As a military journalist, Grigori Pasko filmed the dumping of atomic waste by the Russian Pacific Fleet into the Sea of Japan. After making his material available to the Japanese media, he was arrested in 1997 and charged with espionage and treason. Protective custody lasting twenty-one months, a short period of freedom, and a re-arrest and conviction to four years incarceration under extreme conditions are the stations of Pasko`s odyssey through the Russian penal system, which he has documented in his three series of journals.
These reveal the bewilderment and horror of a man who, without being aware of what he was guilty of, finds himself in a Russian prison under inhumane conditions. In order not to lose his sanity during months-long solitary confinement, Pasko reviewed and examined his experiences, ultimately melding them into a highly critical assessment of the Russian power structure and society in general.
»Pasko`s service is that he has revealed the inner workings of the apparatus of power in a light yet vivid language. He has delivered a piece of documentary literature which most importunes when it is confronting the worst extremes.«
Thomas Roth
Grigori Pasko
was born in Ukraine in 1962. As a military journalist he documented the dumping of atomic waste into the Sea of Japan. After making this documentation available to the Western press, he was sentenced in 1999 to four years of hard labor in a work camp. Early in 2003 he was freed on probation and continued to work towards his complete exoneration. In 2002 he received the Human Rights Award from the organization Reporters Without Borders. His case is scheduled to be heard by the European Court in summer 2006. Pasko works now as the editor of an environmental protection magazine, a political advisor, and a freelance journalist in Moscow.
