âIn 1998â2000 I was a frequent customer at the sobering-up station; in total they hauled me in five times,â recalls programmer Alexander Yulin. âThree of those times I was genuinely dead drunk, and twice they were just filling their quota, so I wasnât put through any procedures: they kept me for two hours in the âshouterâs cell,â and that was it. The âshouterâs cellâ is basically the same as the police âmonkey houseââa cage for those who arenât too drunk and arenât causing trouble. Of course, they still issue you the exact same receipt for âservices,â and all the money you had at the moment of detention ends up in the sobering-up staffâs pockets. However much you had, thatâs how much they took: once they confiscated 200 rubles from me (which was money in those days), and a friend lost two thousandâback then it was still a tidy sum. But I donât recall them taking any belongings, although the crowd that ended up there couldnât have had diamonds or Vertu phones; but they definitely didnât remove wedding rings.
They treated the drunks politely, but harshly. If you argued or resisted, they could beat you up. Football fans after matches were especially âlucky,â when the cops were all keyed up. If they brought you in wearing a scarf, God forbid you say something out of turnâyouâd get hit in the head right away. Otherwise they usually just stripped you down to your underwear; if the passenger was in a really disgusting stateâcold shower, then a ward with 6â8 beds, a wool blanket, and lights out. About once an hour theyâd drop in to see if there was any commotion, to check whether anyone had vomited. Theyâd lazily walk along the beds and poke you with the end of a batonâlike, are you alive or not? If someone started making noise, there was no medicineâjust drag them into the corridor and rough them up. And at seven in the morningâwake-up and goodbye.â
In 2011, the last sobering-up station in Russia was closed.