[Editor’s note: just this week Mikhail Tanich, the poet profiled below by Grigory Pasko, would have celebrated his 85th birthday.] Mikhail Tanich: «Jail – is the Russian melody…» Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. Over the past 16 years – from 1992 through the year 2007 – there have been more than 15 million people convicted of a crime in Russia. More than one in ten out of a population of 140 million. Nearly a million people per year. Of these, 5 million and then some have been deprived of liberty. Vladimir Radchenko, first deputy chairman of the Supreme Court (ret.), head of the center of the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Legal Studies under the government of the RF, considers that humanization of criminal legislation and of the practice of its application can not be evaluated simply as a manifestation of liberalism. On the contrary, it is a necessity for the gradual return to health of the social situation in the country. Procurator-General of Russia Yuri Chaika considers it imperative to change criminal policy in the sphere of judicial proceedings, in order to improve the situation in places of the deprivation of liberty. Even representatives of the service for the execution of punishments have begun to talk of the imperativeness of changing criminal policy. They are practically screaming that the jails are overcrowded. Not long before his death, the poet Mikhail Tanich wrote such lines: