Tatiana Menaker

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is proud to highlight Florida’s Portraits in Patriotism oral history project on communism. VOC partnered with Florida’s Department of Education and the University of South Florida to produce this witness project featuring Tatiana Menaker.

Born in 1949, under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, Tatiana Menaker grew up in communist Soviet Union (now the Russian Federation), witnessing first-hand the inequalities that occurred under Stalin’s rule. “Refuseniks,” Tatiana and her family applied for permission to emigrate and became “Refuseniks” when they were denied permission to emigrate. Eventually, Tatiana engineered a plan that would allow her and her family to escape the Soviet Union.