EXACTLY at 6 o’clock in the morning, you jump up in a hut from the roar of a siren that can wake even a deaf person. From that moment, you have only 10 to 15 minutes to run out for breakfast.

The administration does not care whether you need to wash up or dress. Morning hygiene is a fast routine when you only need to stand in line in front of a washbasin and the toilet. Washbasins. There were only five of them for 120 inmates. If you are fast enough to complete this routine then you a very successful person, and you then get a chance to run out for breakfast, right on time.

Why run out? Because the doors are open exactly during that 10 to 15 minutes. After leaving the local barracks area, you dive into a stream of people who are also moving towards the dining room. When you reach that point, you see 200 to 300 prisoners pressed against each other, trying to get in while fitting through one door. Everyone wants to reach the conveyor belt which is full of aluminum bowls. The bowls are piled up on top of each other and you need to grab your food away, as the belt makes it impossible, even for a second, to consider what you want to eat.

I do not even know what to call it, but let’s call it food in aluminum bowls: macaroni pasta stuck together in one solid lump, two or three sips of tea in the same bowl as a slice of black (actually gray-blue) bread.

After eating, you move back to your local barracks area in exactly the same flow as before. Then you wait for the counting. It begins at 8.30–9.00 and proceeds like this: you are taken out of the barrack into the streets, no matter the weather conditions. You get lined up in rows of five people for easy counting. Cards with photos of everyone living in the barrack are checked.

You are allowed some free time before lunch, during which you can do anything but lie on your bed or sit anywhere except the bedside chair. If the chief or the person in charge finds you lying down, you will be reported and likely pointed at as a “malicious violator of the detention regime”. As a consequence, you will likely be sent to the disciplinary commission, which will probably forbid you to receive any packages from the outside, and remove you from family visitation. In the most unpleasant case, you might be sent to a punishment cell for a period of three to 15 days.

A few words about the punishment cell. It is a room two by three metres in size, fully tiled with a tiny window under the ceiling that does not permit you to see the street. From 6 am to 6 pm, your bed is fastened to the wall, and the only place where you can sit or lie down is the cold floor.

From 1 pm until 2 pm: lunch. The organization is easier than breakfast since most of the convicts are in the industrial zone, which is separate from the prison facility. Surrounded by fence, the area houses the workshops. Prisoners are forced to work there in three shifts. One can refuse to work, but may as a result end up in the punishment cell. Lunch consists of a cabbage soup and the legendary porridge. No one knows what it is cooked from. After lunch, you can have some spare time. By the way, electricity in the blocks is turned off immediately after breakfast until 6 pm.
From 5 pm to 6 pm, dinner is served. It consists of sticky vermicelli and a piece of bread. Immediately after, a new counting takes place, which is no different from the morning one. Out of the barrack into the streets, lined up in rows of five.

Electricity is turned back on at 6 pm. And so begins the life in the barracks. If you could look from the outside, it would look like the athletes were waiting in the starting blocks and ready to rush onto the exit and the kitchen. It is merely a four by four-metre shack with a stove for cooking on one side, and iron cabinets called “cells” on the other side. It looks like a buzzing hive.
If you have nothing to do in the kitchen, then you are free to relax in the so-called “Len. Room” and watch TV. “Len. Room” stands for “Lenin”, and refers to a place made for leisure and political training.

This room brings a great psychological relief after such hard days.

Evening times are by far liveliest moments in the blocks: you are offered the opportunity to boil some water to make tea, or you can stand up and watch TV. Why stand up? Well, because only 50 people fit on the benches, and up to 120 people are in the shack.

Well, after watching movies and drinking tea, at 10 pm it is time to for a last check before bed. Everyone shall be on his sleeping spot so that the warden can count everyone in the room. The light is turned off. You may fall asleep and wake up the next day, which is no different from the day you have just lived yesterday.