Press Release, 15.09.2023

On 14 September, a launch of the books by Eva Merkacheva: “The City of the Doomed. An Honest Report on Seven Penal Colonies for Life-Sentenced Prisoners”, “Who Lives Well in Russia. How Prisons Work in Modern Russia” and “High-Profile Cases. Crimes and Punishments in the USSR” was held in the central office of Yabloko in Moscow. Eva Merkacheva is a Russian journalist, writer and human rights activist. Since 2018, he has been a member of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, and Valentin Gefter, human rights defender, publicist, and director of the ANO Institute of Human Rights, spoke at the event.

An expert in the field of penitentiary system, Eva Merkacheva wrote a series of reports from the most notorious Russian prisons. In the book “Who Lives Well in Rus’. How Prisons Are Arranged in Modern Russia,” a separate chapter is devoted to Merkacheva’s inspections of prisons conducted jointly with Andrei Babushkin (1964-2022), a human rights defender and a member of the Yabloko Federal Bureau.

“All my books awaken faith because they describe the darkest places we have. I think such are prisons. Many times I have cited the example of public opinion polls that show that the fear of prison is in the second place after the fear of death. Certainly, history, which included the Gulag and repressions, forces people to remember at the genetic level that anyone can end up behind bars. No one knows what the fate of him and his loved ones may turn out to be. By and large, it is impossible to correct anyone. But you can give such conditions to a person, after which he will begin to respect himself, value himself and, accordingly, value and love society,” Eva Merkacheva said.