A Historian's First Day in Prison - three years since

“I was going over, in my head, the events connected with my arrest and the first days after it three years ago, and I remembered that the number of my first cell, into which I entered in the early morning of June 9, 2023, was 333. When I saw that number on the door as I was walking in, I automatically thought: the Battle of Issus, 333 BC. And only much later did I learn that three hundred and thirty-three is also a military command, meaning something like ‘fire all weapons.’ I even heard a Z-song of the same name playing during a walk in the prison courtyard. But the events of Alexander the Great’s campaign are still somehow closer to me.

Yours, Vasya N., SIZO-1, St. Petersburg”