http://newtimes.

ru/articles/detail/48714/

Prisons people. The investigator

One of the most important people in the life of every prisoner is the investigator. The person on whom, given the realities of our judicial proceedings, your fate depends. To discern or to not discern the features of a crime, to designate as an accused or as a witness, to arrest or to leave under a signed pledge not to leave town, and even whether to allow a meeting with relatives all this, and much, much more, is in the hands, as a rule, of a very young (up to 30 years) and very recent graduate from law school. By law the investigator is independent. Almost as much as a judge. In actuality he is but one small cog in the law-enforcement vertical. A petty bureaucrat, often not even having a voice with respect to substantive questions of his work. For four years, with a brief interruption, I interacted with these people. Nobody actually required that they pretend to be actually investigating anything, but procedure obligated us to be present in the same office together for the duration of many hundreds and thousands of hours. It was not possible to avoid interacting completely, and besides there was no such goal. Various kinds of people were encountered among the investigators the indifferent ones and those who found their role to be a burden, those who aspired to understand something and those who were simply serving out the number.1 I do not wish any of them ill, therefore my story is loosely based on the tales of those of them who have already left the system. Yuri Ivanovich* a rare personage in my investigative group, *The names and the details of the events have been changed. selected in the main from national cadres.2 Ones like him are always a problem for the bosses hes independent, to the extent that this is possible within the framework of the system. His sense of his own dignity is supported by an awareness of his professional and everyday self-sufficiency. A good education, an apartment he got from his parents, and a quick mind allow him to sometimes have his own opinion about the undertakings in which he has to be involved in parallel with my case. From time to time he shares this same opinion with me. Today Yuri Ivanovich can barely contain his emotions: Can you imagine, Mikhail Borisovich, yesterday there was a raid against the illegal felling of timber. I can certainly imagine the problem. They fell the timber barbarically, closer to the cities and the roads, they cut the trees any which way, and, of course, without any permissions, for which you need to pay into the budget. The choppage3 next smuggled as contraband over the border. Thats how nearly all the local elite lives.

otbyvayushchie nomer this unusual phrase uses the same verb as serving time in prison, and most likely means going through the motions until its time to move on to something else.Trans.
2

national cadres ethnic non-Russians. Yuri Ivanovich (a very Russian-sounding name) is one of the rare ethnic-Russians among the investigators.Trans.
3

Narublennoye that is, the felled timber.Trans.

Either reconcile yourself to it and enjoy the benefits, but feel like youre a piece of crap, or fight, with the understanding that they will pour crap on you from head to toe

They summoned us for a training drill, he continues, showed on a map where not to stick our noses, where the tracts of the police and other bosses are, they divided up the zones of responsibility, and off we went. We get there theyre sawing away, not even paying any attention to us, no license, theyre toppling the forest, any old way. We detain, place the equipment under seals. The foreman just laughs hes like Ive already made a call to the right place. In half an hour we get a call: release the people, remove the seals, tear up the reports. The poachers laugh, we leave, like weve just been spat on. Turns out, this is the allotment of the governor, but he didnt even indicate it on the training drill map. And then they even raised a stink with us upon arrival, they promised we wouldnt get any bonuses. How can they do this? This is Siberian pine, after all, and theres already so little of it left as it is In the investigators voice genuine hurt and indignation. Which pleases me it looks like hes distressed not because of the risk of being left without a bonus. The humiliation he has endured, the sincere feelings of an inhabitant of those places for the nature of his part of the world have cracked the armor of habitude to anything-goes corruption. We discuss the reasons for what took place, the possible variants of actions. I see he has already been thinking about all this, and not just once; it merely all spilled out now. I dont rule out that hes waiting that I will find some kind of unexpected solution. Unfortunately, I dont have such solutions. Either reconcile yourself to it and enjoy the benefits, but feel like youre a piece of crap, or fight, with the understanding that they will pour crap on you from head to toe. Such are the rules of life of the system. There is a third way out, and Yuri Ivanovich made use of it he submitted a notification of resignation. But is this really a way out? And another thing too is important: this is how negative selection takes place. Gradually, only the worst remain in the system: some dont have enough intelligence to understand whats going on, others do understand, but dont have enough of a conscience to at least refuse to become a part of it themselves. Fools or low-lifes now theres some nice material for building the state machine. And yet this is our state.