by Ben Stewart
I wonder what they had imagined would be the reaction of the Russian coastguard, defending the security of what in any waters would be a highly sensitive installation. They had been warned to back off in the most explicit terms and told that any attempt to scale the exploration rig would be regarded as a hostile act … Faced with the unenviable imaginary choice of a government run by Vladimir Putin and one run by Greenpeace, I would vote for the former every time. Putin might be a vengeful and autocratic ruler in the Russian tradition; but he is not part of a gang of well-meaning fools seeking to drive mankind back into pre-industrial poverty.
In a film for the hugely influential Sunday Times newspaper entitled ‘Should we blame Greenpeace?’110 the commentator Rod Liddle said:
So Greenpeace authorised their people to clamber aboard a Russian gas installation which the Russians consider a security installation, and Greenpeace are surprised the Russians didn’t accept all of this in high spirits. What on earth was Greenpeace thinking?
Liddle then interviewed the former Russian presidential adviser Alexander Nekrassov.
‘Do you have any sympathy for the Greenpeace people?’ he asked.
‘I think the Greenpeace people made one crucial mistake,’ Nekrassov replied. ‘They should have realised the gravity of the situation. They should have warned all the people involved that this is not an easy thing, it carries a lot of danger here. I feel sorry for the people who went there without knowing what they were in for.’
Similar stories have appeared in newspapers and on television around the world. It’s a line that Dima heard on state-run TV in his cell at SIZO-1. And he’s picked up some hostility from a few of the other activists, a sense that because he’s Russian he should have known how the regime would react.
But from where Dima is sitting, this is the third time he’s been arrested in the same waters, going back to 1990. A year before the Sunrise was stormed, he was one of the people who protested at the same rig. Putin was president back then and they weren’t touched by the authorities. Dima wasn’t alone thinking Russia had a fairly sane and rational government. Granted, there were voices saying Putin was mad, but they were far from the mainstream, closer to a lunatic fringe. At worst Dima expected the crew would be detained for a few days aboard the ship after the action. And even in jail he stands by that expectation, given what he knew then.
In Frank’s compartment the argument is still raging.
‘Come on, Frank. When we had a legal briefing about what the charges could be, I’m not sure piracy was even mentioned.’
‘It fucking was.’
‘Well, even if it was, it was never said to us like it was a serious risk.’
‘Because it wasn’t. Because we weren’t going to commit piracy. You can’t commit piracy on that platform, it’s attached to the seabed, it’s not a ship. Jesus, guys, I know we’re in the shit here. I know we’re all hurting, but please, give me a break with this blame game.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t a serious risk then what are we all doing here?’
The row peters out to silence, but the tension hangs unresolved as the train rattles through the night.
Alex’s cousin has sent her a Russian–English translation booklet and it has a section devoted to romance. She pulls it out on the prison train. It has the Russian translation for phrases including I would die without your love and I like it when you touch me here and I want you. Alex, Sini and Camila shout out these lines at the guards then collapse in laughter. But the guards don’t smile. They stare ahead with concrete expressions.
Twenty-four hours have passed. The head of the guards tells them they’re close now. For some it’s a moment of huge relief. So they’re not being taken to a transit prison. This isn’t the Stolypin journey of their nightmares. Then the realisation dawns that they’re hours away from being split up. Alex and Sini shout out, ‘We love you’ and, ‘Wherever you go, stay strong!’
The train pulls into St Petersburg and the carriages fall silent. The guards take them out, one cell at a time. They have to jump across the track from the train to the open doors of an avtozak. Sini and Alex are pushed into a compartment together. Alex zips up her purple ski jacket and reaches out for Sini’s hand. They squeeze as tightly as they can.
The men are loaded into different vans. The drivers turn the engines. The women are heading for SIZO-5, some of the men for SIZO-4. But most of them are driven to St Petersburg SIZO-1.
Kresty.
It’s a crumbling stack of red brick and barred windows on the banks of the river Neva and would look like a derelict Victorian mill or an asylum if not for the distinctive onion domes of the Alexander Nevsky cathedral that rise from the middle of the complex. Kresty means ‘crosses’. The nineteenth-century architect who designed the prison had it built in the shape of two crucifixes, so the prisoners could better repent of their sins.111
The prison housed the enemies of tsarism, then after Lenin’s seizure of power Kresty housed enemies of the new communist government. In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn wrote: ‘During the whole year [1918] it would certainly seem that more than a thousand were shot in Kresty alone’ – of whom six were peasants guilty of clipping excess hay from a communal farm to feed their cows.
During the long decades of Soviet rule Kresty held both criminals and political dissidents from what was then called Leningrad, Russia’s most liberal city. Anna Akhmatova, one of Russia’s greatest poets, would wait for hours outside the prison walls in the hope of delivering a package to her son, the historian Lev Gumilev.112 Akhmatova captured the anguish of the relatives of Kresty’s inmates in her famous poem, ‘Requiem’.
How, the three hundredth in a queue,
You’d stand at the prison gate
And with your hot tears
Burn through the New-Year ice.
In the preface to the poem, she describes how she was prompted to put her experience into words after spending seventeen months outside the prison gates. She saw ‘a woman with blue lips. She had, of course, never heard of me; but she suddenly came out of that trance so common to us all and whispered in my ear (everybody spoke in whispers there): “Can you describe this?” And I said, “Yes, I can.”’
Escape from Kresty is almost impossible, but many have tried. In 1946 a prisoner named Volkov removed bricks from the wall of his cell, one by one, and put them in his chamber pot, which he emptied outside. Eventually he created a hole to the street, and one night he made his break. Having secured his freedom he went immediately to the public baths, where he was recognised by a surprised but diligent off-duty guard. It is said that Volkov was returned to Kresty humiliated but clean.113
In 1984 two prisoners forged KGB identification papers from cardboard and red thread. They scoured magazines for pictures of uniformed officers who resembled them, cut out those photos and stuck them to the card. Their counterfeiting skills were so advanced that nobody at the gates of Kresty thought twice about letting them stroll out into the street to embrace freedom.114
The Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991, but Kresty remained. Four years later, under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, a monument was erected on the opposite bank of the River Neva, commemorating the victims of political repression. A year after that another monument was installed in Kresty itself, this time to the poet Anna Akhmatova. But recognition of past crimes did little to improve conditions there. By the end of the millennium Kresty housed ten thousand prisoners – three times its capacity – and was suffering a virulent outbreak of tuberculosis.115
As the avtozak pulls into the grounds of the famous prison the men see barbed wire and the decrepit, dominating cathedral that rises up from the middle of the jail, built in the same style and with the same bricks as the incarceration blocks. At the top of a white dome are two crosses. One is a typical Russian Orthodox cross, the other a more familiar T shape. From a certain angle the two crosses, overlaid, take on a very particular profile, and Dima remembers that it’s this shape that i
s the design of the prison tattoo that professional criminals have inked around their fingers across Russia – the U of the Russian Orthodox cross, over a T.
Gathered in the reception area are fourteen of the Arctic 30, including Pete, Frank, Phil, Roman and Dima. The rest of the men have been taken to St Petersburg SIZO-4, an isolation unit across town. The eight women are being taken to the all-female SIZO-5.
The activists at Kresty are processed, then led to their new cells. Dima steps through the door and puts down his pink bag. The door slams behind him. The smell of fresh paint fills his nostrils. A man gets up from his bunk and introduces himself as Vasily. He’s in his mid-thirties, well-built, very tall, wearing expensive sports gear.
‘Welcome.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Please, sit down.’
‘Thanks.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Sure.’
Vasily bends down in the corner of the cell and produces an object that makes Dima visibly flinch. ‘Wow, that’s a big motherfucker of a tea boiler.’
‘Thank you.’
‘In Murmansk we had these little sort of coils that you put inside the glass. But that looks like a ten-watt massive fucking tea-boiling pot. Are you even allowed that in here?’
The man shrugs, ‘Of course not.’
Then, while the water is boiling, Vasily says, ‘Dima, we do not eat prison food here in my cell.’
‘No?’
‘No, we do not.’
He opens up the fridge – ‘We have a fridge in our cell?’ – and pulls out a French baguette, cuts off a slice, spreads a knob of butter over it, produces a jar of red caviar, spreads a spoonful onto the bread, closes the sandwich with a flourish and holds it out. And Dima thinks, no, we’re not in Murmansk any more.
Vasily tells Dima his story. He rented out a house to some students who grew nine marijuana plants, and the investigators say he knew all about it. He’s been in Kresty a little over a year, waiting for his trial on narcotics charges. But Dima knows enough about Russia to suspect that’s not what Vasily is really in for. The clothes, the food, the fridge, the attitude. This guy’s a bandit. Rich. Influential. Sorted. A post-Soviet killer-type bandit.
‘The cells were all painted two weeks ago,’ says Vasily. ‘Refitted entirely for you. Kresty has the doroga but you aren’t allowed to be part of it. The guards told us, “If you want to stay in these lovely cells with the Greenpeace people, behave.”’
Then he shows Dima an order book for the prison shop. It has five pages of food to choose from.
‘You order on one day and get it the next day. It works. For people like me anyway. And you too, Dima. You too.’
In a cell down the corridor Frank is sitting on his bunk and looking out through the window. He can see the onion domes of the cathedral through the bars. He imagines Trotsky being marched down the corridors. Many people died here, Frank knows that. Many political prisoners. He can feel the weight of history. The weight of hopelessness. Frank was brought up a Catholic and has a fondness for ornate churches. This cathedral in the middle of the prison looks beautiful, but utterly incongruous in its setting. He writes a note to the governor requesting a tour of the church and hands it to a guard.
Pete Willcox is sitting on the edge of his new bed, writing in his diary.
12th November
Got to the prison around noon, suspected and neglected and put away. The cell is about half the size and I have a roommate. So it sucks. The view though has a bit of a large canal out to the left and a Russian Orthodox church to the right. Reminds me of George’s Cross we put up on Amchitka. I am not doing very well. Is this shit ever going to end? My roomy Igor is twice my size but very nice. He has been here 18 months. I do not know what for. He is very hygienic. Tonight he looked at dinner and said it was garp [shit]. So he took the sardines, pulled out the bones, and made a very nice sardine and noodle dinner. We do not talk much. All in all, I would much rather be back in Murmansk.
Frank Hewetson’s diary
12th November
This is the oldest and biggest prison in Russia and is more or less a museum. I had a nasty stand-off with the same guy who gave me shit on the train, while waiting for allocation of rooms. He blames me and Dima for the lengthy incarceration. Claims he never got a full legal briefing and claimed whatever we did turned to shit. He will send a complaint about it to IMAD [Greenpeace ships unit]. He made a comment about me never sailing with Greenpeace again. I think I prompted that by asking him why he was whingeing so much since he was the one who swore he’d never sail with us again. Some people are upset with the way it’s turned out and the campaign team in general.
Got packed to my cell and now sharing with Anton. He got a book out and pointed to the word ‘AMNESTIA’ indicating that a good chance for our release would be the December amnesty, which is a whole month from today, which I think I can easily handle. BUT with difficulty if we have continuing rumour see/saw. What we need is a date to work down to. Just saw long clip on Arctic 30 arrival in St P with the press saying it was like a Top Secret transport of high level personnel. The circus continues.
Across town, in a hallway at SIZO-5, the women are lined up in front of cell doors. The guard standing next to Sini slides a key into the lock and the door swings open. Sini takes a nervous step forward. The door closes. Two women look up from their bunks. Sini tries to smile. She holds out a hand but the women ignore it.
They’re both Russian, middle-aged. They look away. Sini sees a spare bunk, crosses the cell, sits down and stares at the floor.
Along the hallway Alex is in her new cell with three other prisoners. One of them is an old woman, tired and sad, short and plump with long white hair. Alex is sitting on her bed watching her. A key turns in the lock, the woman jumps up frantically, makes her bed then stands stiffly in front of it, waiting for inspection. The guard pokes his head around the corner then disappears. Twenty minutes later there’s a sound from the corridor, Alex stands up, the woman pushes her out of the way to get to her bed and straighten the sheet.
The woman sits on her bed. Alex sits down next to her. She has a dictionary and by pointing at words she can make herself understood. She asks the woman how she ended up here, and nervously, by pointing at words herself, the woman explains that she’s seventy-four years old. She says an intruder broke into her house, he kicked and punched her but she ran to the kitchen and pulled a knife from a drawer and stabbed him in the shoulder.
She’s looking at seven years. Her name is Marina.
Meanwhile Sini is lying on her bunk, watching her new cellmates. One of the women is floating around the cell, her eyes vacant like there’s nothing behind them. Sini stands up and walks to the window. The woman follows her, talking to herself in staccato Russian. She pokes Sini, shakes her head, wags a finger. Sini waves her away and sits back on her bed. But when she stands up again the woman shuffles behind her, shaking her head with disapproval and muttering to herself through tight dry lips. Sini unzips her bag and starts laying her meagre possessions on her bed, the woman rushes across the cell with a panicked expression, shaking her head wildly. Sini shoos her away. She lies on her bunk, pulls the sheet up over her head and holds herself tight. She can sense the woman standing over her. She can hear her breathing.
She’s taken to gulyat and shouts over the wall. ‘Camila! Alex! Faiza!’ But there’s no answer, so she shouts again. A guard opens the door of her box.
‘I don’t know why you’re shouting,’ he says. ‘There’s nobody there.’
TWENTY-SIX
Pete Willcox’s diary
13th November
In the cell. It sucks. Not freaking but way bummed. Went to the exercise yard. At least you can see some sky, but it is shitty. Saw the isolation cells on the way. They looked really bad. Got a copy of the prison rules in English. Tried to read them but quit when I got to the place where the family of the inmate can recover his body. The prosecutor (new for St Pete) stop
ped by after dinner. They all had a good laugh when I said Igor ‘killed’ me at chess today (they saw the board out). I almost asked him what he was going to do with us. But I chickened out. I did not like seeing him.
On the afternoon of the second day in St Petersburg the SIZO governors tour the activists’ cells, bringing with them a retinue of officials. When the door of Alex’s cell opens, Marina jumps to attention with a look of terror on her face.
Fifteen men file in, one after the other, prison guards and the head of the prison.
‘Do you have any problems?’ asks the governor.
‘No,’ says Alex. ‘I just want to go home.’
The man sniffs. He looks around. His eyes fall on the old woman. He walks over to Marina and starts asking her questions. She speaks quickly, he nods and makes some notes. The delegation leaves, the cell falls silent. Then Marina starts to weep.
‘What’s wrong?’ asks Alex, putting an arm around her. ‘Don’t cry Marina. What’s wrong?’
One of the other women, a young Russian, sits on the bed and puts a hand on Marina’s shoulder. ‘She cries because she’s been here two years. She asks for help many times and receives nothing. Then they visit you and for first time she speaks to governor. First time he knows who she is. First time they are nice to her. First time.’
In the other jails – Kresty and SIZO-4 – the activists are also being visited by the delegation of officials. An array of huge hats, immaculate uniforms and medals. There’s barely enough room for them in the cells.
They ask Dima, ‘How is it?’ and, ‘Is it okay?’ and, ‘Is it all to your liking?’
‘Apart from being in jail, it’s all fine.’
The men nod and pat each other on the back then stream out of the cell.
