Ihar Losik revealed what prevented him from losing his mind in prison

"The thing that truly prevents you from losing your mind in prison is books. From childhood, I read them voraciously; my library cards at the school library constantly ran out, and for my birthday and New Year, I asked for encyclopedias instead of toys.

Before prison, I lived in a constant mode of searching for information and news, writing posts, drawing memes, had a large network of major channels, and was simply completely immersed in this whirl. Time flew by very quickly.

When I got to prison, I realized that time can slow down 100 times. That one day, from wake-up to lights-out, can drag on like a whole week. And if you have such days until 07.07.2034 (release date), you can go crazy just from your thoughts.

When you're in solitary confinement (SHIZO - punishment isolator) with nothing but soap and toilet paper, and also in terrible cold, time slows down even more.

Therefore, those days when books were at hand were the best days for your mood. It didn't matter which ones. Even Shilova and Dontsova, but when you immerse yourself in reading, the day flies by, and sometimes you even forget that you are in prison.

If there was no book in the cell or the radio wasn't playing, I experienced a real panic attack from the silence and thoughts on how to pass the time every day from morning until lights-out.

Once, in Zhodzina, I was suddenly transferred to another cell and wasn't allowed to take my books with me. It was two weeks until the next visit from the librarian, but I somehow miraculously caught him and begged him to give me at least some book to pass the time. He apparently understood how important it was and brought me a collection of poems by Rabindranath Tagore from the Bengali language. It was a real blow.

When you're in a cell-type premise (PKT - *pomieskannie kamiernaha typu*, literally "cell-type room") in Navapolatsk, you only have a list of 400 books allowed by the administration, and you take one book for a week or two. Therefore, I even had a ritual to stretch it out for the entire period. There, just like candies, you divide the pages into portions for each day.

One and a half candies per day, to last for a month.

And 50 pages a day, so that the book would last until the next one. You try to remember and pick the thickest book, to read for a longer time.

So I started reading "War and Peace" there, but somehow one day it happened that I read the second volume in a single day. I liked it so much.

In school, I deliberately didn't read classical literature, but in prison, I found many interesting things. For example, "Ugryum-reka" or "Gold" by Mamin-Sibiryak.

Classics turned out to be interesting, because many writers also went through prisons for their convictions.

I noticed one detail that I had never thought about before. Isn't it true that in almost every one of the hundreds of books I read, the plot inevitably features a prison. Or a prisoner. Or an innocent convict. Or a bandit. Or repression. Whichever book you take: be it children's stories about Cipollino or Tom Sawyer, or something serious — prison is present in every book: directly or indirectly.

One prisoner, who had served 23 years (he went to prison in 2001, just imagine), called this list of literature in the PKT "dark worlds" (*mračnyje miry*). At first, I didn't understand why either, but really, in almost every book selected by the colony's administration, besides prison, suicide was inevitably mentioned in the plot. One of the characters would always either hang themselves, shoot themselves, or poison themselves. It's incredible how thoroughly they approached this unfortunate list of books for prisoners! And this is despite the fact that the colony's library itself is quite large and good. There were even books there that are recognized as "extremist" in Belarus.

Even those who have never read a single book in their lives start reading books in prison (and such people are now the vast majority among young people). And everyone starts with "The Count of Monte Cristo".

It's the most worn-out book in all the pre-trial detention centers (SIZO - *sledchy izaliatar*, literally "investigative isolator") I've been to. And I've been to many. And everyone genuinely likes it so much that they become captivated by reading, move from Dumas to Jules Verne, and then to Harari's "Sapiens," start compiling their own reading lists, writing down thoughts and quotes, and even start writing themselves.

Reading in prison is perhaps the main one of the few ways to retain the right to manage one's own thoughts and to be transported mentally beyond the prison walls, while physically remaining within them.

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