AFAIU, persecution of fundamentalist religious sects has never stopped in Russia; it preceded and succeeded the USSR. It might not often have the same imprimatur of the state as more notorious persecutions, but there's plenty of evidence that it has occurred up until this day. For example, this year there's been a crackdown on Jehovah's Witnesses, though I don't know if it's been nearly as severe as previous crackdowns. I don't care to debate whether these sects deserve to be let alone. My point is merely that the Russian police state can be exceptionally harsh. You can still find people and groups systematically traumatized by it; people and groups whose real experiences expose the ridiculousness of American conservative equivocations regarding persecution. The closest equivocation one could maybe reasonably make is to how the American state treats its black populations, but it'd still be a tenuous comparison. And even that disregards that the Soviet gulags were on another level entirely.

I can't know for sure whether my old co-worker was telling the truth. But there was plenty of circumstantial evidence that aligned well with the story. And while I don't know the precise timeline, it's not necessarily relevant.