Activists struggle to commemorate victims of Soviet repression
Send a link to a friend
[November 02, 2023]
MOSCOW (Reuters) - If history is written by the victors,
then a small group of Russian activists are doing their best to make
sure the battle to remember the millions of victims of Soviet repression
is not lost - one small steel plaque at a time.
President Vladimir Putin has sidelined those who have done most to
research the crimes of seven decades of communism, perhaps loath to
invite comparison with his own suppression of dissent, or blur the
patriotism needed to drive his war in Ukraine.
The leading chronicler, Memorial International, was banned almost two
years ago after more than three decades of painstaking work.
But the Last Address project has over several years managed to put up
1,200 plaques on buildings across Russia, each memorialising one victim
at their last home before they were executed or exiled, or left to rot
in a prison colony.
Each steel rectangle, 19 cm by 11, has a square hole, and is engraved
with only the person's name and profession and their dates of arrest,
internment or execution, and formal rehabilitation.
"Every plaque has been requested by someone. We don't invent names ...
The Last Address memorial project is based on public initiative," said
Mikhail Sheynker, 75, a coordinator in Moscow.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Nov/02/images/ads/current/graue_lda_PPP_2023.png)
Sometimes local people resent the plaques, at odds with the prevailing
official patriotism, or say they are turning the city into a cemetery.
"People who talk about cemeteries forget that our heroes don't have
their own grave," Sheynker counters. "They're all buried in mass
graves."
MEMORIAL PLAQUES REMOVED, AND SOMETIMES REPLACED
Yevgeniya Kulakova, Last Address coordinator in St Petersburg, said 434
plaques had been installed there since 2015, always with the building
owner's permission.
At least 45 have been secretly removed. But some, like a plaque on
Vasilievsky Island, have also secretly returned.
"It hung there for a day, then someone took it down, no one knows who. A
week later this replica appeared. Another week later, someone put the
original removed plaque next to it," Kulakova said.
[to top of second column]
|
![](../images/110223PIX/news_z25.jpg)
A view shows pictures of Alexey Peremytov, a victim of Soviet-era
political repression, in Moscow, Russia October 27, 2023.
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Nov/02/images/ads/current/chicagostreet_quarter_FFARM_2023.png)
"Who took down the sign? Who made the duplicate? We don't know any
of that. But it means that the project is alive. That is, there are
people who want to protect them (the plaques), even though there are
people who are against them."
Mikhail Polenov, whose grandfather has a plaque, feels the latter
are gaining ground.
"Those people who don't need the memory, they're in fashion now," he
said.
His maternal grandfather, career soldier Alexei Peremytov, was shot
on July 28, 1937, one of thousands accused of espionage and
conspiracy at the height of Joseph Stalin's purges, the "Great
Terror".
Polenov has researched the case since 1989, and is grateful to Last
Address.
Attending another unveiling last year, he found they were also
replacing his grandfather's plaque, which had been removed without
his knowledge.
"They hadn't told me anything because they felt sorry for me.
Because when I found out, I nearly collapsed."
Artist Vladimir Ovchinnikov, 85, had hoped to see a Museum of
Political Repression adorned with dozens of his portraits of victims
open on Oct. 29, the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political
Repression, in Borovsk, 115 km southwest of Moscow. But local
authorities cancelled the event.
It was not the first time Ovchinnikov, whose grandfather was shot by
Lenin's Bolsheviks in 1919 and whose father was arrested during
Stalin's purges, had been thwarted in this way.
"Why do we stay silent? Why do we hide things?" he said. "Instead of
learning lessons, we're creating a country of lessons not learned."
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by Angus
MacSwan)
[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Nov/02/images/ads/current/humanesociety_sda022411.png) |