You're reading: BBC: Wall of Grief – Russia remembers victims of Soviet repression

BBC: Wall of Grief – Russia remembers victims of Soviet repression

By BBC.

Published Aug. 17, 2017 at 9:28 am

People set candles and lay flowers at the monument to Chornobyl victims in Slavutych, the city of the power station's personnel live, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the accident site, during a memorial ceremony early on April 26, 2017. Ukraine on April 26, 2017 marks the 31st anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster which was the world's worst nuclear accident.

Photo by AFP

Vera Golubeva spent six years in a Stalinist labour camp for telling a joke. In 1951 she was labelled an enemy of the people and sent to Siberia.

“It sounds ridiculous,” the former history teacher smiles. “But that’s the only ‘evidence’ they had on me.”