Ruslan
Oil on canvas
25x30cm
"The normal disciplinary measure was a so called 'coffin' ... a metal box-room just as wide and broad as your shoulders so you could only stand."
Ruslan
(27 years old)
"As my father used to say 'we were born with swearwords and we will win with them'.
I often talk to him in my dreams.
I was born in Dnipropetrovs'k. My mother worked in the factory, so did my father. Both of them worked hard, believed in a better, happier future - but after the fall of Soviet Union they were made redundant. This caused a lot of problems in the family - like violence. I tried to protect my mother and fought with my father a lot, but now I can understand better what drove him to that violence, may his soul rest in peace.
By the age of 16 I had completed 9 years of school. I used to go to an evening art school as a kid but had to give it up as there was no future for me in the arts, and no finances to carry on with studies. When my parents lost their jobs at the factory, I had to leave school and look for work to help out the family. I worked as a loader, so by the time I was 18 - and due to go to the army - I was very exited about the conscription. I hoped it would give me a break from the financial pressure, offer a truly manly challenge and test my strengths and morals. I had a dream like every young boy to go to the army - to become a real man.
When I got to the army, my image of it had burst like a soap bubble.
There were no rules no laws: just sheer brutal force.
The stronger one is always right irrespective of title or rank.
The army was in such a state at the time, for every soldier there were 11 officers.
In total there were 1,014 officers, two battalions of 109 soldiers and seven people in a company.
Can you imagine what kind of life they made us live?!
I was made to follow any whim of the officers 'jackals' - who made life truly impossible.
They use to say to us; 'life is a book, but your life here is like pages torn out of it'.
So called 'dedi', which means 'elders', used to give us one ruble to go and by cigarettes for them, with the condition that we bring back 10 rubles change. We had to rob civilians as we had no money left of our own to give to them - all that was taken away.
I was framed.
They were jealous of my talent. It was a dictatorship, when they said jump you said how high, you had to become a chameleon to survive. I had pressure from the officers, pressure from 'blatnie'. [note: 'blatnie' describes a person with 'favourable-connections'. In the army the term was associated with people who abused this power].
They set me up. Our unit was disbanded, and everyone was looting the base. We were not issued with leave-passes, we were just told to go. Suddenly the commission arrived.
They locked me up for desertion. When my cousin spent months trying to appeal against it, the officer in charge told her that he would only review the case if she had sex with him. I was given a 3 year prison sentence, but I spent only 9 months there, as well as time in the disciplinary battalion and GABN shifts at Commandant's office (before prison). The appeal process took a year and a half.
The normal disciplinary measure was a so called “coffin'. It was a metal box-room just as wide and broad as your shoulders so you could only stand. It had heating pipes running along the back which were constantly boiling hot so you couldn't touch them. The room had a 40V bulb above your head.
If you were to yell when the heat would become unbearable the disciplinary officers would open the door and pour a bucketful of chlorine. This would make your mouth foam up and bile start coming out of it. Your eyes start to feel like they are about to pop out.
If you yell more, saying that your heart is about to stop, or that you have an unbearable headache, the officers would also have a cure for that – they would hit you with a wooden bat and call that 'Anadin' or 'dimerol' (painkillers). Then they would ask, 'is there anything else aching? Would you like some more medicine?'
The next time they tried to hit me I hit the guy back so he wouldn't pour chlorine on me, or hit me with the bat. So they transferred me as an extremely dangerous case. They escorted me with several armed guards, my hands cuffed behind my back. After spending 4-5 months in solitude at the “shift' I started to sense / forsee things, I sensed when my mother was about to visit me.
As I waited in the transit-stage we were told many scary stories - most of which came to be true. We were taken to the baths on the arrival. The requirement was that everything has to be clean and disinfected, clothes were to be ironed. You were meant to wash for inspection - but they would turn on the boiling water so you couldn't stand even a second under the shower. Then they would turn everybody back if they thought that at least one person didn't wash up properly. At times they would switch hot-cold-hot cold water consecutively. You would face disciplinary action for not having washed up properly. They would give us new uniforms but the boots would have no soles.
The blatnie would sit and wait in the baths - they beat me up so badly my mother struggled to recognize me when she came to see me.
There were many divisions of status:
- 'Blatnie' - corrupt, well-connected soldiers that called the shots - they didn't do much, they were in charge of the baths or cooking.
- 'Patcani' - 'boys' - they were right-hand men of the blaitnie, and oversaw the orders given by the blatnie.
- 'Mujiki' - the 'guys' - would do the work but wouldn't accept other people imposing their work on them.
- 'Cherti' - 'devils' - would get all the work, wash up pants and underpants, all the dirty work.
- 'Petuhi' - 'cockerels' - gays or those who were 'made gay through physical force'.
Blaitnie forced toothpicks under my big toe nails. Sometimes they would use an old wound up phone cable. They would put my feet in the water, wind the phone up (an old wind-up telephone discharges electrical current when it is wound) and discharge 14V in to the water.
They would hit me with an iron bar –aiming for the neck and the sensitive bits, and try and push my eyes out. It had gone on for months. All because I didn't say I was “Cherti', but if I wanted to be treated as “Mujiki' I was forced to earn that status.
We were all living in the barracks - 300 men in each one. In such a densely populated space a simple pimple turns in to abscess. After spending days in hot dusty boots peoples feet began to rot. Some had decayed so badly they had big areas of their body covered in pus and worms.
Imagine 300 men all with rotting flesh - the smell in the barracks was unbearable. It is terrifying when living flesh is rotting. At the field hospital the doctor would pull off the scab without anaesthetic, scoop out the pus and then disinfect it with 'Furacelin'. My mum sent me antibiotics but they were taken away and I never got them. We were only allowed a cold shower. If you asked for hot water, they would switch on boiling water only. The clothes were never washed properly and still had other peoples pus on them – they stank and infected the healthy areas of your body.
It is only thanks to my talent - drawing - I was appreciated and survived. There were 200 artists out of 300 men, I never thought I could make it. I got into a good group of people - we used to make rosaries, knives, designs for tattoos, design for glass and swords. The reason my work stood out was because I had imagination, others worked like Xerox copiers - simply copying previous successful designs. I redesigned a lot of old tattoo stencils there.
After I got out of the army I went to work as a builder and got a job as a guard for the different sites. Everything seemed to go OK until I had an incident with a drug addict. Everything went wrong from that point. I was at my duty guarding a café when a junky stormed in and knifed me in the stomach, demanding money. I treated the incident as an injury at work and took 100gr out of the till to get a taxi home to get treated. The owner was pleased with my work said 'well done, get better', but when I got my next month's salary it was 100gr short. I asked him why and he explained that he deducted the money that I took from the till to get a taxi after the incident. Despite the fact I nearly lost my life protecting little kids that were having a birthday party in his café!
I tried to insist it was not fair as it was a work injury, but he wouldn't listen. So I took a hi-fi and some other equipment from his café as a ransom. My boss sent 'krisha' (protection mafia) to retrieve his equipment. They were decent guys but had their side of the deal to keep to - they agreed that it was not fair and the owner was wrong. They took the equipment but didn't 'punish me' as they had been assigned. Then my boss reported me to police for 'stealing the equipment'. I got a 1-year provisional sentence. I lost loads of money in the courts and lost my job, but most importantly I lost my childhood friends over it - they just got scared and turned away from me. I was married at the time and had to provide food for family.
I was 23 and my wife was 17 when we married. I had met my mother-in-law-to-be at the market stall and I helped her to carry boxes with eggs - she introduced me to her daughter. Half a year later we marred, and in 1999 Danyil was born.
It was hard to get a job with a past like mine. I worked at a building site for a while, then again as a guard: we protected sensitive sites, factories and petrol stations. In one operation we seized bandits and militia (police) working together –they were stealing petrol at Koksohim chemical plant (the site that was under our protection).
It was accidental luck. We went out to check the patrol, six of us put on masks, got rid of any identifying items, and then stormed their cars. We fought from 2am till 4am and seized 26 people. We forced them into their own cars and then took out the accumulators. We pretended to speak on our portable radios to an imaginary group of support that was supposed to come out to help us - but our only real hope was the next patrol arriving to replace previous shift at 8 am.
However, when my employers found out I had a dark past, despite the good reputation I had earned, my employer transferred me, together with another eight people with shady records, to another division. We were always sent out to most dangerous and dodgy jobs, raids that involved military special-units. We were treated just like in the army, with no respect - after working there for six months I found out that my work-book record said it had only been one-and-a-half months.
Having spent time with people like that I understood that whether you are on the side of the police, or on the other side, brutal force is still brutal force, and it leads to the degrading of people's personality.
We were guarding Koxohim chemical plant. Though many of those who work there come out as invalids its so hard to get any job, people have to stay to provide food for their family. One day as I was walking on my patrol I stepped in a pool of what I thought was water on the ground - but my shoe sole nearly melted.
After all these experiences, I came to realise that time is flying by, and I would like to accomplish something in my lifetime for self-fulfilment ('samorealizacia'). I had always liked to work with wood. Some good people helped me to get a job at a firm doing inlay, decorating yachts, furniture, cabins, etc. Now we have got a carpenter shop and do our own designs. I hope to open my own family business.
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