In addition to all the normal human attributes which are varied among people, there was definitely a darkness left over from her childhood years being spent in a very bad country (USSR was coming to a close as she hit her 20's,) with parents who had spent their entire lives in a very bad country.
I got a sense of what it means for humans to not be free, and she knew both sides. It is dark and it is depressing for the soul. Often we count the murders these regimes committed in the 20the century. But we don't count the billions of lived lives that were dampened and destroyed or ended early due to causes not directly attributable to intentional killing.
I was conservative before I met her. Knowing her only tripled my disdain for lefty ideologies. I never know whether to think lefties are evil or just naive. I have generally settled on the leadership being evil and the lumpen followers being naive to the point of deserving the suffering their ideologies would bring them if we weren't here to fight their stupidity and save them from themselves in an effort to save ourselves and our kids and our freedom.