10 April 2025
by Aleksandr Podrabinek
Source: Facebook
Meeting in Kostroma
On Wednesday I was able to get a meeting with Valeriya Zotova, a prisoner in the 3rd detail at IK [penal colony]-3, which is in Pribrezhny, Kostroma Oblast. I went there with Pyotr Kuryanov, who did the lion’s share of the preparations, and I shamelessly enjoyed the fruits of his labor. We spoke with Lera for several hours so that she even missed her midday meal in the prison cafeteria, but she reassured us that they would bring her food to her detail and she would eat there.
She is quite a lively, direct, and positive-minded person. For a Russian concentration camp, that is actually amazing. Ordinarily, zeks are morose, guarded, and suspicious—the logical consequence of constantly expecting a blow, unforeseen disasters, or an avalanche of trouble. You couldn’t say that of Zotova. She is always in a defensive stance, prepared to defend herself, and thinks on her feet. She does not let herself be used, which invites hostility from compliant ‘activist’ fellow prisoners and dissatisfaction from penal colony employees. ‘I don’t let anyone control me, I’m my own person’, Valeriya says. ‘I cut off anyone who has rolled over too quickly and collaborates with the prison camp administration’. When she mentions prison camp activists, she points to her shoulders, indicating these activists’ cooperation with those who wear shoulder straps.
She has caught hell for her refusal to yield. Other prisoners call home once a week; she’s allowed to call only once a month. She has been put on a watchlist as a flight risk and at night is woken up every two hours. They say it’s to check that she hasn’t run away. Not that she has ever tried to escape. Once every three months she is invited to the administrative commission in charge of putting her on and taking her off the watchlist. They invariably ask her whether she finally intends to admit her guilt. ‘Why do they need my admission of guilt if the verdict was issued long ago?’ Lera laughs. And they extend her watchlist status again, and keep her from sleeping at night again. In addition, she was moved from a lower bunk to a top one, right under the light, which shines all night. ‘It’s a blessing in disguise, though’, Lera remarks. ‘Now I read books at night’.
It’s not as though you can catch up on your sleep during the day, though. Twelve hours of work in the sewing shop (two days every two days), study in school. There’s no free time left at all. As a seamstress she usually earns 10,000-12,000 a month (about $130), but half this money is deducted for the prison camp. The rest she can spend on food or send home. If you don’t meet your daily quota, there’s a thousand-ruble fine. Labor legislation has no such penalty measures, but there is no labor legislation in a prison camp, which ignores it.
A few prisoners have left for the SVO [special military operation]. They serve in the war as cooks, nurses, and aides, and in other civilian specialties. Those who collaborate with the prison camp administration can count on parole. Others earn themselves parole through denunciations. Zotova is constantly surrounded by what she calls ‘the ladies’, who closely listen in on all of Valeriya’s conversations and sometimes even ask provocative questions. And they invariably call on her to collaborate: ‘It will be simpler for you’. Lately, Valeriya has started to view these ‘ladies’ more calmly, whereas before they would sometimes come to blows.
I asked Zotova whether it was true that political prisoner Zhenya Berkovich from the 5th detail had not asked her to perform in the ‘Son of the Regiment’ show, as she asserts. Lera nearly hit the roof. ‘What do you mean didn’t invite me? I have a witness. My friend was there when she did! She offered me the role of that boy, the son of the regiment. But I turned her down’. In passing, it has been made clear that the opinions of multiple ‘connoisseurs’ of prison camp life about the impossibility of prisoners from different details taking part in the same performance are utter nonsense. Valeriya told me that there are no problems whatsoever with participating in other details’ shows. It doesn’t even require the bosses’ permission. Loyalty is encouraged in every possible way, and collaboration with the administration is welcomed. Moreover, the stories of these ‘experts’ about the strict isolation of details in local zones are the cheap fabrication of ignorant people. At IK-3, there is only one detail in a local zone where ‘repeaters’ live, that is, people who are not in prison camp for the first time. All the rest are in a shared residential zone and interact with one another unhindered during their free time, to say nothing about their work in the shop or encounters in the cafeteria, in the infirmary, on parade, or at all-camp events. I think the false information has a single source: the 5th detail, where all the custodial workers and activists are gathered. The ‘goat detail’, the zeks call them.
I wouldn’t say that Lera is terribly bothered by the lying that surrounds her in prison camp and comes from the outside, but it did seem to me that it does get to her. She remarked to me bitterly that fame can serve as justification for injustice. But like the steadfast tin soldier, she repeated more than once over the few hours of our encounter that she herself has no intention of making peace with injustice and will stand her ground, no matter the cost.
P.S. After Pyotr Kuryanov and I met with her, we bought everything she wanted at the local food store and put together a care package. And on Thursday, the lawyer I invited, Timur Idalov, who will be defending the legal rights and interests of political prisoner Valeriya Zotova, is traveling to IK-3.
Aleksandr Podrabinek
Kostroma – Moscow
Translated by Marian Schwartz
