For centuries, the West has been captivated by the brutality of Russia’s frozen detention centres, and prison literature from Dostoyevsky to Solzhenitsyn has nursed the fascination. The system’s global significance, whether in the mass release of dangerous prisoners to serve on Ukraine’s battlefields, the increased imprisonment of dissenters and journalists, or the death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny in a remote Arctic prison colony last month, has only spurred interest further.

The publication in English of The Prisoner, a 2013 memoir by former inmate Vladimir Pereverzin, is thus well-timed. Prior to his 2004 arrest, Pereverzin was no radical or dissenter; he had little in common with Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza, or other…