A lifetime sentence : children of the gulag fight to return from exile
Millions of Soviet citizens were sent to vast network of prison camps under Stalin. Now their descendants seek recompense
Alisa Meissner (C) is seen in Russia’s constitutional court alongside other descendants of Gulag survivors. Photograph: Alexander Koryakov
Alisa Meissner (C) is seen in Russia’s constitutional court alongside other descendants of Gulag survivors. Photograph: Alexander Koryakov
Tue 23 Feb 2021 01.00 EST
Alisa Meissner is paying to this day for the Soviet Union’s decision to exile her whole family from Moscow for their German heritage.
She still lives in a town just 30 miles from the gulag village where her family were sent in the 1940s after the outbreak of the second world war. And despite the rehabilitation of her exiled family, the denunciation of Joseph Stalin and the collapse of the Soviet Union, she has never been able to leave.