Dissidents on the Internet at gulag.com

A VLADIVOSTOK journalist, on trial for blowing the whistle about naval nuclear dumping, has found a modern outlet for an age-old Russian woe - he is publishing his prison diaries on the Internet.

Grigory Pasko has been in custody since November 1997, accused of betraying state secrets by exposing the dirty habits of the Pacific Fleet to Japanese television. Russia's increasingly computer-literate youngsters are reading him avidly, just as their parents pored over the prison writings of Soviet dissidents in hand-copied samizdat (underground) publications.

The first instalment of the diary brought Mr Pasko, 37, instant popularity, although whether it will cut any ice with the court, due to give a verdict in his case sometime this month, remains to be seen. Entitled "Cookie", a slang word meaning a novice prisoner, the chapter gives survival tips for those having their first experience of Russia's notoriously overcrowded and tuberculosis-infested jails.

"Anyone determined to challenge the authorities," he writes, "should keep a large bag at home, full of provisions, because he can be hauled off to prison at a moment's notice. Essential goods include cans of food to compensate for the meagre prison rations and a blanket of one's own."

All advice with which Soviet-era dissidents such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Bukovsky would have concurred, not to mention the Decembrists, who were dragged off to Siberia in the early 19th century for opposing Tsarist autocracy. In Boris Yeltsin's Russia, despite democratic progress, it often seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Amnesty International has designated Mr Pasko a "prisoner of conscience" and he is widely believed to have been framed by the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB.

His military trial has been conducted behind closed doors. However, by law, the verdict should be announced in open court and there is now a dispute in Vladivostok over the choice of venue. Supporters of Mr Pasko want maximum room for the press and public while the authorities are trying to keep numbers down. The state prosecutor is demanding a prison sentence of 12 years for treason.

Mr Pasko began his career as a naval officer before going into journalism and forging a reputation as an environmental crusader. At first, he wrote for Boyevaya Vakhta or "Battle Watch", the newspaper of the Pacific Fleet. He came to the attention of the authorities after he started doing freelance work for NHK, Japan's largest television network, which broadcast a documentary about the Russian fleet's dumping of nuclear waste off the Japanese coast.

Through much of the trial, Mr Pasko has been kept in solitary confinement. "He is a journalist," said his wife, Galina Morozova, "so he always tries to write about topics that interest him. The best way to get rid of the solitude is to make some use of your talent, and write about it."

She professes not to know how the diaries reached the Internet. Presumably, however Mr Pasko passes handwritten notes to visitors - if not to family members then perhaps to his lawyer, who is in touch with the Glasnost Foundation, an organisation devoted to free speech that dates back to the Gorbachev era.

The website carries appeals and details about the case in English. For the time being at least, the diary itself is only available in Russian.

A recent instalment gives tips on how citizens should conduct themselves after being arrested. Like prisoners of war, he advises, they should give no more than name and number. "Say nothing. You have to survive the first 72 hours. It's the period when they can keep you there. To extend it, they need special documents and they will have to provide you with a defence lawyer."

In his case, custody was extended for 18 months after the initial arrest. He describes the "preliminary confinement cell, a cage stuffed with other detainees and a rank toilet in the corner". He also speaks of being photographed, X-rayed and subjected to "painful blood tests with a thick needle". He says he survived by finding a "family" - a small group of inmates who share their food parcels and generally look out for each other. Mr Pasko says the hardest part is listening to old lags predicting the length of sentences likely to be handed down by courts that have little respect for the principle of presumption of innocence.

But the case all depends on the FSB who, almost certainly, are listening. For while dissidents have updated their methods, so have the security services. They are developing ways of bugging the Internet to intercept the e-mails of terrorists and tax evaders. Why not also the diaries of prisoners in the new-old gulag?