ABSTRACT
For Soviet Gulag survivors, the negative consequences of repression continued through to the end of the victim's lifetime and beyond, in ever widening circles. The large and small difficulties created by political repression found their way into every corner of the psychological, social and political life of the victim. While some of these 'returnees' attempted to blend into the social fabric, others would not go gently back into a society that had taken their freedom and now wanted to deprive them of their dignity by not properly acknowledging their innocence. Though the lot of returnees improved significandy as a result of the era of rehabilitation (the Khrushchev and Gorbachev reforms), the effects of their experience of Soviet repression continued to haunt their lives and the lives of everyone in their network. A great many Gulag survivors were never able to escape their sense of 'second-class' citizenship.
