Brilliant’s tragic death in that grim institution, like the rest of his criminal life, ended up surrounded by dark questions and conflicting stories. Vladimir understood perfectly well that he might be killed there, and he often shared those fears with trusted cellmates. He had every reason to think so.
At the time, the special colony was known in criminal circles by an informal name that roughly meant the central barracks of strict regime. The defining feature of that place was a deliberate, methodical effort to break the most stubborn old-school thieves psychologically and physically. In one interview, a retired high-ranking officer who had once overseen special camps explained the logic with chilling bluntness: “A thief has to be worked on.”
According to him, the goal was to pressure the inmate into writing an official statement renouncing his criminal status and agreeing to live honestly. In reality, to get that prized piece of paper, the most unyielding men were subjected to conditions made intentionally unbearable. Defiant underworld leaders were beaten half to death and humiliated in calculated ways.
All of that pressure served one central purpose. The broken prisoner was expected to publicly renounce the code—either by signing a statement or by posing for a degrading photograph with a sign reading, “I am no longer a thief.” Notably, senior prison officials preferred not to get their own hands dirty.
The actual work was handed off either to inmates who had already been broken by the administration or to activist prisoners who hated the criminal elite and their status. Vasya Brilliant had no intention of saving his life by submitting to authorities he despised, so he prepared himself quietly and with dignity for what he believed would be the end. His grim expectations seemed to come true when, in late June 1985, word spread through prisons across the country.
Vladimir Babushkin, one of the underworld’s best-known leaders, was dead. His many followers had no doubt then, and many still have none now: the legendary thief was killed by a man sent in at the administration’s direction. Among prisoners, the only disagreement has been over the details and the method.
Some inmates insisted that while he slept, someone smashed his head with a heavy steel square. Others were equally certain he was strangled. Still others blamed a notoriously violent employee from the prison sanitation unit nicknamed Sergei Mug. But according to the sparse official version put out by prison authorities, the famous inmate’s sudden death involved no criminal act by any third party…
