Navalny’s penal colony in the Arctic is direct heir to Russia’s Gulag

For three weeks his family, allies and lawyers had no news of him. But on December 25, there finally came word from jailed Kremlin critic Navalny. He resurfaced on social media platform X with a string of sardonic posts to say he had been transferred to a prison north of the Arctic Circle. 

Navalny, 47, founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been behind bars since early 2021. In August, a court extended his prison sentence to 19 years on extremism charges. He has now been transferred to the IK-3 prison colony of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region, nearly 1,900 kilometres north-east of Moscow. 

At the beginning of December Navalny disappeared from the IK-6 prison colony in the Vladimir region, some 250 kilometres east of Moscow, where he had spent most of his detention. His disappearance even provoked alarm from the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who posted a message on X before Christmas, saying he was “deeply concerned about the whereabouts of Aleksey Navalny”.

Read moreRussian opposition leader Navalny goes missing as Putin seeks re-election

After sending hundreds of requests to detention centres across Russia, Navalny’s allies on Monday said they had managed to locate him, adding that Navalny’s lawyer was able to visit him.  

In a series of sardonic messages published on X on Tuesday, Navalny said he was “fine” and “relieved” that he had arrived at the new prison.  

“I am your new Santa Claus. Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (a traditional Russian winter footwear). I have grown a beard for the 20 days of my transportation,” he said. 

‘Climate as a tool of repression’ 

But Navalny’s mocking words belie the harsh reality of his new prison accommodation. 

In Kharp, Navalny will have to content with temperatures as low as -40°C in winter. His access to emails and visiting rights will be severely restricted.  

“Although Navalny is always provocative and always retains his sense of humour, he has health problems, and will have to grapple with the isolation, even torture that exists in some Russian prisons,” said Sylvie Bermann, who served as French ambassador to Russia from 2017 to 2019. 

“Weather conditions are very harsh, much harsher than in previous colonies,” said Marc Élie, a researcher specialising in the history of the Soviet Union at the Centre for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies (CERCEC) in France. 

“There’s little light for six months of the year, and in summer you’re attacked by mosquitoes and midges,” he said. 

The IK-3 penal colony is one of 700 labour camps currently operating in Russia, where some 266,000 inmates are currently detained – a relatively low figure compared to the near 420,000 prisoners in 2022.  

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year, Moscow has sent some 100,000 inmates to fight on the frontline.  

“In Russia, you have four types of detention: the open-type colony, in which inmates are very free; the general regime, in which the majority of inmates are locked up in barracks; the severe regime, with tighter restrictions, notably on visiting rights; and the exceptional regime, in which Navalny finds himself,” Élie said, adding that “this last regime is reserved for the most dangerous prisoners, those sentenced to life imprisonment or those whose death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment”.  

Experts on Russia view these penal colonies as part of the legacy of the Gulag, the concentration camp system that deported more than 20 million people during the Soviet era. Although the Gulag officially disappeared after Stalin’s death in 1953, some of its features live on in today’s prison system.  

Founded in 1961, the IK-3 penal colony – also known as Polar Wolf – was built on the site of the former 501st Gulag. 

“The prison system retained a number of features dating back to the Stalinist era, particularly the idea of [using] the climate as a tool of repression,” said University of Strasbourg lecturer Emilia Koustova.  

“These are also very isolated places. For three weeks, no one knew where Navalny was. The use of arbitrary [detention], which has been in place since the Stalinist era, is aimed at severing the ties between prisoners and their loved ones. This severing of ties becomes a means of repression and terror, or blackmail,” said Koustova.  

Before his transfer to IK-3, Navalny was subjected to multiple periods of solitary confinement.  

Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said last October that he spent a total of “236 days” in a small isolation cell.  

Putin’s punishment 

Considered by Putin as his main political foe, Navalny continues to pay the price for his relentless criticisms of the Kremlin’s despotic regime.  

Before his arrest in January 2021, Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in August 2020, requiring emergency hospitalisation and lengthy rehabilitation in Germany.

Putin denied any involvement in the operation, stating at a news conference that If Russian security services had wanted to poison Navalny, “they would have finished the job”. 

“Putin clearly has a very particular attitude towards Navalny, he never mentions his name. There’s a desire to disregard him while pursuing him relentlessly. His transfer to a colony characterised by a particularly harsh regime is representative of this,” said Koustova, who is also on the board of the human rights NGO Mémorial France. 

Navalny’s transfer also comes three months before Russia’s next presidential election, in which Putin is running. 

“Alexei Navalny will no longer be able to get his political message across on this issue,” Koustova said. 

Putin’s bid for another six-year term in office, authorised by the 2020 constitutional referendum, would appear to be a mere formality in the absence of opposition.  

The last opponents who tried to unseat Russia’s strongman such as Andrei Pivovarov, ex-director of the Open Russia movement, and 38-year-old opposition figure Ilya Yashin, have been killed or imprisoned. 

Read moreLast remaining voices of the Russian opposition are being silenced amid war in Ukraine

According to Mémorial France, whose central body was dissolved by the Russian Supreme Court in September 2021, there are currently more than 500 political prisoners in Russia as of 2022. 

Last Saturday, the Russian Electoral Commission banned former TV journalist Ekaterina Duntsova, 40, from standing in the upcoming election, citing 100 “mistakes” on her application form.  

“In truth, there is no credible opposition, not to mention the fact that many people of her (Duntsova) generation are very much in favour of Vladimir Putin’s re-election. He has every chance of being re-elected with a fairly high turnout,” Bermann said 

The Russian presidential election is scheduled for March 17, 2024. 

This article has been translated from the original in French.