Lock Down at Vladimir Central Prison

VLADIMIR, Central Russia -- Even veterans of Moscow's most exclusive cafes and clubs would be impressed by the hurdles they have to jump to get into the museum at Vladimir Central. Armed guards are one thing, but aren't high brick walls and four rows of barbed wire pushing it a little too far? Not at all, administrators seem to think. After all, Vladimir Central is a working prison, and one of Russia's oldest and most notorious at that.

The museum at Vladimir Central provides a fascinating look at more than 200 years of Russia's prison system, which today ranks second in the world in rate of incarceration (the United States ranks first). But located on the prison grounds, the exhibit is also a total immersion into life at Vladimir Central today. The prison's current inmates, all male, have been convicted of particularly violent crimes or transferred from elsewhere for repeat violations of prison regime. Their sentences begin at five years and run to life.

Just to be safe, the museum sticks to wooden mannequins of its inmates for its regular exhibit. Greeting visitors at the door is one of these wooden convicts, dressed in a gray and black-striped suit and matching hat. His hands are covered with massive rings and tattoos, and behind him is a narrow prison bed.

"After the war with the Nazis in 1945, all of the clothes from the concentration camps were passed on to the gulag and since that time it has been customary to dress the most dangerous prisoners in striped robes," said Major Igor Zakudayev, the museum's director.

Opened five years ago, the two-room museum showcases handmade playing cards, as well as knives and saws that were found hidden in wooden spoons or hollow books during cell searches. One of the glass cases even features a $100 counterfeit bill that an inmate painted by memory.

Together, these objects piece together the private life of a prison that has been at the hub of Russian history for as long as it has existed. Founded in 1783, Vladimir Central housed many of Russia's most illustrious political prisoners of the 19th and 20th centuries. Photographs of these inmates and prison documents modestly decorate the walls of the first showroom.

Staring out of one of these pictures is a 19th-century convict, his forehead and cheeks branded by a hot iron. Branding thieves and dangerous convicts before their exile to Siberia was customary until Alexander II's prison reforms declared the practice inhumane. New and improved shackles were introduced in its place, as well as the custom of shaving off half of the prisoner's hair. As to whether the newer shackles were any better, visitors may judge for themselves from the spiked throat-cuff in the exhibit and the handcuffs, circa 1906, that are still being used at the detention center.

According to Zakudayev, the older methods have their advantages. "These handcuffs were twisted around the convict's wrists, like some garage locks today, while modern handcuffs can be opened with a pin," he said, adding that there had even been an instance when a pair of handcuffs was unlocked with a wad of chewing gum.

After the revolution in 1917, the prison was delegated to inmates found guilty because of their high social status -- a serious offense in the new Bolshevik state. Many former prison wardens were shot or imprisoned. In the chaos that followed, the Soviet Union's inexperienced new prison authorities turned over the administration of several prisons to their inmates.

Vladimir Central soon became the punitive destination for several famous writers, scientists and civil rights activists who had been imprisoned for anti-Soviet propaganda. Among the inmates profiled in the exhibit are philosopher Daniil Andreyev, well-known Duma deputy and White Army supporter Vasily Shulgin, space medicine pioneer Vasily Parin and singer Lidiya Ruslanova.

By 1940, there were 510 active prisons in Russia, including six prisons specially marked for enemies of the state. Vladimir Central was among the latter. The exhibit shows photographs of several of those prisoners, their faces marked with black ink. The political prisoners were also clearly branded with yellow stripes on the side of their trousers and caps with yellow bands.

Prison regime mirrored Communist party life, with some prisoners allowed special privileges -- pocket money, permission to write and family meetings -- that other prisoners were not. Such inmates included Josef Stalin's son, Vasily, and relatives of Svetlana Alliluyeva, the dictator's wife. Required to keep a low profile in the prison, they went by numbers instead of names.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the prison was home to famous writers, scientists and civil rights activists imprisoned for anti-Soviet propaganda. One of the faded documents on display describes American pilot Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy plane was shot down in central Russia in 1960. Sentenced to ten years in prison, Powers was released from Vladimir Central in 1963 in exchange for Russian spy Rudolph Abel.

The last part of the exhibit brings the museum's history into the present, with display cases filled with boxing gloves, soccer balls, judo kimonos and telephones, produced by the inmates during the workday. In a more private gesture, the exhibit also showcases a set of brightly-painted figurines molded from bread during the prisoners' off-time. Among them are pirates, buxom beauties, and miniature self-portraits of the inmates themselves, sporting prison stripes.

The museum of Vladimir Central is located in Vladimir at 67 Ulitsa Bolshaya Nizhegorodskaya. Tel. (0922) 32-3997/2033. Visits must be arranged in advance. An admission fee, based on the size of the group, will be charged.

Vladimir is 180 kilometers northeast of Moscow. The journey takes about three hours. By car, take Shosse Entuziastov to Gorkovskoye Shosse, which will lead to Vladimir. Commuter trains and buses leave Moscow from Kursky Station. From the train or bus station in Vladimir, take trolleybus No. 12 to the Ploschad Frunze stop.