Cover -- Half Title -- Book Title -- Copyright -- Table of Contents -- Notes on contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Glossary -- 1 Introduction -- Researching communist-eraterror and repression -- Defining 'repression' -- Sources -- Exploring women's experiences of repression -- Notes -- 2 Women's experiences of 1937: everyday legacies of the purges and the Great Terror in the Soviet Union -- Atmosphere of terror and witness to arrest -- Sealed apartments -- Aftermath and consequences of arrest -- Locating detainees -- Family life disrupted -- Impact on wider social circles -- Internal exile -- The fate of children -- Teachers, school and higher education -- Hiding a tainted biography -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 3 Victims and collective trauma: surviving mass repression and living through the Soviet period -- Forced labour through the eyes of men and women -- Gender identity -- Gender stereotypes -- Us and them -- Sexuality -- Gender and social networks -- Those who evaded exile -- Pragmatism as a survival strategy -- Longing, heartbreak and depression -- Collective trauma -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 4 Women's experiences of repression in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1968 -- Women political prisoners in Czechoslovakia -- Forced labour -- Health and sanitation -- Violence and punishment -- Loss of kinship -- Strength, survival and resistance -- Punishment through kinship -- Arrest and rupture -- The quest for information -- Family life -- 'Marriage by letters' -- Political, economic and social repression -- Forced relocation and resettlement -- Well-beingand coping strategies -- De-Stalinisation,1953-1968 -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 5 Women's experiences of 1956: student protesters and partisans in Romania -- A wonderful dream that did not come true -- The nightmare begins -- Through the meanderings of the Romanian Communist system -- Life After prison