Biography & True Stories
February 2020
In Siberia's Prisons
by Yoann Barbereau
Midnight Express in Siberia. A gripping contemporary story of escape. “The scene unfolds not far from Lake Baikal, where I live and love and am lucky enough to be loved, in Irkutsk, the capital of eastern Siberia. It’s morning, men in balaclavas appear out of nowhere. My daughter screams. She’s five years old. I’m arrested right in front of her, then beaten – expertly – and interrogated. Worst of all I’m branded with that ignominious word I struggle to commit to paper: paedophile. These men hidden behind balaclavas and shadows want my skin. They have set in motion an implacable and brutish process of destruction that has a name, a name I know, invented by the KGB: Kompromat.” Inside Siberia’s prisons, I try to understand. In the psychiatric hospital where I’m later interned, I try to understand. I’m guaranteed fifteen years of a gruelling camp. The story of my escapes can begin.
