Oleksandra Radchenko, was literally persecuted for her private writing. During a search of her apartment the secret police confiscated her diary. Following a six-month interrogation, she was charged with having written a ‘diary with counter-revolutionary contents’. During her trial she told the judges that ‘the main aim of my writings was to devote them to my children. I wrote because after 20 years the children won’t believe what violent methods were used to build socialism. The Ukrainian people suffered horrors during 1930–33 …’ Her appeal fell on deaf ears, and she was sent for a decade to
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