Is quarantine getting on your nerves?

Is quarantine getting on your nerves? In recent years, tens of thousands of people in Russia (officially more than 60,000 between 2013 and 2018) have been detained on political or other charges and placed under house arrest. The six Russians who were detained told the BBC Russian Service that they had managed to recover in solitude.

Russian theater director Kirill Serbrenkov was detained in Moscow for a year and a half. He made a video of "How to avoid going crazy when you're stuck indoors."

Normal life is full of intrusions like phone calls, Instagram and Facebook. But loneliness takes you away from them all and can provide a break.

"It's a great opportunity to get yourself out of all this chaos," said Kirill Serbrenkov. You can focus on the questions that matter. Like who you are and what you want out of life. 'He suggests keeping a diary and writing down the smallest thing that comes to mind.

Yulia Tsvetkova, a Siberian feminist and director of a children's theater, was detained for four months on charges of campaigning for women's and LGBT rights online.

"It was a wonderful opportunity to do nothing and not feel guilty," she says. Sergei Fomin was first detained for a month before taking part in a demonstration in Moscow last summer and then spent three months in detention. When he was released from custody before the trial, he recalled the plans he had made: "I will exercise, do push-ups and squats, and make a plan for reading." But a month later, Sergei's plans died down. "My daily routine has deteriorated. I would wake up at ten in the morning but stay in bed until three in the evening. I would spend three hours in the bathroom and then crawl back to bed.

Yulia also struggled. "I wanted to be a puppet and hide in a soft blanket and keep myself away from the world and all reality, and that started to scare me," she says. Mathematician Dmitry Bogatov was under house arrest for almost six months in 2018.

He says: 'It's really hard to keep any kind of timetable because we usually have things to keep up with, like when the shops close and when to go to work on time. But (in custody) it all becomes meaningless.

Natalia Shrina, former director of the Library of Ukrainian Literature, was detained in 2015 and detained for more than 18 months.

She says being under house arrest after police raids, interrogations, interrogations, solitary confinement and trials felt like heaven. But that did not last long.

'You think you can read and listen to music, but you don't. Knowing that I was not guilty, injustice enraged and surrounded me. You pick up a book but you can't focus on it, you turn on the TV but everything goes through you. '

After being under house arrest for several months, Natalia was allowed to go to a polyclinic. He needed treatment for a spinal cord injury he suffered while traveling in a police van.

These visits helped restore his health. "I only went to the polyclinic but I would have felt better to see other people busy with my life," he said.

"It was a very emotional moment when they let me go for a 500-meter walk," recalls Yulia Tsvetkova. It felt like a little bit of freedom, but it also made me realize how free I was the rest of the time.

Sergei was banned from traveling, but he broke the ban twice.

"Sometimes at night I would pull a bone over my head and run to the store downstairs to buy beer," he said. When I went out, I had this indescribable feeling as if I had managed to escape from prison.

Detention courts often allow you to talk to your closest relatives. Natalia's husband and daughter supported her in solitude.

Later they were allowed to talk on the phone and then friends started coming to visit. "Even pets are very comforting," she says. Alexander Letreyev, a technologist and opposition activist, created an online project called D-Anonymize to identify police officers who beat peaceful and non-violent protesters.

Their detention has just begun. His friends come to visit him every day. "They bring me good food and make me happy," he says.

Almost everyone recommends reading. Kirill Serbrenikov recommends reading books such as War and Peace, Don Quixote and The Kindly Once. They also suggest writing notes or learning a new language. Alexander Letreyev says he is developing a new business plan.

Sergei says: 'The thing that saved me was the draw. My father gave me a book on how to play and win a draft. During the day to improve my game spend five hours. '

"Think of political prisoners," says Yulia. "I know what it's like to be in prison indefinitely. Quarantine is not as terrible as that.

Alexander Bushmakov, Alexander's lawyer, says the most important thing during self-imposed loneliness is to know that you are not alone and that sooner or later it will all end, and you will be free.