Former plant director Viktor Brukhanov walked free from prison on September 11, 1991, having served five years of his ten-year sentence, most of it in the penal colony in Donetsk. He was released early for good behavior, under the rules of the Soviet judicial system, and was permitted to spend the closing months of his punishment in compulsory labor—known as khimiya, or “chemistry”—in Uman, a town closer to his wife, Valentina, in Kiev. At fifty-five, he emerged from incarceration shattered and emaciated.
