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Ratushinskaya, one of the most important poetic voices to emerge from the last years of the USSR, was only twenty-eight when she was sentenced to seven years of hard labor and five of internal exile, accused of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Her crime: writing poetry. She was detained for three years in a "strict regime" labor camp, where she suffered horrendous conditions. But her poems were smuggled out of the camp and published in 1986 in No, I'm Not Afraid, the book that instigated the successful international campaign for her release. This presents fifty-one previously untranslated poems written over the past twenty years. More than twenty of the poems are previously unpublished works written in the labor camp. Despite her ordeal, her poetry remains consistent in its concerns and subject matter: personal faith and the courageous assertion of the human spirit.