Editor's note: the author's punctuation has been preserved.
Hello!
It's been a very long time since I got any letters from you or wrote myself, I really hope everyone in your family is in good health and everything is fine with you. News reaches me that life on the outside has become harder over the past year, is that really so? So another summer is almost over, for me it's already the second summer in captivity, every time I think about it, my brain is ready to explode from realising how much I still have ahead of me, how much more I'll have to bear, to endure :(.
Right now I'm in Brest Region in the town of Ivatsevichy, 300-250 km from home. I very often think about what it was like for the people who long ago fell victim to repressions and exile. Comparing what is happening to me with what I can vaguely imagine from what I know about those times. I understand that what has fallen to my lot doesn't compare with the torments and suffering they had to endure. But all this is very hard for me, I'm not made for places like this. The way everything is arranged here, the way things really happen, such horror, nonsense and madness!...
IK-5, Ivatsevichy
I'm not a thief, a murderer or a fraudster. It's hard for me to be in this environment. It really is hard, very hard, physically, and morally, and financially too. It may seem that I'm grumbling, complaining. But it really is so, I don't even have much to write about, because there's nothing good in this place, and if something happens - it's something bad, every day is the same (I guess I'm becoming a terrible pessimist).
I go to work (if you can call it that), lately I've been working from 8.00 to 23.00, that way time flies faster and you're distracted from reality, from the absurdity going on around you. The pay for the work is truly ridiculous pennies, sometimes it comes to 2-5 rubles, the work is very hard, dirty and harmful to health. It consists of stripping cables and wire for non-ferrous scrap.
Of course, I don't have to work, but as I already wrote - work distracts me, time goes by faster and dire financial need makes me slave away even for these couple of rubles. It's actually awful! :(
From September I'm going to study at the local vocational school to become a "woodworking machine operator" and I plan to keep going to work on the second shift. In my free time I read a lot of books, I'm taking a correspondence course at a distance Bible school, I don't watch TV at all - I no longer have time for it.
A letter from Ilya Dubsky
And recently I got some very bad news from the outside, from home. My Grandmother (my only one) is in hospital with stage four cancer, the doctors say to prepare for the worst :( She weighs 15 kg, it's horrible! The cancer is eating her up :(. It looks like I won't see her again... For me this is the most terrible thing that can happen in life - losing loved ones...
What else can I tell you? Unfortunately, there's nothing else except unpleasant things, but I won't burden you with that. In general, if you let go of certain things and have support from the outside, then you can stay here and endure it. But if there's no support, like in my case - then it's very, very hard. To get by at least somehow, you have to get into a lot of things, subtleties. Wriggle out, adapt to others and become shameless. In a word - become (adapt to be) like the overwhelming majority here. But I don't want to be like that, I DON'T WANT TO! Most of the people here make me sick, I have a conscience and I want to keep it.
If you have the opportunity and the desire - please write back and tell me what's interesting, what's new, what good news there is, how the summer is going. I'm also ashamed to write this, but if you have the opportunity and desire to help me with something, to support me - I'll be grateful from the bottom of my heart! For example, you can send books, notebooks, pen refills, payphone calling cards, postcards, envelopes and stamps by registered mail. You can also put some money in my account (editor's note: the sender's details are available from dissidentby's contacts). Maybe something will change for the better in the near future, I really want to believe it! All this is very hard for me, very difficult.
Sorry for not writing for so long! Please write back, I'll be waiting impatiently for word from you! Greetings to everyone and God Bless You!!! Sorry...Ilya :)