You're reading: Ex-top cop Lutsenko spends prison time reading voraciously

Being a prisoner has its advantages.

One of them is having lots of time to read.

Former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, serving a four-year prison sentence for an abuse-of-office conviction, is a case in point. He appears to be making the best of a bad situation.

Since his arrest in December 2010, Lutsenko has read 200 books in his 565 days of detention – better than a book every three days, according to his July 16 blog published by his press office.

“In prison, time is the only resource that is truly yours,” Lutsenko wrote. “You can waste it for reminiscences, dreams, planning revenge or doing nothing. But the smartest is to use it for self-education.”

According to the list, Lutsenko has been reading books of various genres, fiction and non-fiction, all in Russian or Ukrainian.

His spokeswoman, Larisa Sargan, told the Kyiv Post that the former minister likes history books the most.

Lutsenko’s list also includes a one- or two-sentence review and special marks to indicate whether he liked it or not.

His favorite authors of the past 18 months are Ernest Hemingway, Anton Chekhov, Samuel Becket, Russian detective star Boris Akunin and others. He also marked Ukrainian literature heavyweights Lina Kostenko and Yuri Andrukhovych.

He didn’t particularly enjoy the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Kurt Vonnegut, Aldous Huxley or John Steinbeck.

Lutsenko notes that Joseph Brodsky’s poems are good to be read when it rains.

The former official’s spokeswoman Sargan told Kyiv Post that Lutsenko has dozens of books stocked in his cell in Lukianivsky prison. After he’s finished, Lutsenko sends them back to his bookshelves at home.

His wife, Iryna, brings him several books of his choice every week. Her prefered ways of shopping are the “Ye” bookstore and a book supermarket at Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street.

“In these stores, salespeople know me and help me find books,” she said in a written comment for Kyiv Post. “They always send greetings to my husband.”

Lutsenko also gets books as presents during court hearings. He is able to read them until the light in the prison cells goes off at 11 p.m. Bad lighting is a problem, but Lutsenko’s latest cell, his wife says, is much better than his previous one.

There was no mention of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” but undoubtedly Lutsenko is familiar with it.

While the protagonist in the novel committed murder, many in the West and in Ukraine believe that Lutsenko is simply the victim of political persecution for being an opponent of President Viktor Yanukovych and a leader of the Orange Revolution.

The 2004 social uprising denied Yanukovych the presidency that year after the constitutional court claimed the elections were rigged.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected].