Authors

Melanie Ilic¹;  ¹ University of Gloucestershire, UK

Discussion

>This paper is drawn from a much broader project that explores the role of women in the Soviet dissident movements.

Despite the fact that Soviet leaders continued to claim that there were no longer any political prisoners in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin, those actively involved in the emerging dissident movements, including a good number of women, were regularly subject both to everyday repressive measures (including threats of loss of parental custody and being sacked from their job), routine surveillance and apartment searches, as well as to arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, psychiatric detention, and they were sent to the camps and into internal exile. This paper provides an overview of evidence drawn from dissident women’s incarceration memoirs and related investigative sources to highlight what penitential life was like for these women dissidents, including those detained in psychiatric wards and the ‘small zone’ labour camp.