Inside the mind of a Russian murderer
MORE than a decade after the BBC started screening documentaries under the Storyville brand, this instalment was one of the most riveting yet.
It was also a reminder that penal institutions generally aren’t the holiday camps we are often told they are.
The prison in this film is officially called Penal Colony 56, though it is more commonly known as the Black Eagle.
RUSSIA’S TOUGHEST PRISON: THE CONDEMNED Sunday, 10pm - BBC4
Situated deep in the Urals, it is surrounded by a forest which is bigger than the whole of Germany.
Until a new road was built in
recent years, it was a 14hour drive to the nearest city; even now, it is still seven hours by car.
Almost exclusively, this 80minute documentary consisted of convicted murderers speaking directly to the camera.
Suffice to say that it didn’t make for easy viewing.
Even harder to watch, though, was the sequence when the mother of lifer Maxim Kiselev came to visit on the first leg of a 5,000-mile round trip.
Now in his mid-thirties, Kiselev woke up after an alcohol binge to find himself surrounded by six corpses.
One of them was that of a tenyear-old boy.
‘The day before the murders Mum asked me not to drink,’ he said.
‘I didn’t listen to her. I got drunk and killed those people.’
Kiselev insisted he is ‘certain’ that he remains ‘a danger to society’ at large.
‘If you released me, I’ll see people living a beautiful life and I’d want the same,’ he said in tones that can only be described as chilling.
‘But I’ve never had a job. And if I got one I’d work for a couple of months, then I’d steal, get drunk and kill. If you’ve killed once, you’ll kill again.’