A gangster sentenced to life for murder kept an interesting diary about the horrors of prison life.

However, before reading Zakharin’s revelations, it is perhaps worth finding out why he received a life sentence. Otherwise, there is a risk of over-romanticizing the image of a suicide bomber, who has more than one human life on his conscience.

Mikhail Zakharin was sentenced to life in prison in 2006. He is involved in the high-profile case of Mikhail Skripnik’s gang. Among the most notorious crimes of this organized crime group are the murder of authority figure Pavel Kiselev in Irkutsk and the assassination attempt on the head of another gang, Alexei Berduto (his bodyguard Maxim Telushchenko was killed). In addition, the gang was charged with the murder of businessman Igor Svetlov, whose dismembered corpse was found in the forest along the Goloustnensky tract. The investigation stated that it was Zakharin who indicated the place where the remains were located. However, he did not admit guilt in the murders.

Let us note that in 2004, when the investigation was already underway, Zakharin wrote a complaint about ill-treatment to the European Court of Human Rights. The ECtHR awarded him 30,000 euros in compensation.

The case of Mikhail Zakharin was again considered by a Moscow court this fall. But it did not concern the crimes for which he had already been found guilty at one time, but the place where the sentence was served.

Initially, Zakharin ended up in the distant “Polar Owl”, which is located in the village of Kharp in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. But after an appeal from his old mother, the convict was transferred to “Snezhinka”, which is located in the village of Elban, Khabarovsk Territory (it’s closer to her home, it’s easier and cheaper for her to get to a date). However, suddenly Zakharyin from “Snezhinka” was shocked to “Black Dolphin” in Sol-Iletsk, Orenburg region. It was this translation that he decided to challenge. The court declared the stage illegal and decided to return the prisoner back.

The stages of “lifers” are always the most difficult, since they usually have to overcome enormous distances. This sometimes takes not even a few weeks, but several months. And so Zakharyin decided to tell us about how they pass.

“The most disgusting thing is the stages! Night preparations, clothes, bustle, fuss, nervousness. Transit prisons, dim boxes, dirty toilets, spit-stained rooms, benches, smoky air. Dog hair in the pits of the paddy wagon, cramped conditions and incredible stuffiness in the compartment of the Stolypin carriage. You pack your things into bags, then put them out. Search. Then you collect again. And again dirt and soot. Screaming, yelling, swearing, laughter of prisoners – new acquaintances, fatigue, sleep through the noise and sound of wheels. Also life, also a journey. Domestic tourism… From the window – nature, and the wretchedness of abandoned villages. People at train stations. Free, free, happy people hurrying past gasping prisoners. They don’t even suspect profitability – there is no greatness! – its position from the bodies on wooden shelves in a nearby carriage. And everyone is going somewhere, in a hurry. Everyone has their own goal. A person behind bars can only envy, imagine, dream. And be glad that freedom is near, it has not disappeared anywhere and has not become an illusory value over many years of observing the same building from a barred window. People are happy. They just don’t know it.

Without consent, without reason or legal basis, they simply took him as an “object” and threw him into another zone. Even further from family and home, contrary to the already rendered court decision (to serve the sentence closer to home – author’s note). The system doesn’t care about court decisions and the law. She has her own logic and guidelines for action. She doesn’t care deeply about all your family connections, which you try to preserve and preserve with all your might all these years.

My elderly mother is not an argument for them. A father who died without waiting for a meeting will not cause them any regret either.

… Behind the pre-trial detention centers of Khabarovsk and Chita. Ahead are the pre-trial detention centers of Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk and Orenburg. And then “Black Dolphin”, where in the early 2000s there was the highest mortality rate (about 300 people!).

The only amenities I have are a kettle, a hair trimmer, a water filter and a radio (and even then, I don’t regulate it). There is also a thirst for freedom, a dream, a great goal: to endure it all to the end – and live! All your needs are switched to a life enclosed within concrete walls. Little things become significant because your “comfort” depends on them. And the system always tries to deprive you of these necessary little things.

Cans, containers, rags, an extra plate, a yoga mat, warm underwear, a stapler, a proofreader, pillows, a scarf, gloves, a mirror, carbon paper, a watch, a razor, a call on a payphone, an extra towel or a brighter light bulb – all these ordinary, familiar The things of a modern person in prison become “values.”

And the system manipulates them. He forbids, does not give what is required, delays, exchanges for the submissive obedience of the prisoner, exchanging his conscience for small things. The system reduces the greatness and dignity of a person to the insignificance of a squeaking mouse.

…After a three-day ordeal in a cramped compartment, the Chelyabinsk pre-trial detention center greeted me dirty and with the freedom of spat on stage boxes, which are still illuminated by incandescent light bulbs. But the people who meet me are pleasant, kind, and friendly. It’s a rare example when in front of them they see not a life sentence, but just a person – a prisoner. The walls oppress, crush, hit backhand with their unsanitary conditions, post-apocalyptic devastation!

Special block. Semi-basement. The window is double glazed, there is darkness behind it because of the iron sheets. The darkness is infested with rats! The stench of rat and dog shit, the rotten corpses of birds – this “bouquet” blows from the window. The moisture, dampness, rottenness of this place makes you grit your teeth, wrinkle your face and endure. Cobwebs on the walls, dirty floors, all kinds of insects, all living creatures live with you on three square meters.

Not a ray of light, not a fresh breeze, not a breath of air, not a long step across the cell – only disgust for this form of existence located on planet Earth. Russia. Chelyabinsk. SIZO-1. Semi-basement of the special block. Camera No. 2. If I had a fierce and hateful enemy, I wouldn’t want him to die in such a place!

…Silence, the faucet is dripping. Tinnitus. Somewhere in the distance, FSI dogs are barking. Thoughts run and collide in my head. It seems to me that the world has ceased to be. Collapsed behind these walls. They are so thick and damp that it seems that neutrinos will not pass through them.

There is uncertainty ahead. There is righteous anger in the soul. And you’re in the system. You are a soulless unit. Therefore, she does not need your smile, kind gesture, deed, word.

If you stumble once, you find yourself among the guilty for life. It’s like it’s burned on my forehead “A criminal cannot be returned to society. Burn it! Spray the ashes into the wind.”

I want perspective! Blue sky, stars, green meadows to the horizon. A person needs depth, height, breadth, distance. Freedom and space in his genetic fetus, in his DNA, came with the molecules of mother’s milk. And now you are in the system. It burns freedom out of you, makes you a two-dimensional, short-sighted, short-thinking creature poorly adapted to life.

…Not seeing stars for years. Do not touch the grass with your hand. You can’t walk barefoot along the seashore, you can’t throw already grown and unborn children into the sky. What kind of punishment is there without the opportunity to be forgiven? What a punishment, an evil lot. It’s as if he’s saying: “Here’s life for you—suffer it to the end and die. Many will be given a chance, but you won’t.”

Punishment must have meaning, it must include the opportunity to correct itself and awareness of the atrocities committed. Punishment for punishment’s sake is the executioner’s concept. And from the suffering suffered, a new, purified person must be born. He must create good from past evil, through pain and repentance, for “there is nothing else to create it from.”

… “They are re-educating.” But! According to the system (and it has an opinion), you are not capable of change. You are incapable of kindness, compassion, forgiveness, repentance, mutual assistance. Society, suffering itself, demands your suffering and torment. It wants to see your blood. And sometimes it sees her and calms down. Retribution has been given. “Social justice” took place. Amen”.

What Zakharin describes, alas, is reality for those sentenced to life. On the one hand, we hope that after reading this, young people will not romanticize the criminal world and will try to do everything to live their lives honestly and not end up in jail. On the other hand, a person, even in the most terrible prison, must remain a person, which the current system, unfortunately, does not want to accept.