Kresty Prison

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Aerial photo (2016)
Prison Church (2007)

The Kresty Prison ( Russian Кресты for "cross") was a remand prison in Saint Petersburg .

history

In the 1730s, during the reign of Anna Ivanovna , the Vinny Gorodok wine warehouse was located here , where all of St. Petersburg's wine stocks were stored. After the reforms of 1861 there was an increased need for prisons: previously serfs were incarcerated by the landowners on their own property, from now on they were put in state prisons. In 1867, for example, the wine warehouse was converted into a prison with 700 accommodations, with men's and women's sections.

Within 20 years the prison became too small for the city. The project for the new city prison came from Antoni Ossipowitsch Tomischko (1851-1900), who had built a model prison in Staraya Russa , the model of which was resumed in Vessyegonsk , Vyazma , Tsaritsyn and other cities. Tomischko had studied the structure of prisons in Germany and was impressed by the Moabiter prison , in which several blocks are aligned in a star shape on a tower. This construction was also used in Pennsylvania prisons and became known as the Panopticon . Under the direction of Tomischko, two five-storey, cross-shaped buildings were built, each with a central tower from which all cell corridors could be monitored. In total, the complex contained 960 cells, which were intended for 1150 inmates. The construction began in 1884, was completed in 1890 and carried out by the prisoners themselves, with old components being torn down and the prisoners being relocated to the new parts. At the time, the prison was considered the most modern of its kind in Europe, with electric lighting, functioning ventilation and central heating. One of the central towers contained a memorial to the English prison reformer John Howard .

In the Russian Empire the prison was officially known as the "Saint Petersburg Solitary Prison" and was intended for the detention of both common criminals and political prisoners . On the evening of March 12, 1917, during the February Revolution , rebelling soldiers and workers who had gathered at the Finnish train station , led by Mikhail Kalinin , stormed the prison, freed the inmates and destroyed all documents. They had two goals: on the one hand, to destroy the police records of their own crimes, and on the other, to imitate the storm on the Bastille at the beginning of the French Revolution .

During the Stalinist Great Terror , approximately 12,000 inmates were locked up in the 930 cells, designed for 1,150 prisoners. During the siege of Leningrad, most of the prisoners were either drafted into the criminal services of the Soviet army or transferred to the eastern regions of the country. The prison was used to detain people who were involved in the theft of groceries or ration cards, and later also for German prisoners of war. Many guards and prisoners also died of starvation during the siege.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikowa and Marija Aljochina , members of the band Pussy Riot, reported after their release in 2013 of the brutal exploitation of prisoners who had to do forced labor for up to 14 hours a day. The government-critical newspaper Novaya Gazeta also reported on abused and even killed prisoners in Kresty. Desperate letters from relatives to President Vladimir Putin that he should take action against the "sadistic prison guards" usually have no consequences, according to lawyers and human rights activists.

At the end of 2017, the prisoner was transferred to other prisons. Even after that, the site was not open to the public, as the administration buildings continued to be used. This was made possible by the construction of the Kresty 2 prison in Kolpino . The inhumane conditions of detention in Kresty, which the Russian Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov even compared with the conditions in a gulag , are to be brought into line with European standards.

There is also a church ( Alexander Nevsky Church ) and a museum on the prison grounds .

Known inmates

Web links

Commons : Kresty Prison  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Andrei Strelnikov: A look behind the bars: The abandoned Kresty prison in St. Petersburg , Russia Beyond (German) , September 4, 2018; accessed on March 22, 2020
  2. ↑ Следственный изолятор №1 - "КРЕСТЫ" ( Memento from October 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ a b "Kresty 2" holds 4,000 prisoners - Welcome to Russia's new Superknast , N-tv.de , December 2, 2015; accessed on March 22, 2020
  4. ↑ Kresty: Church (Russian)

Coordinates: 59 ° 57 ′ 14 ″  N , 30 ° 21 ′ 52 ″  E