Sakharov Museum, Moscow.
Etap is a Russian word that comes from the French étape which means stage in a journey.
It means transfer of prisoners in the GULAG in stages from one facility to another; it means both the process and the place of the staged journey.
Etap seems to have always been built into the GULAG system as a form of punishment in and of itself. Its purpose seems to be to break down prisoners' will.
There really isn't any objective reason why prisoners would have to be moved very long distances from their homes — thousands of miles away — to other facilities, where it would be hard for family to visit them (in the old days, lawyers didn't ever seem to visit political prisoners; now they do).
There's only the state's reason: to make it hard for them to communicate with the outside world. Hence, Khodorkovsky's move to Chita, and now Pussy Riot singer Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's move to somewhere in Siberia (which is a big place!)
In the Soviet era, it was not uncommon for a political prisoner to disappear for weeks on end — months — "na etape" or "in transit" or "on the convoy". It's one of those phrases that is hard to translate because one word doesn't convey the phenomenon.
Was it the Stolypin cars, named for that supposedly progressive Russian official, where the etap concept started? It was in the tsar's era, and then perfected to fine torture by the Soviets — and continues in the modern era.
I've translated a number of prisoner memoirs where etap figures in — I am just working on one now where two brothers (the Shatravkas) happen to get in the same car during their etap and are glad not to be separated, but they are put in closed sections like pens, stacked up three layers. The etap cars were always over-filled with people coughing and smoking and sleep is impossible; there is always the problem of going to the bathroom. The prisoners were always tortured by not being allowed out of the car to relieve themselves and there was no toilet, so in the end they peed in the corner or in their shoes, making their lives more miserable. That's the idea. I understand it is not much better now, hopefully better for women.
The food is terrible or non-existent, the air is terrible or non-existent… Etap –– the worst memories for many prisoners. Sometimes I would notice that they shuffled prisoners around in this system randomly, not with any logical purpose, i.e. not from pre-trial detention to prison to special psychiatric hospital, or from pre-trial detention to labor camp to "do chemistry" — the chemical or other industrial plants in labor colonies where the regimen was somewhat lighter than in a camp. But "just so" — to break them down and keep everyone guessing where they were.
I haven't been worried about Nadezhda Tolonnikova on etap because my framework is the Soviet era where prisoners disappeared into this maw for weeks on end.
Now, however — formally, anyway — there is a limit of 10 days and then families should be notified. But now that time passed. And I was still not worried because I figured that Tolokonnikova, being a protester and being very well known alread, couldn't possibly be "disappeared" in this system.
Yet there hasn't been any word from Nadezhda herself since October 22 — so that's 19 days already. Short by Soviet standards but double what it is "legally" supposed to be by current Russian standards. Tolokonnikova's husband has reported that an official told him that she was bound to Siberia, RFE/RL reported.
Click here to see the long map of her journey half way across Russia.
So now I am worried, and I understand why some people are even fearful that she is dead. Prisoners used to disappear or die after etap in the Soviet era. I haven't heard of that happening nowadays, and I hope the Russians are not pulling another Magnitsky.
The reasons why they haven't allowed her to communicate with the outside world could be due to the resumption of a hunger strike, or possibly protest of some other kind, and then punishment by denying communications possibly. I hope she's okay.
In her letters and messages relayed through lawyers, she has critically described the harsh conditions of forced labor and meager living in the camps, and had feared she might face reprisals for this.
"When the zek [prisoner] hears the word "etap," his soul dies…" — a great resource on everything you need to know about how to survive a Russian prison sentence.
The Sakharov Museum's exhibit on the GULAG.
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