There they read it and understood the scale of the problem. The problem wasn’t the murders. Murder is a criminal case.
Investigated, tried, sentenced. That part follows procedure.
The problem was what stood behind the murders. If Akhmetova’s case went to open court, what came out with it would be impossible to contain. Systematic abuse in a women’s prison, going on for years with the knowledge of prison leadership and the cooperation of medical staff and supervisory authorities.
That was no longer one inmate’s criminal case. That was a stain on the system.
A system that was never supposed to allow such things. A system called Soviet corrective labor.
Corrective. Labor. In the context of what happened in Stepnaya, the words sounded like a bad joke.
The decision came quickly. The case was classified.
Stamped “For Official Use Only.” Closed court session. No press.
Families of the dead were told: poisoning. Accident. Responsible party identified. Case in court.
Zulfiya was tried in Karaganda. Regional court, April 1979. Closed proceedings.
Judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, guards, and the defendant. No public, no reporters, no relatives. Even the court clerk later signed a nondisclosure statement.
The prosecutor read the charges. Article 88, Part 2. Intentional murder of two or more persons.
Three victims. Lieutenant Colonel Zhuravlev. Captain Galimov.
Senior Lieutenant Savchenko. The fourth victim, Lieutenant Kovalenko, survived but suffered severe poisoning. Six months in the hospital.
Medically discharged. A separate attempted murder count for Kovalenko. The prosecutor demanded the maximum penalty.
Execution. The appointed defense lawyer, formally, as was often done in those courts, said a few words about harsh prison conditions and asked for leniency. No fire in it. No real fight.
He was performing a role. Zulfiya was silent through most of the trial. When the judge asked questions, she answered briefly: “Yes. No.”
“I admit guilt.” When the judge asked whether she wanted to make a final statement, Zulfiya stood. Waited a moment.
Then said: “They did things to women for which they should have stood trial. They never did. No one stopped them.
I stopped them. Judge me. I’m ready.”
The courtroom, empty and echoing, went still. The judge, an older Kazakh man whose name was never established later, leafed through the papers for a long time. Took off his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on.
Wrote something. Then read the sentence. Fifteen years in a strict-regime labor colony.
Added to the time remaining on her first sentence. Not execution. Fifteen years.
The prosecutor objected, demanded review. But the sentence stood. Why?
No official explanation was ever given. But Dzhumabayev, who was in the courtroom as a witness for the prosecution, later told reporter Somov: “The judge knew. Everybody knew what had been going on in Stepnaya.
The whole court knew. They just couldn’t say it out loud. And to execute a woman for killing rapists—nobody had the stomach for that.”
Maybe that’s true. Maybe Dzhumabayev was smoothing the edges. We don’t know.
The case is sealed. The judge is dead. The prosecutor is dead.
The lawyer is unknown. All that remains is a file in an archive no one can access. And the words of people who remember.
After sentencing, Zulfiya was transferred first to the Karaganda jail, then by prison transport to a remote northern region. Another camp, another climate, other faces. But the same barracks, the same bunks, the same smell of bleach and hopelessness.
In the new colony, Zulfiya ended up in the kitchen again. Worked quietly, kept to herself. No close friends, no fights.
Like a shadow. Present, but never in the way. The years passed.
Leaders changed. The country changed. Society changed. Everything changed except prison.
Prison is where time stops. In 1992 Zulfiya was released under amnesty. She was 48…
