There was a symbolic date recently. Not a round date, but symbolic every year. When the first batch of prisoners was brought to the Solovetsky archipelago in June 1923. When the first Soviet concentration camp was founded, which even today few people are ashamed to call a concentration camp or do not know that it was a concentration camp and what the conditions were like there. How many people were killed there.

"The bells stopped ringing, the lamps and candle pillars went out, liturgies and vigils no longer sounded, the round-the-clock psalter did not mutter, the iconostases were broken ... - However, brave Chekists in extra-long overcoats, reaching to the heels, with particularly characteristic Solovetsky black brims and buttonholes and black brims of caps without stars, arrived in June 1923 to build an exemplary and strict camp, the pride of the workers' and peasants' Republic."

This marked the beginning of the era of a special prison system and, at the same time, a prison state, which continues to this day. When it is completely unclear whether the prison is a model of the State, or the state is a model for the prison.

What is the peculiarity of the Soviet prison state? The fact that it continues to exist, and, as we can see, it is very successful. Ivan the Terrible's executions lasted for several years, and it went down in history without leaving much of a trace. The Inquisition: the victims are estimated at most in the tens of thousands, and even then, the statistics are scanty. Today, it is more like a vivid plot for historical movies.

But when we discuss the Soviet Gulag, the story is entirely different. The story continues, and the volumes are increasing.

I have never set out to count, but I unwittingly know a fairly large number of Ukrainians who have said approximately the same phrase. They say that this could not have happened in the Gulag because it is "too cruel". And it seems to me that this may be one of the basic problems of Ukrainian state-building and social development. That it is "too cruel". But at the same time, Ukrainian society wonders why Ukrainian prison officers torture people today without even hiding their faces.

What is the fundamental difference between Solovky, the late models of the Soviet prison system, and the modern Russian prison system? I think there is no difference, actually. However, against the backdrop of a superficial view of the Gulag, few people do not notice the main thing that is hidden behind the torture conveyor belt, and which, unfortunately, is also the case in Ukraine.

It seems that few people today use the word "tufta" in youth slang. But it appears that the meaning of this word is well understood even without an awareness of how, where and under what circumstances this meaningful category emerged.

But, unfortunately, it is "tufta" – the good old, well-tested Gulag tufta – that characterises many of the reforms that have been implemented to detach the Ukrainian prison and the criminal justice system in general from gulag principles and practices. Prison privatisation in Ukraine is like a tufta. Recidivism rates is a tufta. The transparency of the penitentiary system is a tufta. The construction of a new prison that was never built in peacetime is a tufta. The goals of criminal punishment in judicial practice are a tufta.

Recently, the UN Special Rapporteur in her report on best practices in prison management stressed that judges, prosecutors, and other decision-makers should regularly visit prisons to see for themselves the conditions of detention, including overcrowding. Have any investigating judges visited "their" pre-trial detention centres recently? If there are such heroes, I think they can be counted on one hand. Instead, we have the example of a 5-year prison sentence for a minor from Odesa region for stealing 40 euros worth of sweets.

However, the main thing is the impact of the Gulag on society and people. Well, if one in five people is a prison officer or a prisoner, a former prison officer or a former prisoner, a relative of a prison officer or a prisoner. Why are we surprised that even after so many years of independence, we still find in society echoes of purely gulag principles of existence such as "you die today, and I die tomorrow". "If you are not [done], don't wave"... There are many examples. This bestial philosophy has shaped much of what can be found in the thinking of modern society. But behind this inhuman – by definition – "philosophy" were not instincts in the spirit of Philip Zimbardo's experiment. Behind it were economic interests, economic indicators and, of course, corruption. Few people know or want to know that it was the Soviet prison system that was the area of greatest corruption. And we are not talking about staff bribes. We are talking about corruption created in the prison by the state itself for the sake of the existence of the state, which was also a prison.

I cannot say that corruption founded the Gulag. But it is clear to me that corruption was what sustained and continues to sustain the "glorious" and extremely convenient Soviet gulag traditions for many functionaries.

In the brilliant Schindler's List, Hauptsturmführer Göth says: "I have you figured out. You need a camp. Your camp." And each of the Soviet functionaries received his camp. Camp – without quotation marks, sometimes with quotation marks. When the main thing was to "fulfil the plan" and send the "Horde exodus" to Moscow. The problem is that today many prosecutors and police chiefs have their own "camp". Others want to have their own "camp".

Even though the Gulag created an all-encompassing culture of torture and a culture of absolute tolerance for torture, it also created a culture of corruption and absolute tolerance for corruption. The Gulag is not about violence. It is better to say that when the Gulag is exclusively about violence, it is a concealment of the true nature of the Gulag. The Gulag is about corruption, when everyone wants to have their own camp. Violence is just a tool.

"I am unable to express my impressions in a few words. I do not want to, and it would be a shame (!) to fall into the clichéd praise of the amazing energy of people who, being shrewd and tireless guardians of the revolution, can also be remarkably brave creators of culture" (Maxim Gorky)