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This is why both those nostalgic for the Soviet Union and the czarist monarchy in Russia can look at the Confederate battle flag and feel a weird sense of kinship.

“We know that the czarist regimes, for instance, kept tabs on Russian dissidents in Paris.”

Speaking Russian, they said they were an uncle and nephew researching censorship in czarist Russia so the nephew could apply for a scholarship to the United States.

The prison dates from the czarist era and has been a terrifying symbol of repression since Soviet times.

Some Jewish families can trace their roots here back more than 350 years, having fled pogroms in czarist Russia and the aftermath of the Catholic Inquisition in Spain and Portugal.