Chistopol Prison

The prison was built in 1855-1857. It was originally intended to hold 350 prisoners. It was also used as a transit prison for convicts being transported to Orenburg and the Urals. The main contingent was criminals whose sentences did not reach penal servitude.^[1]

During the Russian Civil War, the prison was intensively used by both the "Reds" and the "Whites". In 1918, the "Whites" arrested the Czech writer and commissar Jaroslav Hasek; a few weeks later, he was able to escape from prison by posing as someone else.^[1]

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Chistopol "correctional home" was used as a pre-trial detention center.

During the Great Patriotic War, the number of prisoners in the prison increased to one and a half to two thousand, including Volga Germans and deserters. The high density of prisoners contributed to mass illnesses and deaths: from November 1941 to March 1943 alone, 1,023 people died of illness and hunger.^[1] Immediately after the end of the war, the prison was converted into a special-purpose psychiatric hospital.

In 1953, the prison was rebuilt as a strict and special regime prison. A significant number of prisoners were Ukrainian nationalists, including the father, mother and sister of the head of counterintelligence of the OUN (b) [ru] Roman Shukhevych.

Since 1960, the main contingent of prisoners were criminals sentenced to a "special regime of detention".

In the early 1970s, the prison was rebuilt once again: the category of "special regime" was softened to "enhanced regime" (for previously unconvicted citizens who committed serious crimes for the first time). In order to re-educate convicts, the prison began to intensively develop production. A school and a vocational school appeared at the prison, as well as a new residential building, a boiler room, and garages.^[1]

Since its inception, the Chistopol Prison held various prisoners. Among the famous prisoners:

• Anatoly Marchenko, Soviet dissident, died in Chistopol in 1986.
• Constantin Bivol, Bessarabian Romanian nationalist and member of the Sfatul Țării
• Igor Ogurtsov [ru], founder and leader of VSKhSON.
• Ivan Sokulskyi, Ukrainian dissident
• Konstantin Päts, Estonian politician and President of Estonia
• Mykola Matusevych, Ukrainian dissident
• Natan Scharansky, Soviet Jewish dissident and later Minister of the Interior of Israel^[3]
• Sergei Grigoryants, Soviet dissident and journalist
• Vazif Meylanov, Soviet dissident and writer
• Valery Senderov, Soviet dissident and mathematician
• Viktor Nekipelov, Soviet dissident, human rights activist, and poet
• Alexey Smirnov [ru], Soviet dissident, human rights activist.
• Sergei Kovalev, Soviet dissident
• Viktoras Petkus, Lithuanian dissident
• Jaroslav Hašek, Czech writer and Red Army commissar