knew what loneliness meant; but it was only there, in the prison corridor, that for the first time in my life I felt its cold breath touch me. It felt as if Snow Queen, glamorous and superior, passed me by.

A voice of the warden made me wince:

- Where are you! Come over here!

I followed the voice. The warden smelled of liquor and was munching something, his lips greasy, his smile malicious. He opened one of the metal doors for me:

- This is going to be your home now. Ha- ha- ha…- he laughed enjoying his joke and slammed the door.

The first thing that caught my eye was uneasy glances fixed on me. Prisoners are not the most peace-loving citizens of planet Earth. Any prisoner, no matter what his category of offense might be, is potentially dangerous for the others. Who knows what may occur to him in such circumstances? All the negative energy, malice and irritation seem to be focused on the cell, multiplied by closed space.

No need to say that the eyes staring at me didn’t belong to the best representatives of human race. The overwhelming majority of my new cell-mates were dull brainless creatures not worth any interest. They had been failures from the moment of their birth and prison bars didn’t change them for the better. Though they tried hard to look important and impressive posing as prison authorities, I just laughed at the futility of their feeble efforts. Such people can only understand the language of force. Their so-called bravery is manifested only in words, never in deeds. But don’t forget that there are always instigators and stool-pigeons ready to hold up their jaw to help you get another offense and a longer sentence. They will be rewarded for their sufferings with the first amnesty.

That is why treating that scum with disdain is very dangerous. You should learn to be prudent and calculating in prison. Sometimes it’s much better to clench your teeth and avoid the conflict. Remember martial arts? ‘A fight avoided is a fight won’. But on the other hand be always prepared to fight and put the enemy down. I have seen inmates foolish enough to treat calm and respectful attitude as weakness, a desire to find compromise - as cowardice. They had been tolerated for some time but when they became too insolent, they were crushed.

Most of the prison scum got behind bars as teenagers. Waiting for a trial takes a few years, so the youngsters grew up and formed their characters. Their ages range from eighteen to twenty-four, their offenses are mostly petty, their sentence rarely exceeds 5-8 years. All of them had used some kind of drugs before they were arrested, mostly the cheapest and easily available. Their offenses are in one way or another connected with drugs - they needed money to get drugs. Petty theft and extortion are the most common offenses. They didn’t stop at snatching shopping bags from old ladies but look at them now - they pose as prison authorities and expect other inmates to obey them.

Cops deliberately ‘warm up’ the potential candidates to the ‘trusted authorities’ playing on their vanity and putting them to the cells where they can harden and summon up force. With time such well-trained prisoners make excellent informants and stool-pigeons and are widely used by cops for ‘persuading’ the obstinate inmates to talk and give evidence. Absence of gray matter and common sense in their heads make them think they are the bosses in their small toy-like world while in reality they are being used like condoms - done your bit and out to the dump.

It’s only the small fish that behave defiantly and provocatively. The really big ones are never conspicuous. They are famous enough, their names appear in newspapers and on TV. They don’t have to stress their importance. In prison they lead a secluded life, don’t keep any family photos and have nothing that might give you a clue to their occupation, way of life or plans for the future. Such people never find themselves in prison twice. Once is enough for them to analyze their mistakes and avoid them in future. If Good Luck has turned its back on them once, it doesn’t mean it’s forever.

Look at Stepanych. One can hardly call him a failure though his clothes are a bit too extravagant. The first time I saw him he didn’t impress me at all. He looked like a tramp dressed in new but old-fashioned clothes of the 60s. His relatives must have had difficult time looking for suitable garments for Stepanych at the old attics.

Before he moved to the prison bunk uncle Grisha had managed to sell two thirds of the Ukrainian beef and dairy cattle to Arab countries. His business thrived till the country leaders started wrangling about their shares in the deal. Uncle Grisha traveled extensively, had purchased a big house in the outskirts of Berlin and was thinking of buying an apartment in Rome. But Miss Fortune is a very fretful lady. Besides, uncle Grisha allowed himself to relax too much and refused to listen to the peals of the coming thunder. One late evening there was a persistent knock on his door and ill-mannered people in civil clothes demanded that uncle Grisha should give evidence against some big wig in the government. He refused and tried to get rid of the uninvited visitors. But they wouldn’t give up easily. Uncle Grisha was hand-cuffed and charged with tax evasion.

The search in his apartment revealed the unexpected: it was full of big carton TV boxes stuffed with money. Even the cops used to everything were taken aback.

- Stepanych, how come you have so much money?

Uncle Grisha shrugged his shoulders:

- I was saving for my old age.

Apart from the money nothing had been found. Uncle Grisha’s criminal case was full of assumptions and guess-work. This, however, didn’t stop the cops from putting him behind bars for years. By the time I met him he had been in prison for over two years, had had a heart attack, acquired a lot of illnesses but the trial date hadn’t been defined yet. Notwithstanding the blows that fate had dealt him uncle Grisha hadn’t lost his presence of mind. Every day, no matter what the weather was like, he went out with me for a jog in the prison yard.

- Two and a half years are nothing compared to the others - he used to say trying to console himself. - Take the Pop-Eye, for instance, - he has been waiting trial for seven years!

The Pop-Eye stayed on the upper bunk all the time showing no interest in life. He had gone nuts and either laughed for no reason or was cast down which had most often been the case. I hardly exchanged a couple of words with him, but his presence in the cell was very depressing. I sighed with relief when finally he was transferred to another cell. Our new cell-mate named Maximka, had an innocent childish face and long arms like orang-outang’s.

We soon became friends with Maximka. He realized his term in prison was not going to be short so lying on the bunk all day wouldn’t help him to survive till his release. We started doing boxing which was a pleasant distraction from dull prison life. Maximka was quite insolent and nervous at times, terribly rancorous and surprisingly sober-minded. He had been given up by his associates the moment handcuffs closed with a snap behind their backs. Maximka was charged with a murder of the businessman involved in oil trade. The list of robberies and burglaries worked out by him took hour to read.

The pattern Maximka used in his ‘work’ was simple. Prostitutes informed him of wealthy clients and his people started casing their joints. A couple of weeks later the apartment was broken into and all valuables and money stolen. They never had to break the lock, the owners opened the door themselves. Maximka taught his associates how to make people open their doors to the thieves.

He shared a few of his tricks with me. In most residential houses the meter is located outside the apartments, on the landing between the floors. Maximka would turn the electricity off and wait together with his people for somebody to come out of the apartment to check what was wrong. The rest was simple: a blow on the head, members of the family are tied up and a traditional question is asked: “Where is the money?”

In case the meter was inside the apartment Maximka’s people hid on the stairs between the floors while their boss with a bunch of roses waited downstairs. When the ‘subject’ arrived Maximka took the elevator with him to the same fllor as if he was invited to a party next door. As soon as the door opened the man was hit on the head and the previous scenario repeated.

One of Maximka’s stories struck me as particularly resourceful. A girlfriend of his (she was promised 20% commission) led him to an apartment of an extremely wealthy guy. The usual scenario couldn’t have been applied because the guy was always followed by his bodyguard, the meter was inside the apartment and the door was never opened to strangers. Maximka managed to get into the apartment situated above the one that was his interest and tied up its owners. Then he changed into casual homewear and slippers, opened all the taps in the bathroom and began waiting. In about 90 minutes the outraged owner of the lower apartment knocked on the door. Maximka introduced himself as a nephew who came to visit his aunt for a few days and eagerly agreed to go downstairs and have a look at the flooded apartment. His associates joined him the moment the door was opened.

The murder Maximka was charged with had occurred without his direct involvement. Before sending his people he visited the apartment a number of times and worked out all the details. It wasn’t difficult for him to do because he managed to worm himself into the family’s confidence. He was first brought to that apartment by a friend of the family and due to his childlike face produced a favorable impression and quickly won the family’s affection. The head of the family even gave Maximka a job in one of the firms he owned.

Maximka had no doubt that everything would go without a hitch. But his associates got too nervous and overdid it a little bit. They were only supposed to stun the owner but the blow of an axe on his head was too heavy and the man died. He was the only one who knew where the money was kept. Outraged, the robbers cut the body into pieces and started torturing the man’s wife. They put her fingers into the mincing machine, then disemboweled her 10-year-old son in front of her eyes. The poor woman would have gladly told them everything but she really didn’t know anything about her husband’s money. As it turned out later there was no safe or any other hiding-place for the money in the apartment. The robbers had to content themselves with jewelry and some valuables worth almost $5,000. They were too lazy to go to another city and made an attempt to sell the loot in the local market. That’s where the cops caught the unfortunate robbers.

Maximka had a chance of getting away - there was no direct evidence against him. But his nerves gave out. His associates, manipulated by the cops, started giving evidence against each other. Maximka realized that he had had his chance when it was too late. He bribed the investigator and was found innocent of being party in the murder. However, Maximka got a nine-year sentence of strict discipline.

He seemed to be quite happy with such sentence - could have been worse.

- The first bit is the most difficult, - my boxing partner said philosophically. - It’s much easier afterwards.

I looked at him with surprise:

- Are you going to spend the rest of your life in prisons and camps?

- Maybe not all of it, life is long. But there isn’t much you can do on the outside.

I didn’t argue with him. What’s the point? Everyone has his own way.

People are very strange mammals. They behave as if they have 300 years to live. The first sentence might be ten years, then another - eight years, and another and another… The whole life in a stinking lice-ridden cage.

It never stops to amaze me how differently people see prison from the inside and from the outside. I got a short note from a friend the other day. He says he envies me (?!) According to him I have a lot of spare time, a good opportunity to master a foreign language. A very touching note. I have always thought of him as a clever guy and couldn’t make out what made him write such a stupid note. If he could only see my perfect conditions for studying!

Take Denis, for instance. Extremely unbalanced, he either threatens everyone with a shunk or sits in the corner smoking the grass regularly provided by his investigator. Denis was charged with premeditated murder with mitigating circumstances. He had been the only one of age within a group of teenagers and was made a scape-goat. Cops were trying to persuade him that his sentence for murder was long enough and it wouldn’t do him any harm if he confessed a few petty thefts and burglary cases to improve police statistics.

- You help us and we’ll help you. We’ll put you in a nice cell, you’ll have everything. If you don’t cooperate, you know what inmates can do to you once they find out that you raped a girl and then killed her.

In fact nobody raped a 15-year-old girl who lived next door from Denis. She used to hang around with boys at different apartments and didn’t mind screwing at all. That night was no different from the others. Denis brought her to one of his friends’ place. There were four of them: three boys (two of them sixteen years old) and the girl. They drank two bottles of vodka mixing it with beer. Then had it with the girl, first separately, then together. Afterwards, while the boys were having a rest she made some sandwiches to go with the remaining beer. Nothing pointed to trouble. Then the girl decided it was time to leave. No one felt like taking her home. She got annoyed.

- If you don’t want to go, give me money for the taxi.

- Take the metro.

- Are you nuts? It’s three in the morning.

- Shut up bitch. We don’t owe you anything.

The girl was outraged:

- Is that’s it?! I can sue all of you for rape! You’ll spend the rest of your lives behind bars, you dirty pigs!

Denis didn’t participate in the brawl. He was having beer in front of the TV. He wasn’t much concerned: things like that had happened before. But one of the boys got scared.

- What if she really means it?

He went to Denis and whispered noisily into his ear:

- Maybe we should get rid of her?

The boy smelled of alcohol and Denis waved him away.

- Do whatever you want. Let me watch TV.

The boy returned to the front door and together with his classmate strangled the girl with a shoe lace. It happened so quickly that she didn’t even try to make any resistance. In fact, the girl hardly realized what was going on before it was over. The shoe-lace was thrown away into the garbage shute. The body was dismembered in the bathroom: teenagers cut off the girl’s hands and head. Whose idea it had been or why they had done it the boys failed to explain.

Denis was attracted by the noise and appeared in the bathroom, a bottle of beer in his hand. His friends were cutting off the girl’s head with a kitchen knife she had used for making sandwiches a short while before.

- Will you give us a hand?

Denis put down the bottle by the bathroom door.

- The hell with you! I’d rather go dig out a hole.

Denis was due to be called up for military service in a couple of months. Army had lost a good soldier. It took Denis 30 minutes to dig two big holes in the children’s playground with the help of a dustpan and a sauce-pan lid. The boys wrapped the body in an old blanket and buried it in the yard. The bathroom was washed thoroughly, the knife returned to its usual place in the kitchen. Nobody paid any attention to the dark stains on the stairs - they had never been too clean. The boy’s parents who returned on Sunday night, noticed nothing unusual in the apartment. The girl’s parents were not worried about her absence at all: similar things had happened before, they didn’t care much.

- That’s what young people are like. She’ll come back when she sobers up.

Good luck seemed to be with the youngsters. No witnesses, no evidence. It would never occur to anyone that schoolboys were capable of murder. They would have gotten away with it if they had kept their mouths shut. But they felt too proud of themselves and couldn’t stop boasting. Wanted to be as ‘cool’ as famous characters from the movies.

Denis felt quite comfortable the first months in prison. He, like Maximka, didn’t despair much about the prison sentence:

- Nothing wrong with staying in prison for a while. Better than going to the army.

Denis didn’t know then what was in store for him and what his cell-mates were going to do to him after the sentence had been passed.

The attitude to crime and criminals differs considerably on different sides of prison walls. In prison cell you realize that you can’t associate your easy-going and good-natured cell-mate peacefully nibbling rusks and chocolate with a highly dangerous criminal whose ‘exploits’ find coverage on the front pages of newspapers.

Behind bars reappraisal of values is inevitable and happens quite fast. You find yourself in a totally different world. Things that used to shock you become part of your everyday life. Gradually you get used to the idea that killing is natural and there is nothing unusual in murder. People used to kill each other and they always will. Pity that your perception of the world doesn’t change, as if by magic, to your previous one. You will never be able to take the surrounding world light-heartedly again.

I peer at the faces of my cell-mates and realize that those who are called criminals are hardly different from the average citizens who spend their evening in front of TV. People are similar and different at the same time. A human being belongs to the animal world, he is a highly intelligent beast of the mammals class. There is no use idealizing him.

Problems are never few in prison. Once a stool-pigeon appears in the cell, their number increases. To make him out is easy enough: stool-pigeons are usually loud and try to play off inmates against each other. Most often stool-pigeons are picked up from among quite young inmates who consider themselves ‘experienced’ and ‘well-versed’ in prison laws. It is easy for them to instigate other cell-mates to act in accordance with the orders of prison administration.

The last thing prison authorities need is unity among inmates. The more prisoners fight with each other the easier they are to manipulate. Even if some get killed in prison conflicts and petty rivalries, it is no big deal. The warden who failed to prevent the conflict will be transferred to a different floor and that’s it. But the society will certainly benefit and cops will have less work.

Stool-pigeons are also of great help when cops fail to get necessary information from some too stubborn prisoners. To change their attitude and make them talk stool-pigeons are asked to create the so-called ‘atmosphere’ in the cell. Cops keep putting pressure on the stubborn prisoners while stool-pigeons play off other inmates against them in the cell.

I still have a vivid memory of one ‘educated’ stool-pigeon who appeared in our cell with two stacks of books under his arms. He never read those books and wasn’t going to. Books only served to create the right image. “Dostoevsky is my favorite writer”, - he used to say. But when I saw him brushing his shoes with “Crime and Punishment” everything became clear.

For the first few days our new cell-mate was watching us carefully trying to worm himself into the confidence of those who seemed smarter. By the end of the first week he stealthily started to stir up cell-mates against each other trying to keep aloof as if he had nothing to do with it. Soon there was no peace in the cell. The atmosphere that had been tense enough before his arrival became ‘threatening with thunder’. Some stayed on their bunks for days, others began sharpening metal rods.

The cell was reshuffled. New people arrived. The book-lover was very happy: many of the new arrivals were his old buddies. As I found out later, some of them used to be cops who made their living from theft and extortion. Rather stupid but physically well-trained ‘pawns’.

The group started making changes in the cell. The book-lover moved to a better bunk, the young guy responsible for keeping order was forced out of the cell. They didn’t even try to hide their joy. I could feel they had done the preparations and were waiting for further instructions.

I continued to follow my usual routine: had long physical trainings every day, learned foreign languages, read books. However, it was becoming more and more difficult to concentrate, the atmosphere in the cell grew tenser every day. Everybody realized: a blow against one of the cell-mates was being prepared. I tried to analyze the situation and the conclusion I arrived at was unconsoling. There seemed to be two possible targets: myself and a young guy charged with murder who refused to give any evidence before trial. I had enough reasons to think so. Besides, all the people who could have supported me were moved to different cells.

In prison I had developed a habit of waking up the moment somebody approached my bunk. I also taught myself to sleep in a position that wouldn’t let the attackers tie me up in my sleep. I knew I could only rely on myself. The attackers could be five or six, up to eight people. Every night I was lying on my back with my eyes half closed calculating the best ways to act in case I was attacked.

The denouement? Was quite unexpected. As it turned out, the provocation was prepared against uncle Grisha. However, his fate turned out to be different. A few hours before uncle Grisha’s ribs had to be broken another cell-mate, Yura, had hung himself. The cell was dispersed.

Fortunately for the inmates of Lukianovskaya prison stool-pigeons there were far from being professionals. They talked the same language, used the same methods and were easy to spot. They asked too many questions, wanted to know too many things but could never explain the reason of their interest. When you analyze all their questions carefully you discover that hidden behind the innocent interest lies the information the cops are trying to get out of you. Any imprudent word will be used against you. Before the trial all your answers should be based on the following: I am not guilty, my arrest was a mistake, I don’t know anything. If I am found guilty and sent to the camp, then we’ll see who is who.

Every prisoner reacts to the cell-mates’ questions in his own way. Some don’t mind discussing their views on prison life, others avoid direct answers and withdraw into themselves.

While I’m writing these lines a pale face of my cell-mate comes to my mind. He was forty-two years old and we had shared the cell with him for about three months. I don’t know what he thought about me, but I considered him to be an absolute idiot. He behaved in such a way that nobody had any desire to ask him any questions. We realized that talking to him was useless - what can you expect of a dummy? The day our cell was dispersed we happened to be standing side by side in the prison corridor waiting for the warden’s orders. Both of us knew we would be sent to different cells and would hardly see each other again. We broke into a conversation. To say that I was struck is to say nothing. I had never met a man with such an astute mind and phenomenal memory. A walking encyclopedia. A vacant look on his face had only been a mask and his behavior in the cell - a brilliant acting. How could I have failed to see that?

In prison everyone defines for himself the basic principles and attitudes and builds up his behavior accordingly. Some like to rule, others don’t mind to grovel. People are what they are, there is nothing you can do about it. I can only dare to give you some simple advice:

- don’t be scared, it won’t do you any good; what is meant to be, will be;

- don’t ask others for anything; try to be independent and live a life of a worthy man;

- don’t impose your point of view on the others; don’t blame your cell-mates if they disagree with you or have a different opinion. Everyone has freedom of choice and can decide for himself.