Moscow, Lubyanka

headquarters of Soviet security services and an affiliated prison · Lubyanka Square, Moscow, Russia

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Goddamned Prison

Available in: English | Česky

In April 1948, Jan Mašek and his colleague Kaska were arrested during the resistance activities and were transported to infamous Moscow KGB, (Committee for State Security), examination room, to Ljubljanka. “They took us to Ljubljanka and soon found out we are Czechs because they sent a telex to Prague and unfortunately the StB, (State Security), members knew me and Kaska well. So the questionings were, let' s say, “friendly.” It is a goddamned prison, the cells are 1,5 x 1,5 meters, the toilets primitive, food very poor; not only in Ljubljanka,but in the whole USSR,” he recalled. After nine months both of them were transferred back to Prague, but with stops in different soviet prisons. Jan Mašek was finally conditionally released in 1964.

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Jan Mašek

Jan Mašek was born 1923 in České Budějovice. A year after his graduation he served penal servitude in Germany. On Christmas Eve in 1943 he escaped back to Budějovice and worked in the local factory till the end of the war. In 1948 he and some his friends established a resistance movement, and were spreading anti-communist pamphlets, but mainly they helped people to get across the border to Germany. After the warning that they arrested warrant for him, he escaped abroad. He continued in resistance movement till 1951 when he was arrested by Soviet soldiers. He was transported to Moscow and after a year escorted back to Prague where the StB took over him. In 1954 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He got through different prisons and finally was conditionally released in 1964. After the Soviet occupation he emigrated to Austria, then to Switzerland and after a short stay in the USA he returned back to the Czech Republic.

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Moscow, Lubyanka

Available in: English | Česky

This large Neo-Baroque building was originally constructed in 1898 as the headquarters of the All-Russian Insurance Company, and it dominates the square of the same name. In the Soviet times, however, the square was called after the founder of Cheka, F.E. Dzerzhinsky. After the Russian Revolution, the building was first used by Cheka and then by its successor NKVD, (The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs – transl. note). The building was significantly enlarged already in the 1940s, when it served as the headquarters of the Soviet security service KGB. The building is infamous especially thanks to the period of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, when regime opponents were imprisoned, interrogated and executed here. Nowadays, the building houses the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, (FSB).

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Goddamned Prison

Jan Mašek