Giving your word: Sergei Nikitin writes to political prisoners

‘We were fortunate to have these cards on our walls.’

by Sergei Nikitin 21st April 2023

When I was working for Amnesty International as the head of its Moscow office, I heard a story told by my London-based manager. She recalled how, in the 1970s, Amnesty International activists were writing letters to Soviet political prisoners. She used to write to a priest serving his term in a corrective labour colony in the USSR. ‘We never got any reply from the prisoners, we just received pink slips of paper – official confirmation from the colony’s officers that our card had been received. And by these slips of paper we knew that the prisoner was still there, was alive’.