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Episode details

World Service,03 Feb 1999,3 mins

Surviving a Soviet Labour Camp

My Century

Available for over a year

At the age of 28, the Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaya was imprisoned in a Soviet labour Camp for her writing. She spent four years in a Soviet labour camp. Much of her time there was spent in solitary confinement. "All my efforts to do something in prison were devoted not to being released in the end, but to prove that 'Look, we are women. We can do it. We don't have to compromise. We don't have to lose our personalities'."

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