The Tatars of Berlin will install a sign for Musa Jalil on the wall of the Moabit prison

This initiative was made by representatives of the Tatar diaspora in Germany.

Rustem Kabirov has been living in Berlin for three years. Not long ago, he and his wife turned to the Kazan workshop “Agach” with a request to create a memorial plaque to the great Tatar poet Musa Jalil. Now the couple is in Tatarstan, but very soon they are returning to Berlin, where they are going to get permission from the authorities to install a memorial sign.

There is a park in Berlin where the Moabit prison used to be located. There is an initiated prison cell on which a plaque could be placed in memory of our hero. My wife and I decided to contact one of the Kazan workshops. It all happened spontaneously. And now the sign is ready, in our hands. We have not yet discussed the issue of installing a board with the city authorities. This will be our second step. But, I think, obtaining permission will not be difficult; we should meet them halfway. By this time, our entire organization of Berlin Tatar Youth will join us and everything will work out,” the interlocutor expresses hope.

Rustem expects to install the sign by the beginning of October. Thus, our compatriot wants to tell the people of Germany about the feat of the Tatar hero.

One of the leaders of the Agach workshop Bulat Mustafin says that they receive a lot of unusual orders, but this one is especially memorable.

This is our history, our past. Musa Jalil is famous not only for his work, but also for his death. Therefore, we immediately agreed to fulfill the order. We take care of all the financing,” he said.

Musa Jalil - Tatar poet, journalist. Born in February 1906, in 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army. With the rank of senior political instructor, he fought on the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts, and was a war correspondent for the newspaper “Valiance”.

On June 26, 1942, during the Lyuban offensive operation near the village of Myasnoy Bor, Musa Jalil was seriously wounded in the chest and captured. He joined the Idel-Ural legion created by the Germans. In Jedlinsk near Radom (Poland), where he was formed, Musa Jalil joined an underground group created among participants in the movement and organized escapes of prisoners of war.

Taking advantage of the fact that he was assigned to conduct cultural and educational work, Jalil, traveling around prisoner of war camps, established secret connections and, under the guise of selecting amateur artists for the choir chapel created in the legion, recruited new members of the underground organization. He was associated with the underground movement “Berlin Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”, which was headed by Bushmanov.

The first formed 825th battalion of the Idel-Ural Legion, sent to Vitebsk, raised an uprising on February 21, 1943, during which some of the fighters (about 500-600 people) left the unit’s location and joined the Belarusian partisans with weapons in their hands. The personnel of the remaining six battalions of the legion, when trying to use them in combat operations, also often went over to the side of the Red Army and the partisans.

In August 1943, the Gestapo arrested Jalil and most of his group a few days before a carefully planned POW uprising. For his participation in the underground organization, Musa Jalil was executed by guillotine on August 25, 1944 in Plötzensee prison in Berlin.

While in prison, the poet wrote poetry. Subsequently, they formed the basis of the famous collection called “The Moabit Notebook.” For this cycle of poems, the author was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize. The publication has been translated into 60 languages, and in 2013 the collection was recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia for schoolchildren to read independently.

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“We are celebrating a new start for Russia as a state”

The history of our country, which at different times was called differently - Rus', the Russian Empire, the USSR, goes back more than a thousand years, but the event that we celebrate on June 12 is not even thirty. On this day in 1990, the first Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Russia. By that time, many republics of the Soviet Union had already seceded from the USSR and, in order to emphasize the statehood of that part of the country that was formed within the new borders, its new name was adopted - the Russian Federation, Russia.

By the way, it was on June 12 that the country, in addition to independence, also gained its first president. On the same day in 1991, the first ever popular open election of the head of state took place, in which Boris Yeltsin won. It was he who, by his decree in 1992, established a new public holiday - the Day of Adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Federation. And on June 12, in a televised address to Russians, he proposed renaming the holiday Russia Day. However, this name was officially approved only with the adoption of the new Labor Code of the Russian Federation - in 2002. That is, it turns out that the Russian Day holiday is very young - it is only 17 years old.

KazanFirst asked politicians and social activists about the significance of this holiday for modern Russia.

Marat Bariev, deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, member of the Committee on Physical Culture, Sports and Youth Affairs:

In 1991, on June 12, the first presidential elections of the Russian Federation took place. For the country, this date has very great historical significance. This is the starting point for the construction of a new Russia. This is the birthday of today's Russia, or rather, its revival. Unfortunately, in the minds of many Russians this is not yet such a popular and beloved holiday.

I read that half the country's population doesn't even know what it's called, let alone what it's dedicated to. But it's not people's fault. I think that if Russia develops, including in the direction of improving the quality of life of the population, then more and more people will be proud of their country and how they live in this country. Then people will be more sensitive to Russia Day and celebrate it with pride. I hope such times will come very soon.

Igor Bikeev, co-chairman of the Tatarstan regional headquarters of the ONF, first vice-rector of the Kazan Innovation University:

Russia Day is a young holiday that has already taken root in our country. In fact, the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Federation became evidence that our state - Russia - is changing. The document solemnly proclaimed the state sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic throughout its entire territory and declared the determination to create a democratic rule-of-law state within the renewed USSR. Let me remind you that sovereignty usually means the independence of a state in external affairs and supremacy in internal affairs. The Declaration was adopted against the backdrop of a deep socio-economic and political crisis that gripped the entire country: the loss of authority by many authorities of the USSR, the collapse of governance, a total shortage of consumer goods, acute interethnic and ideological conflicts. It is a pity that the preservation of the Union stated in the document did not happen.

I completely share the opinion of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin that the collapse of the USSR is the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

At the same time, the declaration served as the basis of the modern Russian state, the principles of its constitutional system and the system of authorities. In addition, it actually established that Russia has its own interests, which it will clearly defend with respect for other countries and peoples. This is what is happening before our eyes today.

Therefore, Russia Day, in my opinion, has the character of a celebration of our modern statehood and independence. By tradition, on this day state awards of the Russian Federation are presented, and various ceremonial events are held. Russia Day is a patriotic holiday on which we can especially express our pride in the country and our love for it. And for this we, citizens of the Russian Federation, have every reason.

Andrey Bolshakov, head of the department of conflictology at KFU, Doctor of Political Sciences:

Today's holiday is called the Day of Adoption of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Federation. Naturally, this is difficult to pronounce, so many people simply call this holiday “the twelfth” and perceive it as just another day off. I think they did the right thing by leaving this holiday to the Russians, unlike the Constitution Day of the Russian Federation. If we live in a state called the Russian Federation, then we, of course, must celebrate the day of the formation of this state. The French have been celebrating the founding day of the French Republic - Bastille Day - for hundreds of years. Although everyone knows how the Great French Revolution was a bloody and controversial event. Our events on June 12, 1990 were also ambiguous, although not so bloody. Many believe that with the adoption of this Declaration the idea of ​​the Soviet Union was torpedoed for the first time. Following this event, all the union republics declared their sovereignty, thereby undermining the unified state - the USSR. But a new one was formed - the Russian Federation. It probably had its shortcomings - we lived for a long time in a state that could not be called strong. But in the last 10 years we have noticed, and this is evident from the results of opinion polls, that Russia has become a stronger state. In my opinion, Russians should be happy about this, because a strong state is generally a strong country. It is clear that we still have many unresolved problems, and there are, of course, shortcomings. But there are no problem-free countries.

As for today's assessment of the events of June 12, 1990-1991, they can now be interpreted in completely different ways. If some historians say that it was they who led to the fall of the great Soviet Union, then they will probably be right. And today we need to live within those borders in the territories that we have. The Russian Federation is still a great and large country, comprising 85 constituent entities that are very different from each other.

But still, Russia Day is more of a political holiday than a folk one. For it to become popular, everyone must experience and feel it. I think it will take several more decades for this to happen. And sociological research data show that this holiday is gradually gaining supporters among young people, because they were born when June 12 was already celebrated as Russia Day. And although it is still a long time before the popularity of the New Year or May 9th, emus grow, Russia Day must be celebrated, we must remember that we live in one of the strongest and most wonderful countries that exists on the planet, and that we need to develop this country, make it better , and in case of threats to protect.

Marat Galeev, deputy of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan, chairman of the committee on economics, investment and entrepreneurship:

During that historical period when the holiday, which we now call Russia Day, was founded, it was accepted unanimously by society. Moreover, June 12 was not even perceived by many as the date of a joyful event, because this is the day when the main brick was removed from a seemingly strong and stable knowledge - the USSR, thereby marking the beginning of its destruction. Moreover, this happened a very short time after the referendum, in which the majority of Russians spoke in favor of preserving the Soviet Union. And those who voted “for” from the very beginning perceived the proclamation of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Federation as an undesirable event and could not welcome it.

But history has no subjunctive mood - all this already happened on June 12, 1990. Therefore, perhaps, in a certain number of years, Russia Day will become a national holiday. But since it is a public holiday and even declared a day off, it has every right to exist. Today we celebrate a new start for Russia as a state, its new format. 29 years have passed, during which time a whole generation has grown up, which, even if they know from history books what happened on that day, did not feel it, did not survive it. They have no nostalgia for the old. Perhaps Russia Day will arouse enthusiasm and pride in the country among the new generation. But this takes time.

Andrey Tuzikov, Head of the Department of State, Municipal Administration and Sociology of Kazan National Research Technical University (KKhTI), Doctor of Sociological Sciences, Professor:

Any state, any society has some holidays that symbolize statehood. In America, July 4th is considered a national holiday; in France, July 14th is considered a national holiday. Yes. On June 12, a rather ambiguous event took place in Russia - they adopted the so-called Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Federation. It is also called the Declaration of Independence. Clearly, a question arises. From whom?

The Vladimir-Suzdal Principality, Kievan Rus, the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire are simply different forms of existence of Russian statehood. And the current Russian Federation is the Russian state in the 21st century. It has pros and cons, like everything else. And June 12 was chosen as the date of the public holiday, which should be in any country. Whether the date is successful or not is debatable. It carries with it a certain trauma - the collapse of historical Russia, whose borders did not coincide with the borders of the USSR. Naturally, for many who lived in the Soviet Union, this date is sad. In addition, this is a very young holiday, unlike, for example, Bastille Day in France. I don’t think that there, three decades after those bloody events, they were widely celebrated. Any date acquires its meaning, its mythology, symbolic significance only by passing into history. And how soon this will happen in our case depends on how the project of Russian statehood in the format of the Russian Federation will develop. If it takes place as a successful project, then 100 years later everyone will celebrate Russia Day magnificently and brightly. And if some kind of reformatting happens again, for example, in the USSR 2.0 version or something else, a different date will probably appear.

What do you associate the word “Moabit” with? For me, of course, with the Tatar poet Musa Jalil and his cycle of poems “The Moabit Notebook,” written by him in the Moabit prison in Berlin. We studied the poems of Musa Jalil at school, his name is known to every Kazan resident. Those who have been to Kazan are more familiar with the monument to the poet (a hero escaping from the shackles of barbed wire) opposite the Kremlin.

Musa Jalil was executed in Plötzensee prison, there is now a museum there, which we did not get to (and we ended up in Moabit by accident).

In 1946, former prisoner of war Nigmat Teregulov brought a notebook with sixty poems by Jalil to the Writers' Union of Tatarstan. A year later, a second notebook arrived from the Soviet consulate in Brussels. The Belgian patriot Andre Timmermans carried her out of the Moabit prison and, fulfilling the poet’s last wish, sent the poems to his homeland.

Moabit prison was destroyed in 1958, a park was laid out in its place, and the walls and foundations of buildings were left behind. On the wall is a quote from Albrecht Haushofer's "Moabite Sonnets": "Von allem Leid, das diesen Bau erfüllt, ist unter Mauerwerk und Eisengittern ein Hauch lebendig, ein geheimes Zittern."

Moabit is the oldest German prison. It is located in Berlin and was built in 1889. In Moabit sat the legendary leader of the German communists Ernst Thälmann, Georgi Dimitrov, convicted of setting fire to the Reichstag building, the poet Musa Jalil, and later Erich Honecker and the all-powerful Stasi leader Erich Mielke. But recently, photographs of the ancient prison again appeared on the front pages of German newspapers. The fact is that two Russian prisoners escaped from this strictly guarded prison, which greatly alarmed respectable Germany. And then the following happened.

Moabit is considered the strictest prison in Germany, although today it is not a prison at all, but a pre-trial detention center. The cells are designed for two people, but if desired, the person under investigation can live alone. There is a bunk bed against the wall, on the other side there is a table with chairs, a TV, a refrigerator, and a cupboard for food. In the farthest corner there is a toilet and washbasin. Walks every day, every day you can visit the shower and gym. In general, you can live. This is exactly what the suspect Nikolai Tseys believed when he was brought straight from the police station to the pre-trial detention center.

A little background. Kolya was born in distant Kazakhstan into a family of Volga Germans. He graduated from an automobile technical school in Aktyubinsk, then served two years in the Soviet Army. True, in a construction battalion, since the Volga Germans were not drafted into decent branches of the army. He returned home in the midst of perestroika and got a job in a car service center. When the Soviet Union collapsed, life in Kazakhstan became difficult. Therefore, at the family council it was decided to go to Germany, so to speak, to the homeland of our ancestors. However, life in the new place did not work out. In Germany, it turned out to be difficult for a person who barely spoke German to get a normal job. Therefore, Kolya worked as a loader in a pharmaceutical warehouse, earning mere pennies, and then as a painter. And when acquaintances from the Russian diaspora suggested that he start stealing and dismantling cars, Kolya did not hesitate for a long time. He understood perfectly well that such a criminal business in Germany would not last long, but he hoped to live well for two or three years. And then you can go to jail for the same two or three years. There's really nothing to lose. He will not be deprived of his citizenship and will not be sent back to Kazakhstan. The beautiful life really lasted two years and ended with detention and arrest.

During an interview with the prison official on duty, Kolya asked to be placed in the same cell with a Russian prisoner to make it more fun. And he soon regretted it. In the cell he was met by a huge muscleman weighing about one hundred kilograms, who introduced himself as Vasily.

Judging by his habits, Vasya clearly belonged to the “Russian mafia,” which took deep roots in modern Germany. In his youth, Vasya served his military service in the airborne troops. Then he was involved in specific extortion and banditry, and spent several times in and out of jail. When the pressure from Russian law enforcement agencies became excessive, Vasya bought himself fake documents of a Russian German and emigrated to Germany. And here he returned to his old ways. He ended up in Moabit for causing grievous bodily harm to some businessman, also a native of Russia. In general, the story was very dark and murky.

Vasily unceremoniously took on the duties of overseeing the “hut” and began to intrusively look after his cellmate, teaching him all the intricacies of prison. At the same time, he criticized the Germans in every possible way for their tolerance, gentleness and carelessness.

“Once I was walking around the yard during my next walk,” Vasya said, lounging freely on the bottom bunk. - I see a strawberry bush growing on a small lawn. And the berries have already appeared, completely red and ripe. I decided to have a little refreshment, picked a bush and began to eat these berries. Of course, I did it in front of everyone, without hiding from anyone, I’m not some kind of “rat”. Further events developed like this.

Suddenly three German guards ran out of the glass booth. They jumped up to me and started shouting for me to immediately spit out these berries. But I fell into a state of prostration from such a zeher. The guards, seeing that I was not listening to them, handcuffed my hands, threw me to the ground, grabbed my head, and began to forcefully open my mouth. Then the police called an ambulance. The sculptors gave me a high-quality gastric lavage with all the ensuing consequences. In the sense that I puked a lot, and then shit myself a bunch more. After all, the doctors gave me a couple of injections in my ass and put me under an IV.

I spent three days in the prison hospital. And then I was invited to a conversation about love and friendship with the warden. There was also a doctor and a translator present in the office. I almost went crazy from the subsequent market.

The Germans seriously tried to find out why I wanted to poison myself and ate these poisonous berries. It turned out that in Germany strawberries are considered very poisonous - like our wolfberry. To my answers that in Russia everyone eats strawberries and no one has died yet, they did not react in any way.

The Fritz were firmly convinced that I had attempted suicide. And they were interested in the reasons why I committed suicide. They asked if I had any conflicts with the guards or my cellmates. Finally, I gave up and said that I was suffering from bouts of depression. The Germans smiled from ear to ear, and the conversation ended. I was assigned some kind of imprisonment and constant monitoring by a prison psychiatrist. In general, they are all goats, chewed up fools.

Nikolai was offended by such conversations, but he could not do anything. Asking to move to another “hut” was awkward and out of character. After all, Vasya didn’t do anything bad to him. And it is still unknown what opportunities the local “Russian mafia” has; they can take revenge for “breaking out” of the “hut” without any particular reason.

After a month of “pleasant” communication, the tone of Vasily’s conversations changed. He was tired of being behind bars and began to yearn for freedom. And then he started talking about . At first Kolya thought that his cellmate was joking, but Vasya was completely serious. “From the air, Moabit resembles the American Department of Defense Pentagon,” the former paratrooper began to develop his thought. - Five narrow four-story buildings, each with up to two hundred cells, converge in beams towards the central tower - a key place in the prison’s security system. From here you can see all the prison galleries to the very end.

If necessary, security blocks the entrance doors and blocks, while maintaining full visibility and, accordingly, control over what is happening. The prison is considered exemplary in terms of security. The territory is surrounded by a seven-meter high monolithic concrete fence with barbed wire on top. But this is all bullshit. Let's make a rope and climb over the wall. The main thing is to get into the courtyard unnoticed.

Soon Vasily moved from words to action. While walking, he noticed a small piece of concrete wall that was lying in the corner of the exercise yard, and his eyes lit up strangely.

“Well, that’s it, lad, we’ll run tomorrow after our walk,” Vasily declared categorically after returning to the cell. - If you try to jump off, blame yourself, I warned you.

Kolya was covered in sweat, but did not dare to contradict his formidable cellmate.
The next day, before going out for a walk, Vasily wrapped all the sheets and duvet covers that were in the cell around himself, and put on a wide jacket on top. During the walk, the escapees managed to separate from the main group of prisoners and hide in a secluded corner of the yard. Then Vasya quickly made a long rope with a cat, using sheets twisted into a rope. He managed to make an anchor from a piece of concrete wall and several spoons that he grabbed from the canteen. Throwing a rope over the wall, the fugitives deftly climbed up it. They threw a thick jacket over the barbed wire to avoid cutting themselves. Kolya climbed in first, and then Vasya the paratrooper.

His guard from the tower had already noticed and opened fire with a machine gun, but missed. The fugitives managed to overcome the wall and jump onto the street. Moabit's security organized a pursuit.

Fleeing from her, the fugitives rushed through the unfamiliar streets of Berlin and jumped over another fence, ending up in the courtyard of some very respectable villa. By a bitter irony of fate, it turned out to be the residence of... the President of Germany, which was guarded even more strictly than Moabit. A couple of hours later, both fugitives were caught and returned to their cells.

The escape of two “Russian prisoners” cost the German treasury three and a half million euros. That's how much it cost to modernize Moabit's security system. And after this escape, Russian prisoners in German prisons became very respected.

(All names and surnames have been changed)

Andrey Vasiliev
Based on newspaper materials
"Behind Bars" (No. 2 2013)

The Belarusian authorities in penal colonies are “re-educating” citizens (from people, excuse me, into pigs). By coincidence, the authors of this article recently visited the Berlin Moabit prison.

According to information from lawyer Vera Stremkovskaya, posted on the Charter’97 website, Belarusian political prisoner Sergei Parsyukevich is being held in bestial conditions.

For 70 people kept in one room, there are eight chairs and four benches. A person does not have time to wash himself in a bathhouse within the allotted time: there are four taps for a hundred prisoners.

It’s impossible to eat properly: you only have 15 minutes to eat. They feed them like pigs: soup, porridge, jelly from one bowl.

Clothes are issued in the wrong size, the bed linen is worn out, the blanket is torn...

This is how the Belarusian authorities in penal colonies “re-educate” citizens (from people, excuse me, into pigs). The above-mentioned conditions have been created for prisoners in penal colony No. 17 (Shklov, Mogilev region). Similar conditions of detention for prisoners are found in other prison institutions.

By coincidence, the authors of this article recently visited the Berlin Moabit prison. True, unlike Vitebsk businessman Sergei Parsyukevich, who was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for political activity, Vitebsk human rights activists were in prison as excursionists.

“Moabit” - Berlin Pre-trial Detention Institution (PPI). Its Belarusian analogue is pre-trial detention center-1 (Minsk “Volodarka”). Analogous in purpose, that is, in terms of the goals of these institutions. But the methods cannot be called similar: they are opposite.

Starting with the fact that the German “Moabit” is a pre-trial detention facility only for males after reaching 21 years of age. This is one of the most important characteristics of the German prison system. In pre-trial detention centers, temporary detention centers, reception centers, and arrest houses in Belarus, there are kept both men, women, and children under the age of 18 (the authors do not have information about the availability of pre-trial detention centers, temporary detention facilities, prisons, and pretrial detention centers for women and children in Belarus and young offenders under 21 years of age).

It is also important that Moabit, like other German prison institutions, is subordinate to the Ministry of Justice. The administration and maintenance personnel are civilians.

In Belarus, all places for holding prisoners are the domain of the Minister of Internal Affairs. Prison administration officials are people in uniform. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (with the participation of his subordinate DIN - the Department of Execution of Punishments) appoints and assigns police ranks. Many years of experience in human rights activities give the authors of the article grounds to conclude that the main criterion for appointment to positions in the prison administration of Belarus is the candidate’s lack of such a moral quality as philanthropy. Only this can explain the first phrase with which people are often greeted when they cross the threshold of a prison facility subordinate to the department of police general Naumov: “You are nobody here!” (that is, not a citizen, not a person).

The Moabit administration perceives prisoners as normal people. Accordingly, he treats them humanely.

Here are a few quotes from the basic internal regulations of the Moabit UPP. Issued to each prisoner in a language he understands. The authors were kindly presented with copies in Russian.

“You have the opportunity to read the full version of the internal regulations, which you can obtain from your social worker.

Please note that your legal status depends on whether your case is still under investigation or you have already been sentenced (hereinafter highlighted in the rules - Author).

Your conversations and correspondence with your lawyer are not subject to censorship.

Permission to visit untried prisoners is issued by a judge or prosecutor.

The correspondence of untried prisoners is subject to inspection by the court or the prosecutor's office.

You are required to take a daily walk of at least an hour.

If you have an urgent and compelling need to make a call or send a telegram, Moabit can provide you with the desired connection at your expense. Untried prisoners need permission from the court or prosecutor's office.

Even as a pretrial prisoner, you may be given a job. If you do not have your own funds and cannot provide you with a job, you can receive pocket money every month (of course, not in cash. - Author).

You can order books, magazines and newspapers at your own expense.

All prisoners are allowed to watch their own television and listen to their own radio.

You can use your own funds to buy additional food products, as well as personal items.

You may, within certain limits, furnish and decorate your cell yourself (with the exception of electrical and sanitary equipment).”

Fundamental differences are inherent in the very name of the institution. In Germany, this is a pre-trial detention facility, placed in it by court decision. In Belarus, this is a pre-trial detention center, that is, an investigator’s detention center, where a police detective places a person accused of a criminal act in order to deprive the latter of the opportunity to properly prepare for a defense in court.

In “Moabit”, detainees are given visits every two weeks (and in some cases necessary for the prisoner, more often). Permission is given by a judge or prosecutor. At the same time, refusal to allow a meeting is an out-of-the-ordinary event.

The Belarusian investigator usually allows visits to those who have been successfully broken. Unbroken defendants are sometimes not given a visit for months.

In the police detention centers of Belarus (we assume, and in the KGB detention centers), correspondence with the lawyer is reviewed by the investigator: after which some letters from the accused to the defense lawyer (as well as to family and friends) often do not leave the prison walls. We have telephone calls and telegrams from people under investigation - unscientific fiction.

Belarusian investigators send a person to a pre-trial detention center without prior notice of arrest. We believe that a similar practice occurs in Germany. But there the prisoner is given the opportunity to either earn money (there are 400 jobs in Moabit), or they are given it.

There is no such thing in Belarus. On the contrary, prison institutions strongly oppose accepting funds from relatives and friends into the defendant’s account. Cleaning the territory in pre-trial detention centers and other places of detention of arrested persons is forced work and without pay.

As a result: Moabit prisoners are literally eager to clean up the territory, and Belarusian prisoners do this under the threat of punishment cell and deprivation of transfers from relatives.

In Germany, a person under investigation can order books and periodicals for his cell. In Belarus, when a defendant is placed in a pre-trial detention center, books are confiscated from him. Even codes (Criminal, Criminal Procedure, Criminal Executive) and other legal literature. Those under investigation do not have internal regulations. Neither in Russian nor in Belarusian. Not to mention other European languages. Rules in Asian and African languages ​​are generally exotic.

In particular, the authors of this material have little faith that the American lawyer Emmanuel Zeltser, who has been kept in a pre-trial detention center for quite some time, was given internal regulations in English. We'll be glad if you're wrong.

The internal order in Belarusian pre-trial detention centers is, frankly speaking, SS-like. Day after day, month after month, and sometimes even year after year, those arrested are locked up. When leaving the cell, the guard’s “bulldog” roar is heard: “Face the wall!” Legs wider than shoulders! Hands behind your back!”

In “Moabit” (during daytime) the cameras are open. The prisoners walk along the corridor on their own, go to the shower, communicate with their neighbors... The appearance of Belarusian excursionists did not change anything: the prisoners continued to scurry past us on their own business.

Of course, the administration takes measures to exclude the possibility of communication between prisoners on the same case (they are placed in different buildings and floors).

The path to the cells passed through rooms and meeting rooms. Those who went through visits in our pre-trial detention centers under the current regime (and there are hundreds of thousands of them in Belarus) experienced feelings of humiliation and insult. In “Moabit,” before our eyes, in different corners of two large rooms, visitors and prisoners were sitting in groups, animatedly talking. There was even a young mother with a baby in her arms (apparently, she was showing the child to the father). There was no queue for the date.

We also saw a room in which people were talking through a window (without glass). There are even ones with glass and a telephone, but there, too, the conversation took place with the glass down. What we saw was not at all like the performance staged for us.

Along the way, we missed a prisoner who was going on a date with a large bag. “I took my things to be washed,” our attendant explained.

An administration representative explained the policy of the German authorities towards prisoners as follows: “The more a prisoner feels like a prisoner, the more conflicts there are. The administration treats prisoners like normal people. If desired, non-smokers are not placed together with smokers.”

In short, they adhere to the principle: what comes around comes around.

I especially want to stop on my daily walk. At “Volodarka” these are exercise yards: spit-stained, green-mouldy stone rectangular pits with an area of ​​6-10 square meters with a net on top, akin to the one in which the Chechens kept Zhilin and Kostylin from Leo Tolstoy’s story “Prisoner of the Caucasus.” In the Vitebsk temporary detention center, they take you for a walk to a cell on the second floor with an open opening for a window...

In “Moabit” it is the Yard (with a capital D). Such that six-meter walls with two wire spirals on top seem insignificant. Artificial turf court. Almost a dozen balls that flew into the inter-wire space are clear evidence that the coating is being used for its intended purpose (the balls are removed once every six months, since this procedure requires turning off the alarm). There is a gym inside the prison. The cell windows have large lattice cells. On the occasion of summer weather revealed. Prisoners may be near the window.

In Belarus there are double bars on the windows. The sunlight entering the cell is blocked by metal blinds (“eyelashes” in prison jargon). For approaching the window there is a punishment, up to the punishment cell.

But most of all, Belarusian human rights activists were struck by the interior of the cells. There are no cells for more than three people in Moabit. And such a camera - 30 (!) square meters. But this is an exception: in “Moabit” they strive for each prisoner to have his own cell (essentially a room).

The Belarusian Criminal Executive Code (Article 94) allocates living space per prisoner in a cell as in a cemetery - only two square meters. There are bunk beds, but even those are not enough: prisoners often take turns sleeping on them.

A Maobit prison cell has wooden furniture that prisoners can move as they please. Sleeping berths in two tiers are considered a violation of the Constitution.

In the cells of a Belarusian prison, the beds and wardrobe (if any) are metal and tightly welded.

The standard capacity of “Moabit” is 1200 prisoners. On the day the Belarusian human rights activists visited the prison, more than a hundred places were vacant.

This is possible not because Germany is richer than Belarus. It’s just that Germany is not a leader in the number of prisoners. And unlike Belarus, which ranks fifth in the world ranking in terms of the number of prisoners per capita, it does not strive for such a shameful championship.

Before the start of the excursion, we were warned that Moabit, in terms of the conditions of detention for those arrested, was the worst prison in Berlin. But this worst thing delighted the Belarusians.

What is their best prison then?

Pavel LEVINOV, Valery SHCHUKIN, human rights activists

Moabit notebooks are sheets of decayed paper covered in the small handwriting of the Tatar poet Musa Jalil in the dungeons of the Berlin Moabit prison, where the poet died in 1944 (executed). Despite his death in captivity, in the USSR after the war, Jalil, like many others, was considered a traitor, and a search was opened. He was accused of treason and aiding the enemy. In April 1947, the name of Musa Jalil was included in the list of especially dangerous criminals, although everyone understood perfectly well that the poet had been executed. Jalil was one of the leaders of the underground organization in the fascist concentration camp. In April 1945, when Soviet troops stormed the Reichstag, in the empty Berlin Moabit prison, among the books of the prison library scattered by the explosion, the soldiers found a piece of paper on which was written in Russian: “I, the famous poet Musa Jalil, am imprisoned in the Moabit prison as a prisoner, who has been charged with political charges and will probably soon be shot..."

Musa Jalil (Zalilov) was born in the Orenburg region, the village of Mustafino, in 1906, the sixth child in the family. His mother was the daughter of a mullah, but Musa himself did not show much interest in religion - in 1919 he joined the Komsomol. He began writing poetry at the age of eight, and before the start of the war he published 10 collections of poetry. When I studied at the literary faculty of Moscow State University, I lived in the same room with the now famous writer Varlam Shalamov, who described him in the story “Student Musa Zalilov”: “Musa Zalilov was short in stature and fragile in build. Musa was a Tatar and, like any “national”, he was received more than warmly in Moscow. Musa had many advantages. Komsomolets - once! Tatar - two! Russian university student - three! Writer - four! Poet - five! Musa was a Tatar poet, muttering his verses in his native language, and this captivated Moscow student hearts even more.”

Everyone remembers Jalil as an extremely life-loving person - he loved literature, music, sports, and friendly meetings. Musa worked in Moscow as an editor for Tatar children's magazines and headed the literature and art department of the Tatar newspaper Kommunist. Since 1935, he has been called to Kazan - the head of the literary department of the Tatar Opera and Ballet Theater. After much persuasion, he agrees and in 1939 he moves to Tataria with his wife Amina and daughter Chulpan. The man who occupied not the last place in the theater was also the executive secretary of the Writers' Union of Tatarstan, a deputy of the Kazan city council, when the war began, he had the right to remain in the rear. But Jalil refused the armor.

July 13, 1941 Jalil receives a summons. First, he was sent to courses for political workers. Then - the Volkhov Front. He ended up in the famous Second Shock Army, in the editorial office of the Russian newspaper “Courage”, located among swamps and rotten forests near Leningrad. “My dear Chulpanochka! Finally I went to the front to beat the Nazis,” he wrote in a letter home. “The other day I returned from a ten-day business trip to parts of our front, I was on the front line, performing a special task. The trip was difficult, dangerous, but very interesting. I was under fire all the time. We didn’t sleep for three nights in a row and ate on the go. But I saw a lot,” he writes to his Kazan friend, literary critic Ghazi Kashshaf in March 1942. Jalil’s last letter from the front was also addressed to Kashshaf, in June 1942: “I continue to write poetry and songs. But rarely. There is no time, and the situation is different. There are fierce battles going on all around us right now. We fight hard, not for life, but for death...”

With this letter, Musa tried to smuggle all his written poems to the rear. Eyewitnesses say that he always carried a thick, battered notebook in his traveling bag, in which he wrote down everything he composed. But where this notebook is today is unknown. At the time he wrote this letter, the Second Shock Army was already completely surrounded and cut off from the main forces. Already in captivity, he will reflect this difficult moment in the poem “Forgive me, Motherland”: “The last moment - and there is no shot! My pistol has betrayed me...”

First - a prisoner of war camp near the Siverskaya station in the Leningrad region. Then - the foothills of the ancient Dvina fortress. A new stage - on foot, past destroyed villages and hamlets - Riga. Then - Kaunas, outpost number 6 on the outskirts of the city. In the last days of October 1942, Jalil was brought to the Polish fortress of Deblin, built under Catherine II. The fortress was surrounded by several rows of barbed wire, and guard posts with machine guns and searchlights were installed. In Deblin, Jalil met Gaynan Kurmash. The latter, being a reconnaissance commander, in 1942, as part of a special group, was sent on a mission behind enemy lines and was captured by the Germans. Prisoners of war from the Volga and Urals nationalities - Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Mari, Mordvins, and Udmurts - were collected in Demblin.

The Nazis needed not only cannon fodder, but also people who could inspire legionnaires to fight against the Motherland. They were supposed to be educated people. Teachers, doctors, engineers. Writers, journalists and poets. In January 1943, Jalil, along with other selected “inspirers,” was brought to the Wustrau camp near Berlin. This camp was unusual. It consisted of two parts: closed and open. The first was the camp barracks familiar to prisoners, although they were designed for only a few hundred people. There were no towers or barbed wire around the open camp: clean one-story houses, painted with oil paint, green lawns, flower beds, a club, a dining room, a rich library with books in different languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR.

They were also sent to work, but in the evenings classes were held where the so-called educational leaders probed and selected people. Those selected were placed in the second territory - in an open camp, for which they were required to sign the appropriate paper. In this camp, prisoners were taken to the dining room, where a hearty lunch awaited them, to the bathhouse, after which they were given clean linen and civilian clothes. Then classes were held for two months. The prisoners studied the government structure of the Third Reich, its laws, the program and the charter of the Nazi Party. German language classes were conducted. Lectures on the history of Idel-Ural were given to the Tatars. For Muslims - classes on Islam. Those who completed the courses were given money, a civil passport and other documents. They were sent to work assigned by the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Regions - to German factories, scientific organizations or legions, military and political organizations.

In the closed camp, Jalil and his like-minded people carried out underground work. The group already included journalist Rahim Sattar, children's writer Abdulla Alish, engineer Fuat Bulatov, and economist Garif Shabaev. For the sake of appearances, they all agreed to cooperate with the Germans, as Musa put it, in order to “blow up the legion from the inside.” In March, Musa and his friends were transferred to Berlin. Musa was listed as an employee of the Tatar Committee of the Eastern Ministry. He did not hold any specific position in the committee; he carried out individual assignments, mainly on cultural and educational work among prisoners of war.

Meetings of the underground committee, or Jalilites, as it is common among researchers to call Jalil’s associates, took place under the guise of friendly parties. The ultimate goal was the uprising of the legionnaires. For purposes of secrecy, the underground organization consisted of small groups of 5-6 people each. Among the underground workers were those who worked in the Tatar newspaper published by the Germans for legionnaires, and they were faced with the task of making the work of the newspaper harmless and boring, and preventing the appearance of anti-Soviet articles. Someone worked in the radio broadcasting department of the Ministry of Propaganda and established the reception of Sovinformburo reports. The underground also organized the production of anti-fascist leaflets in Tatar and Russian - they printed them on a typewriter and then reproduced them on a hectograph.

The activities of the Jalilites could not go unnoticed. In July 1943, the Battle of Kursk rumbled far to the east, ending in the complete failure of the German Citadel plan. At this time, the poet and his comrades are still free. But the Security Directorate already had a solid dossier on each of them. The last meeting of the underground took place on August 9. On it, Musa said that contact with the partisans and the Red Army had been established. The uprising was scheduled for August 14. However, on August 11, all the “cultural propagandists” were summoned to the soldiers’ canteen, supposedly for a rehearsal. Here all the “artists” were arrested. In the courtyard - to intimidate - Jalil was beaten in front of the detainees.

Jalil knew that he and his friends were doomed to execution. In the face of his death, the poet experienced an unprecedented creative surge. He realized that he had never written like this before. He was in a hurry. It was necessary to leave what was thought out and accumulated to the people. At this time he writes not only patriotic poems. His words contain not only longing for his homeland, loved ones, or hatred of Nazism. Surprisingly, they contain lyrics and humor.

"Let the wind of death be colder than ice,
he will not disturb the petals of the soul.
The look shines again with a proud smile,
and, forgetting the vanity of the world,
I want again, without knowing any barriers,
write, write, write without getting tired.”

In Moabit, Andre Timmermans, a Belgian patriot, was sitting in a “stone bag” with Jalil. Musa used a razor to cut strips from the margins of the newspapers that were brought to the Belgian. From this he was able to stitch notebooks. On the last page of the first notebook with poems, the poet wrote: “To a friend who can read Tatar: this was written by the famous Tatar poet Musa Jalil... He fought at the front in 1942 and was captured. ...He will be sentenced to death. He will die. But he will have 115 poems left, written in captivity and imprisonment. He's worried about them. Therefore, if a book falls into your hands, carefully and carefully copy them out, save them, and after the war report them to Kazan, publish them as poems by a deceased poet of the Tatar people. This is my will. Musa Jalil. 1943. December."

The death sentence for the Jalilevites was handed down in February 1944. They were executed only in August. During six months of imprisonment, Jalil also wrote poetry, but none of them reached us. Only two notebooks containing 93 poems have survived. Nigmat Teregulov took the first notebook out of prison. He transferred it to the Writers' Union of Tataria in 1946. Soon Teregulov was arrested in the USSR and died in a camp. The second notebook, along with things, was sent to Andre Timmermans' mother; it was also transferred to Tataria through the Soviet embassy in 1947. Today, the real Moabit notebooks are kept in the literary collection of the Kazan Jalil Museum.

On August 25, 1944, 11 Jalilevites were executed in Plötzensee prison in Berlin by guillotine. In the “charge” column on the prisoners’ cards it was written: “Undermining power, assisting the enemy.” Jalil was executed fifth, the time was 12:18. An hour before the execution, the Germans arranged a meeting between the Tatars and the mullah. Memories recorded from his words have been preserved. Mulla did not find words of consolation, and the Jalilevites did not want to communicate with him. Almost without words, he handed them the Koran - and they all, placing their hands on the book, said goodbye to life. The Koran was brought to Kazan in the early 1990s and is kept in this museum. It is still not known where the grave of Jalil and his associates is located. This haunts neither Kazan nor German researchers.

Jalil guessed how the Soviet authorities would react to the fact that he had been in German captivity. In November 1943, he wrote the poem “Don’t Believe!”, which is addressed to his wife and begins with the lines:

“If they bring you news about me,
They will say: “He is a traitor! He betrayed his homeland,”
Don't believe it, dear! The word is
My friends won’t tell me if they love me.”

In the USSR, in the post-war years, the MGB (NKVD) opened a search case. His wife was summoned to the Lubyanka, she went through interrogations. The name of Musa Jalil disappeared from the pages of books and textbooks. Collections of his poems are no longer in libraries. When songs based on his words were performed on the radio or from the stage, it was usually said that the words were folk. The case was closed only after Stalin's death for lack of evidence. In April 1953, six poems from the Moabit notebooks were published for the first time in Literaturnaya Gazeta, on the initiative of its editor Konstantin Simonov. The poems received a wide response. Then - Hero of the Soviet Union (1956), laureate (posthumously) of the Lenin Prize (1957) ... In 1968, the film “The Moabit Notebook” was shot at the Lenfilm studio.

From a traitor, Jalil turned into one whose name became a symbol of devotion to the Motherland. In 1966, a monument to Jalil, created by the famous sculptor V. Tsegal, was erected near the walls of the Kazan Kremlin, which still stands there today.

In 1994, a bas-relief representing the faces of his ten executed comrades was unveiled nearby on a granite wall. For many years now, twice a year - on February 15 (the birthday of Musa Jalil) and August 25 (the anniversary of the execution) ceremonial rallies are held at the monument with the laying of flowers. What the poet wrote about in one of his last letters from the front to his wife came true: “I am not afraid of death. This is not an empty phrase. When we say that we despise death, this is actually true. A great feeling of patriotism, a full awareness of one’s social function, dominates the feeling of fear. When the thought of death comes, you think like this: there is still life beyond death. Not the “life in the next world” that priests and mullahs preached. We know that this is not the case. But there is life in the consciousness, in the memory of the people. If during my lifetime I did something important, immortal, then I deserved another life - “life after death”