Something that would have been impossible before 1989 was Plener's contribution on the Stalin years in Moscow. In 1997 she published "Frauenschicksale unter Stalin" ("The fate of women under Stalin") which was followed nine years later by a "Gedenkband über deutsche Opfer des Großen Terrors in der Sowjetunion" (""Memorial volume on German victims of the Great Terror inside the Soviet Union""). Some of the victims whose fates were set out in this volume were people whose disappearance had, hitherto, been unexplained. The theme of Stalin's purges was one in which Plener had a personal interest. When she was living in Moscow as a very small child with her mother, her paternal grandparents had also been living as political refugees in the city. Her law abiding paternal grandfather was arrested and shot in 1937. Three years later, in 1940, the Soviets returned her grandmother to Nazi Germany following conclusion of the Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression Pact. Other relatives suffered, and Ulla's mother, Marie-Luise Plener herself came under suspicion.