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Article: Bitter fruits: ... sexual harassment alive and flourishing among the ice-blocks of Vorkuta.
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- May 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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NATASHA was celebrating, but modestly. No expensive bottles of champanski, just some cranberry juice distilled from the bitter-tasting fruit of the short polar summer.
`I just can't believe I have a job!' she said, pulling a heavy sweater over her lacy blouse as a gust of icy air blew into the restaurant. `I almost gave up caring.'
Twenty-four years old and with the fair prettiness of a nineteenth-century icon, Natasha had come to Vorkuta to make her fortune. Since the 1960s, the Stalinist prison colony that dealt death to so many luckless souls had paid dividends to those willing to trade comfort for higher-than-average earnings.
`I had an ...