As the military forces of a modern Russian dictator menacingly encircle , they stir chilling memories from the past of his predecessors such as Joseph Stalin in this scruffy little town of 12,000 people that sits near a new border with Crimea. For it is filled with exiled families who know from bitter experience the brutal reality of Kremlin rule after suffering repeated waves of ethnic cleansing over the past century – first under the Soviet Communists, then recently under .Typical is a taxi driver called Ildar. His grandmother was deported to the Urals almost a century ago, then his father put in a cattle wagon by Stalin's goons and sent to central Asia on a 20-day rail journey that only one in five people survived.
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