G e o_s y n_c h r o n i_c i t y

Prison entrance, Murmansk, October 1993

Having been drawn to the USSR by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's shattering trilogy The Gulag Archipelago, a grim documentary of the deadly Soviet prison camp system, it was with very mixed feelings that I visited this prison. Would we be shown the truth, or a hastily assembled improvement, prisoners warned not to tell the truth on pain of death? Likely things were already changing for the better. I certainly hoped so, as I hoped that the Orthodox church at lower right was real.