Four thousand nine hundred and sixty kilometres from Moscow, the rough stone track crests a rise and all is revealed. Hunched on the open steppe stands a group of tatty grey buildings, swept by plumes of dust. Welcome to Krasnokamensk, a town at the edge of civilisation.
Nearly two centuries have passed since Tsar Nikolai I banished the rebellious aristocrats known as the Decembrists to remote corners of eastern Siberia. In Soviet times, enemies of the people were dispatched to similar benighted spots in the network of labour camps called the gulag.
Today, in Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation, the price of dissent comes no cheaper. For Mikhail Khodorkovsky — former billionaire, oil tycoon and convicted criminal — the road to internal exile ended here in Krasnokamensk. After speculation about where he would serve his term, prison officials confirmed last week that Khodorkovsky had been delivered to this outpost to complete his term on charges of fraud and tax evasion. On the edge of this wind-blasted company town near the Chinese border — it was built to serve a giant uranium mine nearby — stands penal colony YaG 14/10, the place that will be his home for up to six years.
Bitter winds
In winter, temperatures drop to -40C and bitter winds sweep across the steppe. Visitors are rare and the tycoon’s arrival has sent a ripple of disruption through the town of 60 000, once off-limits to all outsiders. ”He’s the biggest bird that ever flew in here,” admits a guard at the camp.
Once Russia’s richest man with a personal fortune of $15-billio, Khodorkovsky ran afoul of the Kremlin when he lobbied for private oil pipelines and dripped cash into parties opposed to Putin. He was arrested two years ago and convicted in May after proceedings widely condemned as a farce.
This morning the 42-year-old father of three, who previously lived in a villa in Moscow and was driven to work in an armoured saloon, wakes up in barracks number eight of YaG 14/10. Dressed in blue fatigues, he will shuffle off with his fellow zeks (slang for inmates) to a breakfast of porridge and black tea.
Yuri Yakushevksy, Siberia spokesperson for the federal penitentiary service, told Interfax the colony spent 65,44 roubles daily ($2,29) on each prisoner, of which 35 were spent on food.
”All the prisoners eat in the same canteen,” he said. ”They prepare the food themselves and they do the washing up. The bread is baked by the prisoners. On the menu today is porridge, bread, meat. Soon they will get a wagon of seafood and fish.”
He said inmates rose at 6am, and those on duty worked for two hours, while all could watch TV for two hours a day.
”Khodorkovsky is no exception and works like all the others,” he said, adding that he had brought in two cases of books and was studying for an unspecified doctorate. He would sleep on a bunkbed in a dormitory 40m by 15m, in a two-floor building holding an estimated 160 prisoners.
Old habits die hard in these parts, and even approaching the prison — known to locals as ”the zone” — prompts a warning to retreat quickly. A ramshackle collection of huts behind a wall held up by slumped concrete pillars, about a kilometre and a half outside the town, is all one can glimpse before guards bear down. An observation post provides a clear field of fire over the road and surrounding wasteland.
Jumpy
Guards are already jumpy: three local reporters were arrested and their cameras confiscated for getting too close at the weekend. Outside yesterday, men in camouflage erected a checkpoint to stop prying eyes. But details of life inside soon leak out.
”There’s only a few old hands left over from the days when it was a harsh regime camp,” says one prison source. ”Khodorkovsky’s got nothing to worry about — they’re mostly fraudsters and thieves, just like him.”
Work offers one desirable perk: a salary of up to 23,23 roubles (81 US cents) a day. Inmates are largely in their mid-20s and are keen for a job to alleviate boredom and earn money for cigarettes and chocolate, bought in the prison shop.
”There’s a kind of sewing workshop where they make uniforms for policemen and some of them get to look after cows and pigs,” says Valery Dereshov, a local reporter who went inside two years ago. Natalia Terekhova, a local lawyer who visited Khodorkovsky on Friday, says he was calm but disoriented. ”Mikhail Borisovich had a lot of questions about the conditions, his rights, his access to newspapers and television,” she says. ”Imagine an intellectual person finding himself for the first time in such a place. He does not want to lose touch with the outside world.”
Isolation
Khodorkovsky’s legal team in Moscow is less restrained. Anton Drel, his defence lawyer, accuses the Kremlin of isolating the tycoon from his family. ”This is the pursuit of a certain goal: it’s vengeance,” he says, adding that he is preparing a complaint to the European court of human rights on grounds that prisoners are habitually allowed to serve their sentences close to home.
Khodorkovsky’s mother, Marina, has said she and his wife, Inna, may take turns living nearby.
In Krasnokamensk, sympathy for Khodorkovsky is thin on the ground. ”We survive here and so will he,” says Gennady (58) a geologist fixing his car in nearby Oktyabrsky village, where tests a decade ago found radon levels at 190 times their recommended maximum.
Irina, a chemist at the uranium plant, says: ”He’s an oligarch after all. If his relatives want to come and visit they can use his private jet.” – Guardian Unlimited Â