Book DescriptionIt?s official. The gulags of Siberia are no more. Solzhenitsin?s nightmare of the absurd does not exist. The prisons are still there, of course, with plenty of customers, probably more than a million, such as the 15-year-old boyserving three and a half years for stealing two hamsters from a Moscow pet shop, or the mother of four who stole 12 cabbages ? what can have possessed her? ? and was rewarded with four years in Siberia. So the inhuman lunacy still exists, but it is now officially apolitical. In reality it is an economic social endeavour. It does not pay to be a poor thief in Russia, since you will not have the resources to avoid the interminable train ride to the East when you are caught. Carl De Keyzer took that journey to photograph the prisons today. With two army colonels as his shadows, one to the left and one to the right, he photographed what he was allowed to see, and no more. But he has revealed a kind of winter wonderland, a...