Life in a Russian Prison

MOSCOW — “I am declaring a hunger strike starting Sept. 23. I refuse to take part in slave labor in the camp until the penal colony authorities start to conduct themselves in accordance with laws and start treating women inmates like people rather than cattle.” After a year-and-a-half behind bars, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has given up her struggle to keep the peace and has declared war on her jailers.  But only after they threatened to kill her.

Tolokonnikova is one of two members of the punk group Pussy Riot who are serving two-year sentences for lip-syncing and playing air guitar for 40 seconds in a peaceful protest in the largest Moscow cathedral. Ever since they were transported to penal colonies a bit less than a year ago, Tolokonnikova and the other jailed Pussy Riot member, Maria Alekhina, have assumed different roles in public, when they have spoken out, and in their private behavior behind bars.
Alekhina has become a vocal advocate for prisoners’ rights, a sort of jailhouse lawyer who has exposed numerous violations, filed copious complaints, and, in May, held an 11-day hunger strike that succeeded in changing conditions in her penal colony. But the authorities at the colony got the last word by securing her transfer to a different part of the country.
Tolokonnikova has also been an effective public speaker even while incarcerated, but she has spoken out on politics and freedom in general rather than prisoners’ rights. When I visited her three months ago, she insisted she simply wanted to have the time behind bars to go faster, and breaking up the monotony with court hearings or protests only served to slow time down. She did not want to discuss many of the details of penal-colony life, at least as long as she was there — to avoid more attention from the prison administration. And there were other things that neither she nor other women inmates want to discuss, because they are humiliating.
Tolokonnikova not only tried to adjust to life in the penal colony but she even tried to heed the criticism levied at her by colony representatives during a parole hearing. She was criticized for never taking part in such activities as beauty or singing contests, so she signed up to sing — only to be stymied in her attempts to go to the clubhouse to rehearse. Whatever she did, it seemed, the harassment would only intensify.
Three weeks ago, she finally had had too much. She had been suffering from severe chronic headaches, a lifelong ailment exacerbated by the long hours working while sitting down. Chronic sleep deprivation was affecting her as well as the other inmates. On Aug. 30, Tolokonnikova went to see the deputy director of the penal colony, and asked him to guarantee all women on her work shift eight hours of sleep a night.
“This would mean reducing the workday from 16 to 12 hours,” she writes in a letter from prison that was released on Monday. The deputy director answered that he would cut the shift even further: to the legally mandated eight hours. This, however, would mean that the women would be unable to fulfill their daily production requirements (they sew police uniforms) and would be penalized by having their privileges taken away and, quite possibly, beaten.
“And he concluded, ‘If they learn that this happened because of you, then I can tell you that things will never be bad for you again — because things are never bad in the afterlife.’ ”
“Over the next few weeks conditions in the factory grew intolerable,” writes Tolokonnikova. “Inmates who have ties to the administration have been pushing others to take care of me: ‘You have been penalized by having your tea, food, bathroom and smoking privileges taken away for a week. And this will go on forever if you don’t start acting different toward new inmates, especially Tolokonnikova — the way you were treated when you were new. Were you beaten? Yes you were? Were your months ripped apart? Yes, they were. Go ahead, beat the crap out of them. You will not be punished for
that.’ ”
Tolokonnikova realized that the only way to protect herself was to go public. She has filed complaints with police and judicial authorities saying that she has been threatened with murder. She has declared a hunger strike, demanding, among other things, a transfer to a different colony. And she has written a four-page letter detailing the conditions in the colony, including those no one ever describes.

Masha Gessen

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“Life in the colony is constructed in such a way as to make the inmate feel like a filthy animal who has no rights. The barracks have washrooms, but in the interests of punishing and reforming inmates, the administration has created a single, colony-wide washroom that fits five people and the entire population — 800 people — have to go there to wash their private parts. We are not allowed to do this in the washrooms in our barracks, because that would be too convenient. The colony-wide washroom is invariably crowded and the gals with their basins step all over one another in a rush to wash.  … We have the right to wash our hair once a week. But this bath day is frequently canceled because the water pump has broken or a pipe is backed up. Sometimes our barracks could not wash for two or three weeks running.
“When the pipes get clogged, urine bursts forth from the washrooms and feces fly. We have learned to clean the sewage pipes ourselves, but the results do not last long: the pipes get backed up again. The colony does not have a cable for cleaning pipes. We can wash our clothes once a week, in a small room with three faucets from which cold water drips.
‘‘It is probably also in the interests of reform that inmates are given only stale bread, only milk that has been diluted with copious amounts of water, only rancid porridge, and only rotten potatoes. All this summer they kept bringing wholesale quantities of sacks of slimy blackened potatoes, and this was what we were fed.’’
She also wrote that she should have gone on hunger strike months ago.

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Masha Gessen is a journalist in Moscow. Her next book, “Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot,” will be published in March.