Portuguese Ambassador to Russia Madalena Fischer joined other European diplomats and human rights defenders in a tribute to the victims of the Soviet Union’s political repression.
The day of tribute to the victims of political repression in Russia was marked on Monday with actions in this country, where legal prosecutions of activists have increased, but also abroad.
In Russia, arrested Russian opponents conducted a day of hunger strike to mark this date.
European diplomats “honored the memory of the victims of the Soviet Union’s political repression on Sunday by laying flowers next to the Solovetsky Stone,” according to a post from the Portuguese embassy in Russia on social media.
29/10, Moscow – The Ambassador, Madalena Fischer, and ambassadors of the countries paid tribute to the memory of the victims of the Soviet Union’s political repression, laying flowers next to the ‘Solovetsky Stone’ monument.#Humanrights #Memorial #ReturnofNames https://t.co/sKvwe2vSyR pic.twitter.com/IaT7qGWyjH
– Portugal in Russia | Portugal in Russia (@PTEMbassyMoscow) October 30, 2023
The place where the European diplomats will be honored is located on Lubyanka Square, in the heart of Moscow, opposite the former headquarters of the Soviet KGB and currently the FSB, Russia’s security services.
The stone, brought from a gulag [campo de concentração para prisioneiros políticos] Located on an archipelago in the White Sea, it was placed there in October 1990 to commemorate the suffering suffered by opponents of the Stalinist regime.
According to Russian media, citizens who demonstrated against the war in Ukraine were also present at the ceremony.
On Sunday, the names of people executed between 1936 and 1938 were read out, a tribute organized every year by the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Memorial, co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize and which the Russian justice department ordered. to be disbanded in late 2021, a few weeks before the attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, reports AFP.
The tribute took place next to a monument to the victims of Soviet repression, located opposite the Lubyanka, but Memorial announced, however, that authorities had banned the demonstration and that the place was surrounded by metal fences and had a strong police presence.
Since it was forbidden to hold the ceremony in front of the Lubyanka, the NGO Memorial organized the reading of names in symbolic places in the capital, such as former houses of victims of repression, cemeteries and in front of a prison.
Oleg Orlov and Svetlana Gannuskina, directors of the Memorial Association, which was banned by Russian judicial authorities in 2021, told the Russian press that it was “absurd and idiocy to ban mass actions there.” Orlov, a veteran politician, has already been fined for criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two countries that have long considered each other “blood brothers.”
According to the NGO Memorial, also a victim of repression, the country currently has at least 634 political prisoners.
The event also took place in other Russian cities, such as Volgograd, the former Stalingrad (South) and Novosibirsk, in Siberia, as well as abroad.
Natalia Burikina, a resident of the outskirts of the Russian capital, went to the place in memory of relatives.
“My friends and I did our best to be here on this day full of tragic memories and lay flowers on the Solovetsky Stone. If we do not have the strength, we ask our children and grandchildren to do so,” said the older woman, a retired nurse, quoted by the Russian press.
“My father was brought here, to the KGB headquarters, and my mother and three daughters, including myself, were deported to Kazakhstan, accused of being an enemy of the country. A thirteen-year-old sister of mine died for lack of medical attention, which often happened to so-called enemies of the country. That’s why I chose to become a nurse,” Burikina recalls.
The tribute comes at a time when some sectors of Russian society are fighting to restore the image of Soviet dictator Stalin. According to data collected by the press, there are currently about 110 memorials to Stalin throughout Russia, 95 of which appeared during President Putin’s time, a trend that appears to have increased since the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Furthermore, theAuthorities have whitewashed the historic role of Stalin – who led the USSR from 1922 until his death in 1953 – in new history textbooks for the last two years of secondary school.
Stalin is a figure who stirs up minds and extreme views and many, in Russia and beyond, condemn him as one of history’s worst criminals; others recall the fundamental role he played in the fight against Nazism and Adolf Hitler’s forces in World War II, making him a symbol of Russian power.
Source: DN
