"No one cares": Olga Romanova about female colonies and prisoners
Founder of the Charitable Foundation "Sitting Russia" Olga Romanova publishes a book of the same name, which contains stories about the life of Russian prisoners and their loved ones. On the eve of the book’s release, illustrated by Oleg Navalny’s drawings, we talked to its author about the female colonies and the female face of the Russian penitentiary system, how the lives of mothers and children separated by the zone are made, and what it is like to devote ten years to studying the terrible a world about which most compatriots still do not know almost nothing, but which, nevertheless, is always near.
I have fear. Fear of forgetting something important is what I saw and learned over the past ten years. These ten years I have been involved in prison and prison histories, and this seems to me the most important not only in my life. For many years I worked as a journalist, received awards, considered myself successful in the profession and generally knew the country and life. What a sad delusion. No, I did not know neither life, nor country, nor people. I think that even now I have not comprehended the incomprehensible and have not embraced the immense, but have learned to listen and memorize. And record. And so this book appeared - out of fear of forgetting the most important thing with which life had come together.
The book contains a variety of stories from the daily work of the Fund "Sitting Russia" - we help convicts and their families. Somewhere I changed names and addresses, somewhere I combined several stories into one. Or left everything as it was - as, for example, in the stories about the fervent recidivist Petruha-seven-walker-three-escape. This is one of my favorite characters - by the way, now he is a well-known court defender, a respectable husband and father of the family, Pyotr Aleksandrovich.
I have carefully restored some stories for years according to eyewitness accounts and few documents - as a result, a little story appeared about the stormy and monstrous, in fact, life of a famous Moscow judge. Of course, in such cases I remove the names, although the character, it seems to me, has turned out recognizable.
A lot of "travel" stories - for me the most painful are trips to women's zones with children of convicted women: often children go to an orphanage, if there is no one who can shelter them, and orphanages have no opportunity to export children for dates. Sometimes we manage to come to an agreement with the zone, and with the children's home, we take an educator who agrees to accompany the child (it’s impossible to be alone), and we carry it for three days to the zone to mom. And so be calm: if the orphanage is located on the edge of the Arkhangelsk region, for example, then mom will sit somewhere near Kineshma or Kostroma — that is, go and think up a route that would take less than a day. And this is with the teacher, who usually does not know where she is going, and does not want to go anywhere, with the child, who is usually in a state of complete shock - both from the road and from the meeting with an unfamiliar woman, who responds to "mother" but lives for some terrible reason in a terrible place. In general, there is something to tell.
Sometimes it is possible to come to an agreement with the zone, and with the children's home, and we carry the child for three days to the zone to mummy on the bar. A child in a state of complete shock - and from the road, and from meeting with an unfamiliar woman who responds to "mother"
Yes, and do not think that the book is terrible - it seemed to me that it turned out to be rather cheerful. In the end, if you howl from everything seen and traversed, then there is not enough time for anything else. Howl unproductive.
By the way, here we are clearly on the same wavelength with Oleg Navalny. The man who sat down for his brother does not come out of the punishment cell, demonstrates fortitude, cheerfulness of character and - suddenly for many - the talent of a very good artist (and I would add - the narrator, I hope we will see his book also). So what else is needed to make it all happen? Varya Gornostaeva invented all this, she is the most important one in the Corpus publishing house, and I am separately very grateful to her for the brilliant idea. I think the artist had a pretty hard time. Because this book is not about prison, but about another - about love, about sadness, about the ordinary life adventures of our man, who often does not notice the difference where he is. Where will, and where bondage.
I would not say that this is a “women's book”, although there are many women in it - the Russian prison has a female face in general. There are not so many women sitting there, but always, in any prison and zone you meet many, many women. Women stand on transfers to men, women come to convicted women, women work in prisons - mainly in the accounting department, in some inspection, or by a psychologist for example. All this prison jalabuda driven by a woman. Which simply make up the landscape. Customary prison landscape.
It is believed that it goes without saying. A man is put in prison - a son, a husband, a brother, a father - a woman should be obliged to pull a prison strap. Type "your sacred duty." Family, too, she pulls. And the family, and prison. And many find the strength and joy to become pregnant after a long date. As a feat, this is not accepted. It is not customary to reckon with women who work in prison. In this man’s (for some reason) world, a woman is a bit like a shepherd dog. Only a shepherd dog is more terrible for a convict, and more useful for a vohrovtsa: it’s a weapon, a service tool, and it’s beautiful.
By the way, the case in the female zone most of all struck me when I was writing this book. Completely, this story has not entered there - but has not let me go for several years. It was usual for us: we were carrying a girl of about fifteen from the orphanage for a date with her mother. Mom has been sitting for eight years already - she killed a drunken and aggressive cohabitant, a living thing for the female zone. The girl still had a brother of just eight years old, he was already in prison, he lived in the same orphanage as his sister, but he did not go: for him it was just not interesting, as the teacher said - without drama and strain, said how by myself. The girl went on a date to her mother for the first time. There was such a frozen all the way - did not ask either to eat, or drink, or pee; I did not say that I was tired and that I was cold. It was in November, her jacket was light, her jeans were thin, but she was silent. Deadly beautiful girl, all such Natalia Vodianova.
Our path ran through Kostroma, we went somewhere to eat before the road to the zone, and I suddenly met a good friend, an employee of one embassy in Moscow, she went to see the Ipatiev Monastery and other antiquity and beauty. And suddenly she says: "Take me with you, I have never been there where you are going." Well, let's go, it's a good thing, enlightening, useful for karma.
We stopped at a supermarket, gathered a mountain of specific products so that we could miss the zone: a three-day meal for a girl, a teacher and a mother, and so that my mother would have something to eat later. We arrived at the place and went on a long, long circle: to write an application for a date, to get all the papers, to persuade the teacher, who suddenly realized that she would remain here without communication and without the opportunity to go out for three days, and therefore she wanted to turn around, and then a date is coming off. Vanity and pain. The girl all this time stood alone in the wind, quite indifferent to what is happening, she did not even get warm in the car. And with my friend something was happening, something important - I had no time to talk, but I noticed it out of the corner of my eye. And after going through many hours of queues, shouts, humiliation - finally reached the search. This is without us, here we are parting with the girl and the teacher, they will not let us go there, we meet in three days.
She was shocked by our everyday life, as people talk to people, as they humiliate. As they did not care about the little girl who first came to her mother. Disorder and anger, and a complete unwillingness to do at least someone better
Everything, we started our search, we get in the car and return to Kostroma. My acquaintance has been silent for a long time, then she asks for a cigarette, then she says that we urgently need to drink vodka. She shook our everyday life. She was shocked how people talk to people. How humiliated. As they did not care about the little girl who first came to her mother. Disorder and anger, and a complete unwillingness to make someone better, but at least myself. Smile and say: "Your mother loves you, everything will be fine." We’ve got used to it, the eye has become blurred and the hearing has been dulled, and you are no longer amazed at all this, but simply fix anger, laziness, an eerie vocabulary, false purple nails and instant prison smell in clothes: the aroma of stale balanda, unwashed bodies, dusty tulle and old plaster. It is outside. Inside, everything is the same, only without nails. My acquaintance just plowed and shook for a long time - she still remembers it.
And everything turned out well with the girl. They immediately found contact with my mother. Mom has already returned home, managed to get a place to live - she’s been busy in the zone about the laws, well done. Works as a salesman, met a guy like a good one. Contact with the son is not very, well, so it is clear.
And if you really need to change cosmetically in the prison system (although you need to change it all, at the root), it’s primarily women's zones. There is now no contact of the convicted woman with her children. Up to three years (if she gave birth in the zone) she can stay with her child, and then everything. It is necessary to make special inhuman efforts to bring the child on a date with his mother. And only benefactors are doing this, nobody else. Nobody cares.
Photo:tarapatta - stock.adobe.com, Alexander - stock.adobe.com
