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.

Prison, Birsk, Bashkiria, Urals, Russia, September 1993

Someone seems to have attempted an escape, causing one to wonder whether it was a success.