Grey is the Color of Hope 3

"When everyone who is in any way connected with your imprisonment--from the supervising procurator through to the censor and the doctor--persists in lying day in, day out, you begin to feel as though you are in some huge lunatic asylum. The only difference is that it is the overseers who are psychopaths, who try to incorporate you into a hideous, contrived reality. Shalin's insistence that we do not exist is a case in point: 'There are no political prisoners in this camp,' he would aver. Yet at the same time, he and all his colleagues invariably referred to us as the 'politicals.' The pots in which our skilly was delivered from the kitchen had the words "Polit. Zone" marked on them with brown paint. And Shalin himself, in an attempt to make us see reason, would say: 'Everyone in the men's political zone wears identity tags, so why can't you!'"

~~ from Grey is the Color of Hope by Irina Ratushinskaya

Grey is the Color of Hope 2

"What a mixed bunch we are: a Catholic, a Pentecostal, several Orthodox, an unbeliever. . . later we were to be joined by a Baptist. Yet we were always deeply respectful of one another's convictions. And God did not turn His face away from our small patch of Mordovian soil."

~~ from Grey is the Color of Hope by Irina Ratushinskaya

Grey is the Color of Hope

"Natasha is from Leningrad. She is serving a sentence for producing a samizdat journal, Maria, which was devoted to feminist issues. The problems raised in this journal, such as the double workload of Soviet women--eight hours at work followed by five to six hours queuing for food, the horrors of communal kitchens, doing the entire family wash in a hand basin--were to appear in the official Soviet press also, but much later, in 1986. In 1982, when Natasha was arrested, talking about such matters was classed as 'anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.'"

~~ from Grey is the Color of Hope by Irina Ratushinskaya