Oh, I don't know. How many euphemisms can you think of for "shot while trying to escape"? In that area human creativity definitely flowered.
Plus there's Anna Akhmatova's tremendously powerful "Requiem"...
No, not under the vault of another sky, not under the
shelter of other wings. I was with my people then, there
where my people were doomed to be.
Instead of a Forward
During the terrible years of Yezhov, I spent seventeen
months standing outside the prison in Leningrad,
waiting for news. One day someone recognized me.
Then a woman with lips blue from the cold, who
was standing behind me, and of course had never
heard of my name, came out of the numbness which
affected us all. She whispered in my ear (for we all
spoke in whispers there):
"Can you describe this?"
I said, "I can."
Then something resembling a smile slipped over
what had once been her face.
Brad DeLong