Russian businessmen offer to invest in jail
Posted on Aug 18, 2012
Director of the Russian Penitentiary Service Yuri Kalinin offered to give the old prison buildings in Moscow and St. Petersburg for business, if they build a modern penal institution in the suburbs. Architects are concerned that the new owners will destroy the historic spirit of the building, the British newspaper The Times, (full text articles online Inopressa.ru).
Service exposes for sale built in XVIII century Butyrka one of the oldest and most famous in Moscow and in prison “Crosses”, built in the XIX century, in St. Petersburg.
In this case, all buyers have set the condition they would have to build a new detention center outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. Department head Yury Kalinin announced the plan at the end of July as part of the program cost 54 billion rubles to improve conditions in Russian prisons.
He did not mention the price of Butyrka, which is located on a plot of three hectares in the center of Moscow, but real estate professionals estimate it at more than $ 250 million. As noted by Kalinin, management is ready to part with it, if the partners to build a similar detention center in the Moscow region.
Management also reported that prison “Crosses”, a complex of red brick on the bank of the Neva, is also sold and remodeled into a hotel and entertainment complex.
Welcomed the proposed sale of organizations fighting for better working conditions in Russian prisons, which is estimated to contain 830 thousand people.
However, those who worked to protect monuments, fear that the new owners are radically rebuild the building, despite the fact that it is protected by the state. Butyrka was built in 1771 as a barracks, and its first prisoner in 1774 became Emelyan Pugachev.
Among its famous prisoners were Soviet KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
The most famous “escape” from the prison in 1908, made the American magician Harry Houdini, who was chained, locked in a box and shut down the camera. He got 28 minutes. The last famous prisoner was Butyrki businessman Vladimir Gusinsky, who spent three days there in 2000.
Today in jails 2726 detainees, often putting on 40 in chamber able to contain no more than 22 prisoners.
“Crosses” is less well known than the casemates and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, where he was Fyodor Dostoevsky. But in 1893, upon completion of construction, “Crosses” became Europes largest detention facility with a single camera. For nearly a century, this prison was a symbol of political repression, there were such famous people as Leon Trotsky.
Today, “Crosses” known as the most overcrowded detention center in Europe. Now the former imperial dungeons will get a new owner, which by the way does not hurt to think about his possible fate and build to replace outdated cameras really sovremennooe and comfortable jail nobody will know who and how many will have to sit.