Der Schrei des Schweigens

Time and again, Ildar Dadin protests in front of the Kremlin in 2014 against the war in Ukraine. Quietly but persistently, he holds a vigil there against Russia's aggressive foreign policy, using self-painted placards that read "Putin – a disgrace for Russia." It is a lonely protest, as the Russian government has banned even peaceful demonstrations in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. Dadin is arrested multiple times until the Russian judiciary makes an example of the young man.

Dadin is sentenced to three years in a labor camp in the notorious K7 penal colony, where Putin's arch-enemy Mikhail Khodorkovsky also served time. As he nears breaking point after months of systematic torture, he writes a secret letter to his wife detailing the conditions in the camp. After his prison notes appear online, the international press takes an interest in Dadin's case. Encouraged by international support, the activist files a lawsuit against his imprisonment from Russia's most feared penal colony. And in February 2017, the unimaginable happens: Dadin not only secures his release but also the revision of the law that had imprisoned him a year earlier. In this book, Ildar Dadin provides a detailed account of his ordeal in the labor camp. He describes the physical and psychological violence against the inmates: "permanent humiliations and a culture of spying" – thus giving an impression of what perhaps Russia's most well-known opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, experiences in the penal colony in Pokrov, 100 kilometers east of Moscow.