Story
The Lefortovo detention center is one of the oldest places of detention in our country. The military prison in Lefortovo was built in 1881 in Moscow under Alexander 2. Initially, only war criminals were kept here. The building has been reconstructed many times.
At the end of the 20th year, the building began to be called the Moscow-Lefortovo distribution prison. And only after the prison took over the status of a pre-trial detention center. Previously, prisoners were kept in solitary confinement , and communication with prison staff was strictly prohibited. Because of such isolation from the outside world, many convicts began to ask for hard labor, and the rest of them simply went crazy.
Despite the fact that at present the regime of the pre-trial detention center is not so cruel, many prisoners also become inadequate and crazy when they get here. Very little is known about the history of this place. None of the historical sources contain detailed information about Lefortovo.
Even local historians working in this area of Moscow cannot say much about the prison. As before, as now, all information about it can only be learned from prisoners and their relatives. Journalists and others interested in the history of this MLS are not allowed inside. Lefortovo is full of secrets and mysteries.
There is nothing mysterious in the formation of the name of this pre-trial detention center. The prison began to be called “Lefortovo”, like the area in which it is located . And the area, in turn, received this name from the friend and associate of Peter 1 - Lefort. He helped the emperor in training soldiers and conducting military affairs. Previously, Lefort Castle was located on the site of the area; after a certain amount of time, about 500 houses for soldiers were built next to it. Later the area began to be called “Lefortovo”.
The most famous prisoners and escapes
There is a joke among the staff of the Lefortovo detention center that there are many more famous names in the prison archives than in any history textbook. Indeed, many well-known prisoners to this day have been behind these high concrete walls.
Only a small part of their surnames is known:
- Karl Yanovich Bauman is a famous Soviet party leader who was imprisoned without any specific reason (as was later revealed in his letter written in blood in Lefortovo prison). In Lefortovo he was beaten and tortured to death, after which he died at the age of 45.
- Viktor Semenovich Abakumov is a Soviet leader, colonel general, who was imprisoned in Lefortovo prison for false accusations of treason. His wife and 4-month-old son were jailed with him. He was shot, and his wife and child were released a few days before his death.
- Few people know, but Vasily Iosifovich Stalin spent a year in Lefortovo prison for slander.
- Kirill Afanasyevich Meretskov , a famous Soviet military leader, was accused of counter-revolutionary activities and sent to prison in Lefortovo. There he was subjected to torture and physical violence. Afterwards he was released and sent to the front.
- Yuri Konstantinovich Sokolov - ended up in Lefortovo for numerous thefts. At the age of 61 he was shot in prison.
There are also several escapes at this prison. So, for example, in 1920, two convicts were able to escape from here - Grigory Kletkin and Sergei Drozhennikov.
During repairs to the heating system, they were able to make a hole in the floor, through which they were able to escape a little later. In 1994, two prisoners were painting a fence in the prison yard. The guards were unable to keep a good eye on the convicts, and they escaped. By evening they were returned, and security was strengthened.
As a rule, high-ranking officials or rich people are kept in this pre-trial detention center . Therefore, there were many cases when those arrested were able to bribe the guards and thus leave the prison.
Mentions in popular culture
A.I. Solzhenitsyn in 1974 was accused of treason and exiled to Lefortovo prison. After some time, he was released and expelled from the country along with his family. Having settled in Zurich, he wrote to his friend in Russia for a long time, and the letters more than once mentioned information about Lefortovo, about the detention in this place. Currently, these letters can be found in the Solzhenitsyn House Museum in Moscow.
Also, Lefortovo is mentioned by rap artist Oxxxymiron in the track “It’s time to go home” together with Bi-2, the words “...It may not be comfortable here, but it’s not Lefortovo either. And you stubbornly wait for the teleport home to click.”
Thus, the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center is full of a lot of secrets and mysteries. No one except the prisoners themselves can tell you complete information about how things really are inside the building. it is still possible to conclude that the conditions in the pre-trial detention center are not as cruel and terrible as they were before
Women's hell: terrible things are happening in the Moscow pre-trial detention center “666”
Life under a bench with a cockroach
The women's pre-trial detention center in Pechatniki stands next to a beautiful temple. There are bars here, there are stained glass windows, there are concrete fences, there are flower fences there. Truly, the sinful and the holy always go side by side on Earth. As if to prove this, the latest complaint received by human rights activists. Its author is 91-year-old nun Elizaveta, whose granddaughter is now in a pre-trial detention center. The elderly hermit was for many years the abbess of a monastery where orphans were raised. And when her own granddaughter was detained with drugs, she was sure: behind bars she would not have to get sick or go hungry... Alas.
Most of the staff at Detention Center No. 6 are women themselves. Oh, how the new FSI uniform suits them! And some are pleasant not only in appearance. Their souls are torn looking at the prisoners; they would be glad to alleviate their plight, but due to staff reductions and a sharp increase in the number of prisoners, they do not have enough hands or time.
So, here are the numbers: as of June 5, 2021, 1,357 people 892 . Overcrowding is 57% .
Do you think the judges don’t know that the only pre-trial detention center is overcrowded? They know it very well! Both we and the FSIN inform them about this. But people in robes still time and again choose the most severe preventive measure for women. And it would be fine if we were talking only about murderers and other criminals dangerous to society. Again alas! Who couldn't our law enforcement and judicial systems do without?
Here, let’s say, without Katya, who borrowed a scooter from her neighbors to go buy vodka on it.
Or without Nadezhda, a cancer patient, who stole a wheel of expensive cheese from a supermarket.
Without mother of many children, Natalya, who is suspected of insurance fraud.
Without Elena, who was detained at the border on charges of organizing illegal migration.
Without Svetlana, who appropriated someone else’s mobile phone...
I can go on forever. In each cell there are at least 3-4 women who have caused such ridiculous damage that it is even shameful to pass them off as dangerous criminals. They could very well be under house arrest or under house arrest until the verdict. But it’s so inconvenient for the investigator (what if he disappears and doesn’t have a “stick”? What if he refuses to give a confession?) If the idea of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to decriminalize crimes with damages of up to 5 thousand rubles was supported by State Duma deputies, then they would not have the right to imprison them at all . But again and again - alas. The deputies did not support it, which means that women can be thrown behind bars.
How do they live in the pre-trial detention center and what is behind the dry language of over-limit numbers?
Cell No. 108.
55 women of age and social status coexist here temporarily. Almost like a women's dorm.
- Does everyone have a place to sleep? - my colleague, member of the PMC Anna Karetnikova asks them. They grin in response. Point to the far corner. There are several women lying side by side on the floor.
— Aren’t there any folding beds? — I clarify.
“Even if they are brought, there is no place to put them here,” the prisoners shrug their shoulders.
I am offered to sit on a large bench near the table where they usually dine. I sit down and notice that something begins to move right under my feet.
- Oh, is there someone here?
There is... One of the prisoners settled on the floor under the bench. He sleeps curled up and moves in his sleep. I look under other benches - there are women everywhere... It looks like a train station or a refugee camp. Is it possible to do this with women?..
Cell No. 306.
For 44 beds there are 55 female souls.
“Plus 11,” reports the woman in charge of the cell. — That is, 11 prisoners do not have a bunk.
“Beds, not bunks, and prisoners, not convicts,” the staff corrects.
Whatever you call it, the fact remains a fact.
The situation is approximately the same in other cameras. Only the faces of those who do not have a bed and who are forced to literally live on the floor change.
There are no folding beds here either. But even if even a thousand of them were now brought into the pre-trial detention center, this, as the prisoners correctly noted, would not solve anything: there is simply nowhere to put them.
For a long time, women who lived on the floor were given only one thin mattress, which in some places was lumpy to the point of being a rag. It took months of struggle between human rights activists and the administration before they began to allocate two mattresses. This is victory. But as soon as the PSC does not appear in the pre-trial detention center for several days, they stop providing second mattresses. And they are also taken away as punishment for wrongdoing.
There are several women in the pre-trial detention center for whom sleeping even on two mattresses is unbearably painful due to spinal injuries. It is almost impossible to obtain permission for a special, thicker mattress. Here, for example, Elena R. from cell No. 107 suffers from a hernia, she has cysts on her spine, but she was not allowed a mattress, or even a corset (it was “registered” to her while she was free, but the pre-trial detention center does not accept it, referring to the fact that there may be prohibited items inside...).
“In principle, you can live here,” says one of the prisoners in another cell. “Here” means under the bench. If it's not lunch time, then this is generally the quietest place. Maybe it’s even better here than on the second tier of the bed. Because that’s where so many women have recently ended up (in pre-trial detention center No. 6, not all two bunk beds have ladders and restraints. - Author’s note). The only thing is that there are more cockroaches here.
“Yes, cockroaches are everywhere now,” the cellmates pick up. - They filled everything! Recently they were poisoned with something, but there was no effect.
The crowd of prisoners part and let the grandmother pass forward. Very, very old, hunched over, wearing glasses, intelligent.
Lyudmila Ivanovna is accused of murdering her only son (“MK” talked about this story in February). According to investigators, the 76-year-old mother shot him with a pistol, then tried to open her veins. True, it is not clear how the old woman, with her shaking hands, which cannot even hold a bowl of soup, even raised the pistol. But that's not the point. Actually, she admits guilt and asks to be sent to a colony as soon as possible, but not to a psychiatric hospital. My grandmother begs us to find her a lawyer. We promise. And - looking ahead - we will keep our promise.
The women are noisy and noisy. They have so many complaints, so many questions.
People in robes again and again choose the most severe preventive measure for women (photo from another detention center). Photo: Gennady Cherkasov
“And a seriously ill woman was sleeping under the bench,” my colleague Anna Karetnikova would later write in her report. — Two more were sitting in the far corner on the floor on old black mattresses. We asked: do you always sit there? They nodded dismissively and again fixed their gaze somewhere into the distance, through us. It was like the scene with the elders near the wall from the film “White Sun of the Desert.” By the indifference of glances - exactly. It’s like some kind of occupied territory... with prisoners... wounded - in none of the other Moscow pre-trial detention centers does such a painful, painful feeling arise.”
Photo: oficery.ru
Holding your breath in the death box
Collection department . Here are those who have just arrived, or those who are sick in quarantine. In one room there is a woman with rubella (although she insists that she has been sick for a long time, and it is impossible to get it again, and it turns out that she has some completely different ailment that they do not want to diagnose). In the second, there are three women with suspected tuberculosis (they have not yet been officially diagnosed, but the pre-trial detention center staff already know that they are sick).
I ask you to give us gauze bandages, but there are none at the guard post. The employees themselves try not to go into the cells of tuberculosis patients. But we can't do that.
The door opens, and we seem to find ourselves in a bathhouse: damp, stale air, the window is tightly closed, there is no ventilation. In such a room, any healthy person can move a horse, let alone a sick one. Three women are barely alive. Exhausted faces, lacking the strength to simply raise their arms. Everyone shouts: “Air! Breathe!".
— How long has it been since you were taken out into the fresh air for a walk? - we ask them.
“Four days ago,” they answer.
- And for four days no one even offered you a walk? - we don’t want to believe it.
- No, no one...
— Have you been approached by a health care worker during this week?
- No. In general, no one is afraid to come to us.
— Did you write statements addressed to the doctor and management?
- Yes. We wrote many statements and complaints.
— Did they bring you a log of applications for your paintings?
- No. They never brought us the registration log. Can I open the window? Or... for a walk? Breathe a little?.. Please! Ask them! Oh please!!!
We couldn't stand even a few minutes in this cell. They called it the death box. The saddest thing is that our colleagues were here a week ago, asking the administration to resettle this gas chamber. Ventilate it and disinfect it. The employees promised to do everything without fail and... didn’t do it.
And now they promise us to open the window (although they say that this is very difficult, we need a ladder and a specially trained person), to immediately take the women for a walk (although it is already dark outside the window, and we doubt that they will be taken out at such a late hour).
Deputy Chairman of the Public Monitoring Committee, MK observer during an inspection of the women's detention center. Photo: Eva Merkacheva
This cell is probably the worst, but many others also have no ventilation or it doesn't work.
“We recently entered cell 202 and almost went deaf from a desperate cry: “How can I breathe?!” How to live? How not to get sick and die?!” — says PMC member Anna Karetnikova. “Under such conditions, any infection spreads instantly.
But instead of preventing this, the pre-trial detention center began to use a vicious and clearly illegal practice - newly arrived prisoners are taken directly to their cells, bypassing quarantine! We found several women who were not kept in quarantine even for a day and whose blood was not taken or fluorography done. Cellmates avoid such people at first: no one wants to become infected with syphilis or some other disease.
It also happens that a prisoner is diagnosed with an illness, but they do not inform her about it. They just give you a handful of pills without explanation.
In cell No. 306, the prisoners almost started a riot when one of the women was given anti-tuberculosis drugs.
“I still don’t know if she has tuberculosis,” she says. “The doctors don’t talk, they just hand over the medicine.” What, a prisoner doesn’t have the right to know about his diagnosis? I hope I'm not infecting anyone here...
Photo: Eva Merkacheva
Black jelly with sticky bread
The food in “SIZO 666” has recently become disgusting, according to women. Kissel is black, bread is like slush. We doubt the objectivity, but the prisoners rush to confirm their words and bring the remains of the loaf given to them for lunch. It's amazing that bread can be so... sticky.
“It’s not because it’s not baked,” the employees explain. “It’s just that the quality of the flour that was brought last time is bad.”
But why do they accept such flour? Why do they bake bread from it?
Many women eat only what they are given in the pre-trial detention center. This also applies to those who have money in their accounts or have relatives who are ready to bring parcels at any time.
One problem is that the queue at the delivery office must be filled several days in advance. Can pensioners or non-residents withstand this? Therefore, they often have only one option - to buy a queue. This “pleasure” costs 3–5 thousand rubles. It is clear that such queue trading is illegal, but no one wants to fight it. What can we say if lawyers and investigators fight in lines at the entrance to the pre-trial detention center to get to the prisoners.
Incarcerated women can order groceries from an online store, but there are also difficulties. Firstly, the assortment is poor - only onions, garlic, ginger and lemons are offered from fruits and vegetables.
Secondly, prices are sometimes several times higher (for example, stewed meat, which costs 100 rubles in regular stores, is sold here for 200). Thirdly, orders sometimes arrive in 3-4 weeks. In general, there are so many complaints about the work of the online store that it’s time to conduct an entire investigation. The Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia promised us to deal with all this disgrace at the beginning of the year, but things have not gotten better. Products are not delivered or are delivered already missing, one name is replaced by another, lost, etc.
This applies not only to food, but also to non-food products.
— I ordered shower gel, and look what they brought me! — one of the prisoners shows a tube with the words “male gel” written on it.
In chamber 108 we are shown a leaking kettle with a volume of one and a half liters. 55 women drink tea from it and wash themselves (because the hot water has been turned off)! How is this possible? The administration believes that this is possible, so they prohibit the second kettle and do not allow this one to be exchanged for a larger one. They say that the network won’t be able to handle the load, it will blow out traffic jams...
Photo: Gennady Cherkasov
Where did the paramedic send?
But the worst thing is with medical care. This is where the real hell is. We ask a woman who is eight months pregnant: “How often do you see a gynecologist?”
The girl, after a second pause, without hesitation:
- Only when the POC (Public Monitoring Commission - “MK”) comes.
One of the prisoners tells us that she has been bleeding for a month now. They never took her to the doctor:
“But I’m not here for life, I want to go out and give birth again.”
Karetnikova recalls another prisoner with a similar story, which already ended in tragedy.
The gynecologist was not in the pre-trial detention center when she began to experience severe pain. She told us: “I wrote statements every day. I called the doctor every day for a month. There was no gynecologist. Then the doctor left for one day. Because of me. And when I described these pains to her, that’s when everyone ran in... started fussing... Then they took me to the hospital. But it’s probably too late—the cancer was discovered at the last stage. It hurts so bad... I can’t describe it.”
Another prisoner complains with tears:
— I have an appeal tomorrow. But there is no final diagnosis. No certificate. What will I tell the court?
A prisoner named Nadezhda can’t stand it and also enters into dialogue:
- Oh! I want to complain about the paramedic Zhenya, such a girl. She doesn’t care about the sick and sends everyone to... So she says: “And go, all of you, with your illnesses!” This is really good, right?
The girls continue their shocking revelations: for example, that if something critical happens, they run to the windows and shout: “Doctor!” Only then does someone come to help. But then they are punished for this, since it is considered a violation of the rules of the routine.
By the way, about the screams. On May 9 at 10 pm, several prisoners shouted “Hurray!” during the fireworks display. One of them later received a notice of violation of the regime. Another girl was punished for watching a divine service on TV on Easter night. Both incidents occurred during a shift when a certain inspector was on duty, whom everyone calls nothing more than a soulless vixen.
Acting head of “SIZO 666” Alexey Obukhov.
Alas, there are soulless employees (who can hardly be called women) here. How else should we treat guards who refuse to help a mother find out the fate of her child? Elena Sh. gave birth on May 14 in the hospital, where she was taken from the pre-trial detention center. The woman was returned to the isolation ward, but the baby remained in the clinic. Elena begs: “Find out at least something about him!” But the employees respond that this is not their responsibility. Probably not included. But simple human requests are for people, not for pre-trial detention center employees.
The flow of complaints is so huge that we do not have time to record them. They are all similar: they didn’t issue a medical certificate, didn’t take medications, interrupted HIV therapy, don’t treat them, don’t give painkillers...
What is this, after all?
As Anna Karetnikova accurately said: we feel that evil is nearby, we try to clear it away with our hands and words, but it is impossible to tame evil. It is unfortunate that in this particular case, the personification of evil is the staff of the pre-trial detention center. Which, it seems, have set themselves only one goal - to pronounce their sentence on the prisoners even before the court’s decision. Death sentence...
Please consider this publication an official appeal:
to the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, Vyacheslav Lebedev, to verify the legality of the actions of judges who choose the most severe preventive measure for women;
to the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia Gennady Kornienko to check compliance with women's rights in the pre-trial detention center.
Features of the prison regime
The building of the isolation ward has one peculiarity. Balconies-terraces run along the windows, which can be immediately noticed. Guards walk along them, and at any moment they can look into the cell windows and see what the prisoners are doing. The lights are always on in the cells at any time of the day .
In one of the articles from October 2021 (https://ru.krymr.com/a/28076894.html), one journalist gave an interview about the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. According to him, Alexey Pichugin, the well-known former head of the internal economic security department in the oil industry, sentenced to life imprisonment for organizing murders, told his lawyer that during interrogation in Lefortovo he was offered tea or a cigarette, after which he was returned to his cell for on a stretcher, unconscious.
As the journalist himself said: “This is a feature of the Lefortovo detention center.” Apparently, this is not the only case of such interrogation in this place. Although, judging by the way the prisoners are kept here, it is difficult to imagine such “lawlessness.”
