A regular and joyful event in my life—getting out of the punishment cell—has now become something entirely prosaic. They simply take me out of the very last cell in a long corridor and move me into the very first one, though on the way we stop by the search room, where I change clothes. Because there must be order in everything: while I’m in SHIZO (a punishment isolation cell), the back of my prison uniform must be emblazoned with huge stenciled letters reading “SHIZO,” and if I’m in a PKT cell (a cell-type punishment unit), then the letters “PKT” have to be on my back instead. Despite the distance being only 30 meters, the difference in everyday terms is enormous. In the punishment cell, nothing is allowed, while in the regular one, along with the prison slop, they also give me food bought from the prison kiosk. So at one end of the corridor I drink boiling water, and at the other I drink coffee—which improves my mood by 300 percent. They weigh me constantly here, so I know that on average, for every 10 days in SHIZO, I lose 3.5 kilograms (7.7 pounds), which I then gradually regain—if they don’t throw me back in again right away. I once read somewhere that when people are fattening piglets, you can’t feed them well all the time—otherwise you get too much fat and too little meat. People who know what they’re doing alternate: one month you feed them, one month you “marinate” them. Then the result is excellent: a layer of fat, a layer of meat, a layer of fat, a layer of meat. And now I’m thinking: maybe they want to eat me? After all, the African dictator Bokassa, as is well known, ate members of the opposition in order to acquire their strength. Our Putin is at roughly the same level of madness, and he’s clung to power for 24 years, like any lunatic dictator. So he may well be adopting the best practices of his fellow dictators. And besides, it’s very original, and it shows the whole world that we are following our own independent path of development, and that the West has no say over us 😉