XX a. deportations to prisons or forced labour camps scattered throughout the Soviet Union were among the most severe injuries suffered by many people in Russia and other Eastern and Central European countries. The punishments were inhumane. Many prisoners were taken away without charge. Attempts were made to enslave the character, to break the will by turning people into obedient and thoughtless slaves. The results were staggering. Millions of people have died. Survivors remained marked by illness, disability, isolation, exclusion, or mental disorder.
Writing about exile is not just an attempt to overcome this trauma but a duty to the victims. Some of the many testimonies of Soviet prisons and labour camps have become classics inscribed in the most important twentieth century. The list of books - Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" and Varlam Shalamov's "Kolya Stories". The Poles also developed a peculiar relationship with this experience, the most important examples being Gustaw Herling-Grudziński's „Inny świat“ (Other World) and Józef Czapski's „Na nieludzkiej ziemi“ (Inhuman Land). These books provide a better understanding of Polish history and society and also see deportations as a tool of conquest and nationalization politics.
Dalia Grinkevičiūtė was exiled to Altai and later to Trofimovskaya in Yakutia. 1949 from there, she fled to Lithuania with hir mother. When she returned, she wrote the first manuscript of her memories, which she put in a jar and buried in the ground.
Other Lithuanian women writers who have written about similar topics are Rūta Šepetys and Birutė Pūkelevičiūtė.