Last week I happened to turn on to Radio 4 soon after midday. A voice in deeply accented English was talking about poetry and life in communist Russia, and even before I learnt the title of the programme, The Imprisonment of Irina Ratushinskaya, I guessed who the speaker was - Ratushinskaya as being interviewed by Louise Hidalgo.
A friend had given me a copy of Ratushinskaya’s book about her experience of four-years’ imprisonment in a labour camp, Grey is the Colour of Hope, as soon as it had been published in 1988 and like everyone who read it, I was deeply impressed by its author’s courage and conviction, despite the severe privations of camp life in the “Small Zone.”
