Gerard McBurney explores the lives of the Soviet people under Stalin's reign of terror.

Historians estimate that the years 1936-50 saw the deaths of between eight and twenty million people through unending purges, show trials, labour camps and famines.

The programme explores the stories of gifted artists under a regime that allowed them no artistic freedom, such as poet Anna Akhmatova, whose son was arrested, tortured and sentenced to 14 years in a labour camp.