Alexey Ulyukaev, a former minister and academic economist, tried to convey the experience of unfreedom gained during six years in a high-security penal colony in his new book with both analytical prose and lyrical verse. The conversation is about the same thing, but in two languages. Poet: "Three equally important peaks / Beyond the comprehension of the mind /They own my thoughts: /Love, Russia and prison." Essayist: "If we compare Dostoevsky's Notes from the Dead House (the prison reality of the mid-19th century), Solzhenitsyn's GULAG Archipelago (the prison reality of the mid-20th century) and the modern prison reality, we will see a lot in common." And the poet is talking about the same thing again.: "And you won't guess right away, / Having managed, by untangling the thread, / To connect the pain of Sevastopol stories / With the Kolyma ones." A tough, honest conversation about how it turned out that "the country that plants / the country that sits" is the same country.