My Fellow Prisoners

My Fellow Prisoners

Summary

There is the guard who delivers blows with no visible traces. The fraudster stitched up by the police for murder. The man who refuses to lie for a packet of cigarettes. The abandoned teenager, the down-and-out, the grass... He describes a hidden world of brutality and corruption, yet one where moments of humanity still manage to shine through.

One in ten Russian men pass through prison at some point in their lives. This book is a denunciation of an entire system of bureaucratic criminality, and a passionate call to recognise a human tragedy.

About the author

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is the founder of democracy and human-rights initiative Open Russia. One of the earliest supporters of democratic change in Russia, Khodorkovsky criticised endemic corruption at a televised meeting with President Putin in early 2003. Later that same year he was arrested, and jailed on charges of tax evasion and fraud, charges, which he denied and vigorously defended. Khodorkovsky was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. He was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International; and finally released in December 2013. Today, Khodorkovsky continues to advocate for a strong and just state, committed to observing human rights, free and fair elections, and the rule of law. My Fellow Prisoners is his first book. Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney covered Mikhail Khodorkovsky's life story in his film Citizen K (2020).
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