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Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada
My virtue is that I say what I think, my vice that what I think doesn't amount to much.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Irina Ratushinskaya, Soviet Dissident and Writer, Dies at 63

Irina Ratushinskaya in 1987. Credit: Ewa Kuryluk

Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaya has died at the age of 63. Sentenced in 1983, on her 29th birthday, to the seven-year maximum term for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda,” Ms. Ratushinskaya composed some 250 poems in prison, many drafted with burned matchsticks on bars of soap. She memorized them and smuggled them on cigarette paper through her husband to the West, where they were published, and where human rights groups indefatigably lobbied for her release.

More: The New York Times

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