FROM THE FIRST CLANG OF THE RAIL TO THE LAST CLANG OF THE RAIL. Once upon a time, the corrective labor camps of the Soviet Union afforded the Evil Emperor a way to extract cheap labor from politically inconvenient people, although the Organs of State Security had little reluctance to murder such people before extracting labor. The prison system of Russia is still a way to extract cheap labor, although English investment banker Tig Hague found out about it as a cumulation of small misfortunes that he could have avoided by bribing a functionary at the Moscow airport, rather than by being named on a list that was later misplaced. His recollections are in print in Tomorrow You Go Home: One Man's Harrowing Imprisonment in a Modern-Day Russian Gulag. I'll keep Book Review N^o. 12 short. The prison system is a different method of extracting bribes, something that Mr Hague figures out, going so far as to tell one of the prison officials that the British Embassy is getting angry at sending bribe money with no results. Mr Hague was paroled. The details are left to the reader to work out. Much of his experience parallels Alexander Dolgun's in the Evil Empire's prisons, including signing the protocol, transportation in Stolypin cars, work norms, and exchanges of favors with underpaid prison guards. But the Evil Emperor wasn't in the business of selling prisoners for hard currency.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)