Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30

TWENTY-ONE

Dima is lying on his bunk, smoking a cigarette, running over what happened back there. Is he being singled out for special treatment? Is he going down for years while everyone else gets released? Nobody else is getting this shit, or if they are then they’re not talking about it on the road. For hours Dima’s been reconstructing the conversation with the competent authorities, but he can’t work out what it means, and now he’s exhausted.

He sucks on the butt of his cigarette, crushes it against the inside of a tin can and lights up another.

Dima Litvinov never thought he’d become a real smoker, but honestly, there’s no point not smoking in here. Vitaly and Alexei both smoke strong Russian cigarettes all day long and a thick fog hangs in the cell whenever somebody is awake. Sometimes Dima can barely see the opposite wall. Just by being in here he inhales as much smoke as he’d ever get from actually smoking himself. So sometime around the second week he decided he might as well get some pleasure from it. He took up cigarettes.

They come free on the doroga, all you do is send a note out and the kotlovaya will arrange for a packet to be sent your way. And once he started, he realised there was no point in giving up. He could have quit but he’d still suffer the same harm to his health, and without getting any of the pleasure. Cigarettes give a rhythm to the day. They break the boredom. The only way it would be worthwhile quitting smoking in this cell is if he could get the other two to quit as well, but there’s no chance of them giving up because the rest of the cell is always smoking.

Dima takes a drag and stares at the ceiling. It’s a classic paradox. It only takes one of them to light up to make it pointless for the others to give up, because they share the same air. Maybe I should just quit, he thinks. Then persuade the others to give up too. Maybe somebody just needs to jump first.

The women tap to each other in code. Frank has his Valium prescription. Dima smokes cigarettes or goes uyti v tryapki – ‘into the rags’. Each of the thirty finds a different way to survive. For Anthony Perrett, it’s the Gulag Chronicle.

The idea came one night soon after they were jailed, when he was talking to Phil on the road. Both love to draw, from day one they immersed themselves in sketches of the cells, of the other prisoners, the guards, the raid on the ship. And it’s not like there was a shortage of news. So Phil suggested they start a newspaper. His plan was to circulate a daily with empty space where the other prisoners could write their own stories. Anthony was less interested in what the others had to say, instead he wanted to write, edit, illustrate, publish and circulate his own paper. Phil pushed ahead with his idea and for two days his publication – the Gulag Gazette – had a tabloid monopoly. But Anthony was merely biding his time, for he had an altogether different concept in publishing.

He launched with three editions on a single night, including an editorial that ripped into Phil and his dirty rag. ‘Do not read the Gazette, it’s nonsense, the editor’s a moron.’ Then he sent it all out on the road.

Soon enough the Gazette folded and demands flowed into Anthony’s cell to make the Chronicle into a daily. It became a prison fixture. His serving of satire and gossip was eagerly anticipated by the activists. The sixteenth edition was a particular hit with the readers. On the front page, in banner type, sat the headline: ‘SIT STILL AND SAVE THE WORLD’. And below that ran the day’s lead story.

Five weeks into their ordeal, with their story making front pages across the globe, the Chronicle has become the Arctic 30’s own in-house newspaper. Every evening the activists would read the Chronicle, tick off their names to say it’s passed through their cell, then pass it on. There’s a comments box in the corner – letters to the editor – and a stocks and shares section that gives updates on who’s in which cell. Frank = 320 or Phil = 313.

It takes Anthony hours to write it and illustrate the pages. There are stories about the Prirazlomnaya, about helicopters, a balaclava sale. One story details the invention of the colour invisible by the artist Lucian Fraud. He illustrates it by cutting a hole in the paper where a drawing would normally be. But the Chronicle is mostly rants against oppression. Anthony worries that someone will get caught with a copy that castigates Popov and the regime. So he starts writing the Chronicle in such a way that if you speak English as a first language you’ll understand the double-entendres and the sarcasm – ‘Popov’s moustache has no fascist connotations and is indeed one of the superior facial growths of the faculty’ – but it won’t get anybody into too much trouble if the authorities find a copy.

Sini reaches up and rubs her forehead. It’s just been struck by a rebounding potato.

She’s crouched in front of the window, the ventilation gap is opened sideways on, potatoes are bouncing everywhere except through that narrow gap. For days she’s been trying it, but the more frustrated she becomes the less likely it seems that one of them will bounce through the window.

She’s ready to give up now. She’s ready to accept that Popov will discover her secret stash of contraband potatoes and send her to the punishment cell. She’ll survive it, she knows that. She’s strong, stronger than she was when she arrived here. She’s resigned to it now, ready for a spell in the cooler. She just hopes she doesn’t lose this cell, with Alex and Camila just along the corridor. She takes another potato, throws it in the air and catches it. Then she flicks it and watches it bounce off the wall and fly clean through the gap and disappear into the void beyond.

She jumps up and peers down through the window.

Wow, I did one!

Okay, so maybe it’s not time to give up just yet. She crouches down and tries again. And again. And half an hour later another one tumbles out of her cell. She stops and considers what she’s been doing differently and realises that up until now she’s been throwing too hard, she’s been putting all of her frustration, her anger at Popov and Putin, into those potatoes. But when she breathes deeply and relaxes, when she puts less force into the throw, then the flight of the potato is more easily controlled. So she starts holding them between thumb and forefinger, adopting a more subtle, more delicate launch style. And by doing this she finds she can land every tenth potato, then maybe every fifth one, until her entire potato mountain finds its way through the gap.

Every day Sini gets nine new potatoes, she eats four and in the night she gets rid of the rest. The stockpile is gone now. Her cell smells normal. The threat from Popov has tumbled into the courtyard below.

One of the guards is tugging at Frank’s T-shirt, but Frank is asleep so it takes him a few seconds to realise that somebody’s pulling him out of bed, but he can’t bawl out this person because it’s a guard and he’s in a Russian prison cell. New day, same reality. By the time he’s been hauled from his bunk, Frank is awake. And by the time he’s handcuffed behind his back and is being marched down the corridor, he is very awake indeed.

He’s taken down the stairs and along various unfamiliar hallways until he’s outside a heavy door. It swings open, he’s pushed inside, and before him, sat behind a broad desk, tapping at a computer keyboard, his red face betraying extreme dissatisfaction, is prison governor Popov. His mouth is tight with rage, there are little bubbles of spittle on his lips. Standing behind him is a woman, the prison translator.

Popov looks up. He eyes Frank closely but says nothing. The tip of his tongue runs along his upper lip. As he slips it inside his mouth there’s a flash of gold. Frank clears his throat and starts to say something, but Popov presses a finger to his lips to demand silence. Then he grips the side of the computer screen and turns it around so it’s facing Frank. And there, blown up large, is a photograph of Frank behind the bars of a courtroom cage, over the headline: ‘I MIGHT PUT IN A COMPLAINT TO THIS HOSTEL’S MANAGEMENT’.

A week ago Frank used Mr Babinski to smuggle a letter out to his friend Lisa. The letter was written in the style of a TripAdvisor review. He awarded SIZO-1 zero stars:

Frank’s friend Lisa, to whom he sent the review, is the editor of the Independent on Sunday, and now it’s on the front page of that day’s newspaper – a UK national title owned by the Lebedevs, a Moscow family which also owns 49 per cent of the liberal Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Frank’s review of Popov’s regime is being read across Europe and Russia.

Frank looks at the screen and sucks his teeth. ‘Ah. Right. The food review.’

‘Yeeees!’

‘Hmmm.’

Popov says something to the translator, then he launches a furious diatribe in Russian, with the translator racing to keep up.

‘How could you do this? We give you all nice things here, we make it nice, but you do this to me. To me! You say these lies, these lies about nice food you get. You come here and think Russia is shit, but no, you are shit… you… you are shit with these lies you tell.’ Popov is spitting out the words like he’s firing them from an AK-47, a rat-a-tat-tat of abuse directed at Frank, one hand clenched into a fist that’s banging on the table for emphasis, the other with a long extended finger that’s jabbing at the screen in time with the tirade. After a minute, maybe two, Popov reaches a crescendo of abuse, falls back in his seat, throws his hands in the air, spurts another few words – ‘All lies you tell, typical Western lies!’ – then he folds his arms and falls silent.

Frank runs his hands through his blond hair, which by now has grown out completely. ‘Yes, well… but you see, that letter, it wasn’t actually from me.’

‘Uh?’

‘It’s not me.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not me.’

‘Is you!’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘Whaaaat?’

‘You don’t seriously believe everything you read in the Independent?’

‘Uh?’

‘It’s. Not. Me.’

Popov sucks a long frustrated breath through his nose then, with a stiff outstretched arm, he points at the door. Frank is dragged from his seat and marched out of the office. And in the following days the Arctic 30 notice a marked change in the guards’ attitude to contact with the outside world – with lawyers, consuls, the ground team and human rights observers. The authorities are instituting a clampdown on people bringing items to and from SIZO-1. Even Mr Babinski struggles to conduct his vital work.

Popov is taking his revenge.