Andrey Voskresenski, 39, a cameraman of the laboratory of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Executed on march 4, 1939. In the drizzling rain and almost negative temperatures, thousands of muscovites have been reminded of this on Tuesday to the victims of the repression stalinist. In the plaza Liubianka, in front of what was the dark headquarters of the KGB (now the seat of the Federal Security Service), have made queue for hours to participate in what is known as “the recovery of the names”. One after another, have challenged the neglect of singing the identities of the purged, as Voskresenski. Scientists, opponents, workers, doctors, priests, teachers, engineers. A list is endless with the details of more than three million people, collected by the organization Memorial.
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Increase in Russia the nostalgic towards the Soviet Union, the footprint of The Great Terror in Russia Stalin: politics and terror Crushed by the terror of Stalin
The ceremony, which celebrates its thirteenth year, has become a banner for the release of persons detained for political causes in Russia: from human rights activists to participants in the protests this summer in Moscow for the elections open. “Eternal memory to the executed; eternal curse for the tormentors”, he cried out after reading several names the attorney Guenri Reznik.
About 12 million people were victims of the stalinist purges, according to the calculations of the organization Memorial. Imprisoned, deported, sent to labor camps, killed. Many follow without knowing the details. Only between 1937 and 1938, the years of the Great Terror, were represaliadas 1.6 million people; 700,000 in shot. Among them, Valentine Trífonov, military and diplomatic, shot dead convicted for counter-revolutionary activities, recalls his granddaughter, Mary Trífonova, a biologist for 59 years, which account the whole family, suffered the reprisals of stalinism.
“I’m a scientist, I understand that life is a spiral. The lesson learned lasts something, but not much. People forget things and there are that recordárselas”, regrets the woman, with a black cap draft to the ears. His grandfather was buried secretly in a forest of Moscow next to the other shot, account Trífonova, which leads participating in the recovery of the names from the first ceremony. An act that organizes a Memorial in 35 cities of Russia on the eve of the day of Victims of Political Repression.
enlarge photo Hundreds of people line up to participate in the event in memory of victims of political repression, this Tuesday in Moscow. Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP
At his side, dozens of people deposited candles and flowers next to the stone Solovetski, from the archipelago of Solovkí, in the White sea, which housed one of the Gulag-hard soviet times and where sent to socialists, anarchists, members of the Soviet Communist Party, opposition; to anyone who gave samples of being “enemy of the people”. Piotr Mijáilov, professor of Theology in the university, has come with his wife and their two children. Excited, you read the name of his great-grandfather, Ioan Bulgakov, cure orthodox banished, which ended up dying because of the harsh conditions to which it was subjected. “A lot of young people, but even very old, do not understand the magnitude of the horror of what happened. Acts who have never been convicted of truth. The authorities continue to be responsible”, claimed next to their small son, Kolia.
To his back, before the microphones that Memorial has been installed, many calling for the release of people like Konstantin Kótov, arrested this summer in protests against the veto to the opposition candidates in the local elections in Moscow, sentenced to four years in prison. Others, reminiscent of Yuri Dmítriev, chief of the branch of Memorial in the region of Karelia, that has worked for decades to shed light on the crimes of stalinism and today is being investigated in a dark case of child abuse that the organization suspects that it has been manufactured.
