Inside Campaigns

Like any person who dared to criticize authoritarian regimes, I understood that it was not worth renouncing prison. But when I was arrested, I still did not expect to end up in a totalitarian prison. Permanently. It was as if some vile time machine had sent me to the GULAG. No, I’m not getting hit yet. But they try to break it. In every way. They twist and crush, use Terry camp methods.

The worst thing is that I have no correspondence or communication with the outside world. I am a political prisoner, so the letters I write every other day to my mother, son, wife, and friends are not allowed outside the prison walls. They don’t come out of jail; I think that the local political officer carefully files them to my case. What he’s going to dig up against me is clear.

Of course, the letters that are sent to me from the outside do not reach me either. Not that they were censored, some were passed, others were not. They don’t let you through at all. Even though they read it. And books just don’t transmit.

I wanted to start writing something myself-I can’t! In addition, every written word of my diary is read and copied.

Once, after a meeting with a lawyer, after trying to pass a letter to my mother and wife, they took me into a room, stripped me completely naked, and searched me thoroughly to see if I had hidden a piece of paper somewhere. Then they put me in a “glass” — a meter — by-meter concrete punishment cell-while they searched my cell, it seems.

Believe me, the “glass” in comparison with the total information vacuum is nothing. But for spiritual care, a TV was brought to the cell. Of course, only three main Belarusian channels are available, where there are special soul-saving Belarusian programs-they probably hope to wash their brains with propaganda about milk production and grain harvesting.

Shower once a week, on Wednesdays. The toilet in the cell is in full view. Solzhenitsyn from the grave waved his hand and turned over on the other side.

They make you shave every day. Regulation. If you don’t shave, they threaten you with a punishment cell (it’s almost like a “glass”, but there is a stool, there is nowhere to lie). Growing a beard is a certain degree of freedom. Not allowed! All must be the same. The razor is blunt, there are no lotions and the water is icy. After the first shave, the face became inflamed. The next day they make you shave again, even though nothing has grown back! The irritation increases. I called the doctor — he said that “he sees the inflammation, but can’t do anything”, they say, it is not necessary not to shave. Charter!

You can’t lie on the bed during the day — for this, too, a reprimand and a punishment cell are guaranteed. But after 22:00 — lights out. Do you think that lights out means you went to bed and fell asleep? Lights out — this is just turned off the music, Soviet-Patriotic, which from six in the morning thunders from the yard. The light in the cell is on continuously, 24 hours a day. The bunks are short, iron, and so uncomfortable that it is impossible to sleep on them. My legs are swollen and I can’t pull them out. Therefore, it is impossible to get enough sleep: it is painful and light. And the constant clang of iron locks and doors. Always. 24 hours a day. In 2020, this can and should be regarded as torture. Torture for freedom of speech, for incorrect views and articles about the presidential election.

Non-free Belarusians, I hope you have a better life there, in the wild, than here. Although the difference is getting smaller every day, if the rumors that come from the outside are true, the unbearable conditions in which I find myself are nothing compared to when young people, teenagers, girls are beaten with sticks, that there is no living space left for them. And the devil knows what they, like me, are looking at deadlines. However, I do not lose hope for freedom, for all of us.

She will be. Sooner or later. All that’s left is to find this damned time machine and go back to the twenty-first century.

Just in case, I officially declare that I have no thoughts of suicide. I hope to be fully exonerated, to be released, and to continue to live a free and honest life, as I have always lived.

With respect and love,
Temporarily stuck in the Byelorussian SSR,
free political prisoners

Vitaly Shklyarov