Magadan “was, in a sense, the freest town in Russia,” Aksyonov wrote. “In it there lived the special deportees and the special contingent, which included those categorized SHE (Socially Harmful Elements) and SDE (Socially Dangerous Elements), nationalists, social democrats, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists … people who recognized themselves as the lowest slaves and who, therefore, had challenged fate.” In June 1988, Magadan was still closed to foreigners. The only way to get there was on an official Potemkin-village tour with the Foreign Ministry.
