Child Arrested for Poem

"We only wish they'd bomb the school,
We're awfully tired of studies."

Those two lines got an 8th-grader, Nina Peregud, arrested and thrown into prison. The horrible sacrilege of these lines, in a schoolgirl's handwriting, demonstrated a clear and present danger of terrorist attack.

As a result of having composed those lines, her bedroom was searched. Arresting officers discovered her 6th grade diaries and immediately confiscated them.

And it was a good thing they did. Within those diaries, the arresting officers found a photograph of a church that had been destroyed. This was taken as proof of her dangerous Christian fundamentalist leanings and used as evidence against her. As she was being processed, officers discovered that she wore a crucifix around her neck. Understandably, they demanded she remove it. She refused - her mother had given to her on the morning of the arrest. For this offense, the courts separated her from her parents and placed her into foster care, specifically, into an orphanage, to assure her own safety and the safety of others.

Now, can you guess where it happened?

Sweden?
Finland?
Germany?
Massachusetts?
California?
Chicago?

All very good guesses.
Indeed, anyone today would believe me if I were to name any of those locations.

But, the actual location was Stalinist Russia during World War II.
The account is taken from the Gulag Archipelago, Volume II, p. 465-466.

Good thing the West, especially America, are countries of freedom under the rule of law, eh?