Lefortovo Prison is a prison in Moscow, Russia which has been under the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of Justice since 2005. The prison was built in 1881 in the Lefortovo District of Moscow, is the setting of the two famous interrogatories of Raoul Wallenberg with colonel Kartashov at the end of World War II. The dialogue in the novel between the two became famous not only because during these interrogatories the Soviet colonel and Wallenberg discuss two opposite views of life, The Western and the Russian, but also because the two, despite political and cultural differences, reach the point of understanding each other on the meaning of life. Wallenberg will then be transferred to Vladimir Prison.
Lefortovo was a KGB prison and interrogation site (called an “investigative isolator”, or СИЗО: следственный изолятор) for political prisoners. Raoul Wallenberg was imprisoned here.