good to have you with this week's top stories now for you. in the russian capital the official reports the last plane crash that killed poland's president and members of the country's political elite points to pilot error or source accepted part of the blame lies with the produce side but said some points have not been addressed. to the world's great all companies. companies have struck a deal to explore the potential of huge deposits of oil and gas periodontal russia's continental shelf. and the nuclear arms reduction treaty between moscow

and washington has been approved by russia's parliament in the second of three readings that would see the two countries also will slash. was given the go ahead by the u.s. senate just before the new. next we take you back to the stalin era telling the story of a soviet girl whose dari meant she was banished to infamous camp that's next on. 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. the story of a girl who went to a moscow school much like there was eighteen years ago. she started a diary. 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 of what she wrote in the. diary for somebody else rather than myself. i shudder at the thought. on.

the. touch. ten yes. i. was. and did they give me ten yes. the agreement is without appeal. i've done nothing wrong nothing wrong. real soviet people were supposed to be full of joy cheerful place desley parades an impressive demonstrations all of which were designed to inspire people with enthusiasm. i guess what i'm really stone 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 nina's 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 culpable oaks filled with barely legible scribbles but then i looked in science 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 urged by the grumblings of her teachers and longed to have more fun we learned about her admiration of tolstoy and check off 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 intrigue me when i can't see them he looks just like many other boys but when i see you guys 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 other though 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 and we crack 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 the thing is that many different from the soviet she was never one of them she didn't yield to the realities of summit life on this new look to 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 moving dead by. in the street because there are too many of them. in one thousand nine hundred thirty 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 soviet thoughts 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 sense

it was not aware of the terrible things happening around us. i think olmert stalin knows nothing about the goings on here. the things those survivor investigators do here there are snakes they slander us. 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. but 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 the gulf 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 of 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. he walked away into nina's diary as were discovered when her flat was searched on january fourth one thousand nine hundred thirty seven and. nina's mother knew both he and her two sisters who were arrested on march the tenth nina was arrested six days later. nina 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. why did they do to you and i stood up for the history teacher has been arrested back in spring. when they sent a new teacher toss the whole class went on strike but all of us were arrested at

the graduation party that summer. i'd even dressed up for the occasion with a bow and everything going. 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 as that the letter to comrade stalin. in europe the look of sky is called the russian and frank the jewish girl who expose naziism in a war time diary. on a diet in a concentration camp of typhoid. survives the ordeal of the gulag.

would be so much brighter if you knew about soon from phones to christians. who scream start on t.v. . 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 . because they were with when my grandmother was first questioned by an

investigator she did not realize what she was in for a woman there east but there are signs laughing at what she said. when she returned to the cell she remarked the lead investigator has no manners he didn't even ask me to take a seat. this is going to stop all. about their dogs. this is squished up. 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. and 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 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 they drove. to 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 hundred fifty and the. cattle i'm grew vegetables.

bishan 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 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 she was buried in this small coffin. the graves were shallow at that time bare must have dug it up. i found it in one

thousand nine hundred nine. was lucky she'd been assigned to work at the camps poultry farm. day then chimps are alive she didn't die of vitamin deficiency. there were almost 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 suvi government had used normal methods it would have taken fifty years to open up a mock prison inmates did the job in ten. slave mandela could help give the country a big thrust forward. to roll back in the early twentieth century french economists had. the soviet union was halted in 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 cartridges just these ones are pistol fired yes pistol flood i think these were fired with a carbine or submachine gun. look here some more. they call it 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 thousand to inspire fear in the others . they also wanted to make sure that gold mining targets were men on time. some reason company executives believed i would always have a plentiful supply of 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. they strenuous 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 an equal measure. of sky has 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 stupidity of her that she met her future husband also an artist and ex inmate. who was she was the carriage throughout the rest of her life whenever her husband was going to tell somebody about her life she did like this and that she wouldn't let him say anything she was afraid as time went by nina realized 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 which 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 of the 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 menas quiet in 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 getting. the doe's 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 goat. which. crosses. the mistakes my relatives my. and early twentieth century. 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.