New Year’s in prison definitely beats all your favorite entries in the collection of unusual celebrations like “we celebrated on the beach” and “we did it on a plane in midair.” It’s unclear how many celebrations like this I still have ahead of me, but the first one will definitely stick in my memory. First of all, the New Year atmosphere here is excellent. There’s a sea of snow, white and very clean. There are no cars, after all, and they don’t spread any chemicals on it. Second, the snowdrifts are huge and square. I’m not joking. It’s a universal absurdity that unites prison and the army. If a snowdrift is shaped normally, then it’s “civilian,” and that means disorder. So they use plywood boards to make them square. Absurd as it is, for me it brings back childhood nostalgia. An ushanka hat (a traditional Russian fur cap with earflaps), white snow, square snowdrifts—it’s as if I’m nine years old again, walking to my dad’s workplace on a military base. There’s nothing even resembling a festive dinner here—which was a big disappointment. I thought there’d at least be a token tangerine. But something more important did happen: we were allowed to stay up until 1 a.m. and use the kitchen the whole time. That’s when the culinary miracles began. People generously opened up their reserves. So there were tangerines, cake, and even Coca-Cola. Thirty minutes before New Year’s, they come into the barracks to offer congratulations. In front of a formation of convicts—that is, us—a few other convicts dance around dressed as animals and Ded Moroz (the Russian New Year gift-bringer, similar to Santa Claus). An operative officer watches. The educational work department films it on camera. A classic moment when absolutely everyone is embarrassed and just wants it all to end as quickly as possible. When Ded Moroz asked “the guys to recite a little poem,” 71-year-old Valera (convicted of grievous bodily harm; he stabbed his neighbor with a knife) unexpectedly actually read out his own verses. They included these lines: “Ded Moroz, grant us release on parole, If not all of us, then at least every other one.” Ded Moroz didn’t promise parole, but he did give Valera a handful of candy. We were allowed to wake up at 7 a.m. I still woke up at 5:30 as usual and just LAY IN BED. And when I got up at 6:45 and lazily went to wash up, I felt like a sybarite in a silk robe. The kind who, the morning after a noisy party, strolls from the bedroom to an aqua disco. They’d also promised to cancel morning exercises on January 1, but apparently they decided the inmates might overdose on comfort and not survive it. Still, exercises at 7 a.m. is very, very okay, believe me. So it was a very good holiday. I liked it. Hope you celebrated well too 😉