According to Stephen F. Cohen, half of Russia looks back to Josef Stalin as a great leader and the other half as a genocidal murderer. This disconnect, and a longing for a stronger, secure state, can be seen in public debate over a memorial to the victims of the gulags, where more people died than in Hitler's death camps.
Cohen tells the story of the victims and their struggle to reenter society in his new book, The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin. Born of more than 30 years of research and personal experience, the book is a memoir as well as a history, and Cohen joins Laura in studio to discuss it, and the ongoing struggle to reconcile that period in Russian history.
