I’m reading Marchenko—a Soviet dissident who spent half his life in prison and died in 1986 after a hunger strike. He describes his imprisonment in the 1960s. With every page, what strikes me is not even how similar the systems are, but that it is the very same system. For example, here is a quote from his chapter on the punishment cell (SHIZO, a punitive isolation cell): > “The term there is limited—no more than 15 days. But it is easy for the prison authorities to get around this rule. In the evening they let you out into the camp zone, and the next day they lock you up again for another 15 days. For what? There is always something: you stood in the cell blocking the peephole, picked up a cigarette butt during exercise, answered a guard rudely. They can give you another 15 days just like that, for nothing. […] Once in Karaganda, they kept me in solitary confinement for 48 days, letting me out only to read me a new order on my ‘placement in a punishment cell.’ Writer Yury Daniel was given two consecutive punishment-cell terms in Dubravlag for ‘being rude to a sentry.’” Compare that with my four months in SHIZO—the pattern is identical. And it is the same in everything. Hunger, food, cigarettes, visits, care packages, and prison kiosks—the things around which a prisoner’s world revolves. The only significant change is that now the cells have water and sewage, and the “reduced food ration”—official torture by starvation—has been abolished. And corruption has increased. Some will say: “They also abolished punishment in the form of deprivation of packages and visits.” Sure—look at me. I’ve been in Melekhovo for seven months, and in that time I’ve had 1 (one) phone call, 1 (one) package, and 0 (zero) visits. Yes, the Soviet prison system underwent a certain degree of humanization after Stalin’s death, under whom there were literal death camps, but after that it remained unchanged. It has not the slightest connection to rehabilitating criminals; its only purpose is to dehumanize the prisoner, torment him, and carry out the unlawful instructions of the country’s political leadership. Whoever needs to be released—we’ll release. Whoever needs extra time—we’ll easily find a reason to add to the sentence. Whoever you tell us to—we’ll kill and write it up as pneumonia. So Russia’s prison system is the same Soviet GULAG—there’s just a church built in every penal colony now. This system is beyond reform, and in the Beautiful Russia of the Future it must be rebuilt completely from scratch.