You chose a new name at fifteen-would you keep it if the state erased you?

In 1949 Moscow, a woman is arrested and sent to a Gulag labor camp for six years under Article 58. She later calls this the thing that saved her.

You chose a new name at fifteen-would you keep it if the state erased you?

This episode explores the extraordinary story of Nelly Semper, a woman who faced the Soviet state's attempts to erase her identity. It delves into how she navigated a system designed to break individuals and what she built within herself to survive.

Person: Nelly Semper Date: July 1949 Location: Moscow, Vyatlag Charge: Article 58

- Nelly Semper was born in Moscow in 1911 to an artist father and a Bolshoi dancer mother. - At fifteen, she chose her own name, Nelly Semper, a decade before the Soviet state's machinery would reach her. - She studied languages at Moscow institutes and worked at VOKS, the Soviet organization for cultural exchanges. - In 1949, she was arrested under Article 58, a broad political category, and held in Lubyanka and Butyrka prisons. - She was sentenced to ten years and spent six years in Vyatlag, a labor camp in the Vyatka region of the Gulag system.

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