Algemeen·NRC·7 okt

In Evan Gershkovich’s new memoir, prison is a microcosm of Russia

There are three types of people in Russia, runs an old joke: those who have been in prison, those who are currently in prison—and those who will be. Under capricious rulers, incarceration is an ambient risk, which can be a mark of virtue rather than degeneracy. For Dostoyevsky and others, it incubated moral clarity and spiritual rebirth. In his new memoir Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist, quotes a character of Tolstoy’s: „The only suitable place for an honest man in Russia…is prison.”