When proud inmates tried needling him by asking whether it was beneath a thief-in-law to sweep, Vasya answered evenly that he hadn’t learned to fly yet. His logic was simple: if he walked on that floor every day, he could help clean it without making a fuss. He also always carried a surprisingly heavy bag with him during prison transfers and camp moves.
Inside that bulky sack was not prized prison food or cigarettes, but books by well-known classic authors, which Babushkin valued highly. He reread them constantly and freely lent them to bored cellmates whose main entertainment was usually card games. For all his mild appearance and bookish manner, Babushkin’s authority in any prison was absolute.
He settled disputes among inmates quickly and without much debate. For example, during a long stay in a large city transit jail, two aggressive prisoners got into a serious conflict. They had been playing cards, and when the tense game ended, each insisted he had won.
Before long, both cheats were loudly demanding a large cash payout from the other. One argument led to another, and soon the whole cellblock was involved, with homemade knives coming out and everyone bracing for bloodshed. At that critical moment, Vasya Brilliant slowly rose from his bunk and stepped between the two men.
He ruled that both gamblers now had to pay a substantial fine into the thieves’ common fund and that neither of them would be allowed to touch cards again. The conflict ended on the spot. No one present dared challenge a verdict from an authority of that stature. Thanks to his enormous influence, Brilliant could, with very little effort, set off a mass prison revolt.
In the end, that rare organizing power turned into a serious liability. In the mid-1980s, while Babushkin was being held in a maximum-security facility in a remote forest settlement, he was suddenly placed in solitary confinement. In response to the isolation of their leader, a furious and uncontrollable riot broke out almost immediately.
The administration of that model prison—one firmly controlled by officials rather than the criminal hierarchy—was forced to make the humiliating request that Babushkin calm the inmates down. But the principled old thief flatly refused to help the authorities suppress what the prisoners saw as justified anger. After that, the order came down to transfer the defiant inmate to the notorious special colony known for its brutal methods: White Swan…
