from. the future covered. the latest news in the week's top stories a russian land investigation concludes pilot error was mostly to blame for the plane crash that killed the polish president last year of warsaw calls the internationally backed findings incomplete and has launched its own probe. russia and the u.k. look to the north as oil giants ross nafta and b.p.c. to a multi-billion dollar deal to extract the untapped riches of the arctic to gather the two companies have swapped shares and what they are calling a groundbreaking historic venture. russian lawmakers approved a key nuclear arms reduction deal was washington ratified before the end of the month after counterbalancing changes made the u.s.

senate to use the new start treaty after coming into force it should slash the two country's nuclear arsenals. so are the top stories of the week up next it's back to you as a czar as we take a look into the diary of a soviet schoolgirl. these children have a different kind of history. is visibly nervous what he's about to tell them is very important to him on a personal level who count the story of a girl who went to a mosque much like this one there was eighteen years ago. she started a diary at seventeen she was banished to the infamous gulag locked up behind bars.

for an attempt on stalin's life who instructed i got no explicit instructions from anybody. just another page in the history books. his grandmother lived through it. to understand how he feels about the difficult subject but how. just one example. there are. for somebody else rather than myself. i shudder at the thought. on.

the. touch. yeah ten years. i. was. one and did they give me ten years. be agreement is without appeal. i've done nothing wrong nothing wrong. real soviet people were supposed to be full of joy cheerful place desolate parades and impressive demonstrations all of which were designed to inspire people with enthusiasm. i guess what i'm reduced down to one said life has become better life has become merrier life for people in his inner circle may indeed have become better and more cheerful but listen to what lena

wrote when she was thirteen moscow's not happy people killing for basic necessities are angry and worn out they curse their government and their miserable existence i. after classes we were sent into the streets to march there there was no telling how angry i was what made things even worse was that i felt quite helpless. i decided not to join the demonstration. i often visits the state archives and came across the name is diary quite accidentally she'd been looking for the file containing the case of nina's father said geary been mcgough schoolboy who'd been purged along with many others. at first i really didn't feel like listening thrown in his diary three confidence filled with barely legible scribbles but then i looked inside and when i began

reading i couldn't tear myself away from it. typical teenage emotions for most of the three thick no books we see that nina was uncomfortable about her looks she thought she had a particular squint in one eye she was irked by the grumblings of her teachers and longed to have more fun we learned about her admiration of tolstoy in check and her belief in eternal love she worried about failing to become a decent person when she grew up sometimes she played with the idea of committing suicide it seems like a case study of teenage psychology but the diary was nevertheless used as evidence of her counterrevolutionary activity. his eyes always intrigued me when i can't see them he looks just like many other boys but when i see its eyes from a short distance they seem to be twinkling as little spots flare up and fade away in them. nina's

best friend remain still has good memories of you have the most handsome boy in their class as well as their boring teacher they were thirteen years old. and then you know what she was very fond of no although she said as well as good things about me in her diary. she wrote that i liked teasing her but i don't you remember that. there was a very unpleasant incident in our school some of the boys used to sling shots usually pictures of the country's leaders on the walls. they did that simply for the fun of it. but in fact it was a nightmarish apposite. we as a school principal and everybody else could have been sent to prison.

the bolsheviks are nothing but a pitiful bunch of despicable cowards they are afraid of everything so much though they might even build a criminal case around innocent jokes by schoolchildren they are out to bring us up to be uncomplaining slaves while stamping out any size of the spirit of protest baby it mainly cracked down on all critical attitudes and the slightest hint of free and independent behavior. i. really didn't know that nina was keeping a diary nina kept her heart shut to her friends but she had no qualms about confiding to her diary what many adults never ventured to talk about even in whispers new with us if this thing is that men a different from the soviet people she was never one of them she didn't you to the realities of so it life on this welcome you looked with through nice and she was a wealth what was going on.

there bizarre things happening in russia famine and cannibalism people coming from the provinces tell stories is a local authorities can't cope with the job of removing dead. bodies in the streets because there are too many of them. in one thousand dirty seven someone did read through her diary an investigator from the ministry of internal affairs picked it over very carefully he used a red pencil to underline everything that seemed to him in thai sylvia dos phrases like life is a meaningless and stupid joke were found throughout by all accounts nina's teenage pessimism was out of tune with stalin's catch phrase life has become better life has become merrier. now that we started

it was not aware of the terrible things happening around us. yes i think olmert stalin knows nothing about the goings on here. the things those survivor investigators do here there are snakes they slander us. but he takes they would sit face value how come he doesn't know she doesn't do you know that speakers of the communist party said nothing about jails for political prisoners and other prisons being turned into resorts. what this play is based on a book called journey into the whirlwind by you gave me a ginsburg like nina the woman went through the gulag. prison mentions. a seventeen year old inmate the book describes how adult women looked after the girl they washed her pants braided her hair gave her their sugar rations and taught

her how to behave during interrogation. do you admit that you had terrorist intentions against comrade stalin and other leaders of the bolshevik party. i admit i had a terrorist intent against stalin the soviet government's crackdown on my father prompted such intentions. nina's fate was likely sealed before she was even born she could have ended up in prison anyway even without the diary. to begin with she was born into the family of an opposition ist his father said again or even mcgough school he was a communist but his interpretation of the word different from how the bolsheviks and the ruling party understood it. he was in favor of the people's power and against the dictatorial power of one man despite repeated harassment and arrests minas father managed to set up a prosperous enterprise cooperative of the bakers it was called the end colony all

in its four hundred staff from director to floor sweeper. were paid the same salary they had free meals at the local canteen and the cooperative ran its own hairdressing salon in theater it was a veritable communist paradise. but when some members of the ruling bolshevik party asking his father to allow them to join the prosperous cooperative he turned them down he was arrested in one thousand thirty seven and executed shortly thereafter. if you want to weigh into nina's diary as were discovered when her flat was searched on generally force nine hundred thirty seven. nina's mother to both you and her two sisters who were arrested on march the tenth nina was arrested six days later. the new was sentenced to five years in prison as were her mother and her sisters. all four were sent to lever camps in the

country's north. and. when we were in eighth and ninth for but she didn't show up at the start of the school year . she had fallen ill. nobody in school knew that nina had been arrested she just vanished into thin air classmates might have guessed what happened to her but they didn't dare talk about it at the time soviet people were no longer overly surprised to hear of people disappearing without a trace even children were arrested as a matter of routine. i stood up for the history teacher been arrested back in spring. when they sent a new teacher tossed the whole class went on strike all of us were arrested at the graduation party that summer. i'd even dressed up for the occasion with

a bow and everything. but you know i'm. sure i'm sure that the truth will be found out and they will be set free because i i just know they will because i sent a letter to comrade stalin. in europe is called the russian and frank the jewish girl who expose naziism in a wartime diary. died in a concentration camp of typhoid. survived the ordeal of the gulag. download the official placation. i pod touch from the top story. life on the go. video. on tease my full

costs and feeds now in the palm of your. question on the. wealthy british style it's time to cut back on. the. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy in the kinds of reports. in this history lesson the teacher is quoting examples from the background of his own family rather than a textbook he's recounting the story of his grandmother who like nina was arrested . you could say oh when my grandmother was first questioned by an investigator she did not realize what she was in for all women their respect their science laughing

at what she said when she returned to the cell but she remarked that investigator has no manners he didn't even ask me to take a seat. this is so awful. about their dogs. this is. and. i do mean touches like all gangsters they do they do see business at night you have to block your ears if you don't want to go crazy they're beasts. a region in russia's north gripped by a harsh climate it's six thousand kilometers from moscow mina and her mother and sisters were sent here after they were found guilty of so-called counterrevolutionary activity menas diary had been included in her case as key

material evidence. i spent several days in bad painting a picture in my mind's eye of how i kill him that dictator villain and swine that georgian was crippled russia and how do i do it i want to kill him at the earliest opportunity i will take revenge for myself and my father. food chain your old nina wrote those lines in one nine hundred thirty three the inner thoughts of a teenager with an attitude but three years later under excruciating interrogation she was forced to sign a confession admitting a plot against stalin's life. what exactly were your terrorist intentions. i did nothing concrete i only hoped i would cross stalin's path outside the kremlin after finding out when he

normally left it then i would shoot him with a revolver. visitors to cali mud today have mixed feelings on one hand they see beautiful landscapes on the other. they know that the region's history is fraught with inexplicable cruelty. the truth that drove. the prison camp in the autumn of one nine hundred thirty seven took a road built by other inmates many of them died during the construction. we have come. to visit a prison camp for women. women serve their terms here between the one nine hundred thirty one nine hundred fifty and the. cattle i'm grew vegetables. menas ambition was to be a painter and a musician but most of all she wanted to be a celebrated author however the easel the piano and the pen were now things of her

past here she'd be forced to use tools of another trait. visited what was left of prison camps to collect oil lamps aluminum mugs picks and spades. here is a new exit for a museum they used to mine gold with it she set up a museum dedicated to the gulag and sometimes visits the camps with relatives of former inmates. there was a cemetery for children around here among the bushes in the one nine hundred forty s. . i think the child of one of the inmates she was buried in this small coffin. the graves were shallow at that time must have dug it up. i found it in one thousand nine hundred nine. was lucky she'd

been assigned to work. day. live she didn't die of vitamin deficiency. no survivors among mates working in the gold mines. most could endure only four years of such grueling labor there were two types of inmates in prison camps criminals convicted for murder burglary or similar crimes and people convicted for political activity. sue called political convicts even included mothers who might have stolen wheat stocks from a collective farm to feed their starving children or fathers coming to work five minutes late grandfathers who kept copies of the bible at home were persecuted and even teenagers writing school compositions and what was seen as the wrong spirit could fall foul of the law that people were put behind bars for telling jokes and praising technological achievements of other countries there was

a host of absurd charges i still keep the one nine hundred twenty six criminal code that one of its articles even made side punishment for failing to provide horses to the red army. many historians suggest that if the sylvia government had used normal methods it would have taken fifty years to open up a mock prison inmates did their job in ten. slave mandela could help give become big thrust forward. to roll back in the early twentieth century french economists had warned the soviet union was holding its tracks no country would be able to catch up with a nine hundred fifty. gold miner and son of an ex political prisoner he doesn't learn his history from a book the land where he lives is his teacher sometimes it shocks with graphic

lessons like this one. is a rifle card which is just these ones are pistol fired yes pistol. i think these were fired with a carbine or submachine gun. look here some more. they crop out quite often this one is rusty yeah small wonder after so many years down there. here bullets in cartridges are just as common as gold nuggets. inmates were publicly shot and killed by the thousands to inspire fear in the others. they also wanted to make sure that gold mining targets were met on time. for some reason company executives believed i would always have a plentiful supply of inmates gold mining in colima i think nineteen thirty seven and especially not in thirty eight with the darkest pages in column is history.

the only thing the teacher couldn't explain to the children was why some inmates shouted words of admiration for stalin before they were executed and why they were still sure that anybody but him was to blame for their deaths. is that on us you see a cult of stalinism was forming in the country even children who were taught to worship an admired stone from a young age. while my mother recalls that she was at a loss denser in questions from guests. they wonder which of the two she loved norm well her father or comrade stella. frankly she loved both and equal measure. of sky is survived five years of imprisonment before being exiled to the city of monkey done to work as a graphic designer at the local theater her job was to paint soviet style stars and write slogans on red banners it was during her stint to theatre that she met her

future husband also an artist and ex in me. she was scarce throughout the rest of her life whenever her husband was going to tell somebody about her life she did like this or that she wouldn't let him say anything she was a great as time went by nina realised one of her ambitions she was acclaimed as an artist but never again were her thoughts recorded in a diary as emotional and sincere as they had been in her childhood but she still steered clear of public demonstrations and never used red colors in her paintings and italy kuvin an artist was her friend in the final years of her life there she was more daring in her work than many other artists her paintings were not given due recognition it was not until she was sixty years old that she was admitted to the artists union nina's quiet and modest life came to an end in one thousand nine

hundred three. true. you know that she. she. she made it clear that she.

each. case was closed because the elements of the crime were not present but millions of people in similar cases were already did their cases were simply closed because the elements of the crime were not present. when. the children hang around after class to discuss what they've just heard some try to remember the names of relatives who had also passed through the gulag their teacher . hopes that goes will be lasting memories for. the father of gold miner. was also rehabilitated. to things he's duty bound to set up a memorial crosses where prison camps are cemeteries for inmates used to be he goes out of his way looking for these places he makes the crosses and then invites

priests to come say memorial prayers over unmarked graves just like take a look from this side first. it's not quite in the right position and stand here turn up to face me. ok for. each. of these crosses. for the mistakes my relatives my. and early twentieth century and. i hope god will somehow take notice of this.

court's found no crime in the case of. author of journey into the whirlwind later adapted it will play the performance always attracts a full house each time the actors receive a standing ovation. but it should hardly comes a surprise nearly every russian family had to endure the horrors of stalin's repressions.

it.

all. great for the four.