They did not work but they were allocated a full ration; they levied a money tribute from all the 'peasants', those who did work; they took half of t… - Anne Applebaum

If respect for others helped some maintain their humanity, respect for themselves helped others. Many, particularly women, speak of the need to keep... as clean as possible, as a way of preserving... dignity. Olga Adamova-Sliozberg describes how a prison cell mate "washed and dried her white collar and sewed it back on her blouse' every morning." Japanese prisoners in Magadan set up a Japanese 'bath'—a large barrel, to which benches were attached—along the bay. During sixteen months in Leningrad’s Kresty prison, Boris Chetverikov washed his clothes over and over again, as well as the walls and the floors of his cell—before going through all of the opera arias he knew in his head. Others practised exercise or hygienic routines.

Before a nation can be rebuilt, its citizens need to understand how it was destroyed in the first place: how its institutions were undermined, how its language was twisted, how its people were manipulated.

If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.