Sketch by Michail Distergeft. A woman comforting a child, as they stand in line waiting hoping for news of the fate of their family member who has been arrested. Such lines formed outside every prison during the years of mass terror, as it was the only hope for family members to learn of the fate of the arrested. The lines are memorialized in Anna Akhmatova's famous poem "Requiem." The sketch is from Distergeft's series "Those Years".

Sketch by Michail Distergeft. Families who sought information on the fate of family members who had been executed were often greeted with the lie that their loved one had been sentenced to a forced labor camp "without the right of correspondence." Consequently, the phrase become a synonym for execution in prisoner language. In the sketch, a guard with a gun stands looking down at a prisoner who has been shot in the head.