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.