One more year, despite prohibitions and restrictions, the celebration of the “Restitution of the names” of the victims of the Soviet period took place in more than 100 cities in Russia and abroad, meeting in places and times other than usual to evade police controls. Meanwhile, Moscow authorities announced that the Lubyanka Stone is planned to be removed to carry out “renovation works” in the square.
Moscow () – On October 29, the commemoration of the victims of persecution during the Soviet period was celebrated, the ritual of the “Restitution of names” (Vozvraščenie imen) which between 2007 and 2019 took place regularly in all cities of Russia, starting with Moscow, in front of tombstones with lists of names solemnly proclaimed by their descendants or representatives. At the end of October, winter snowfall and frost can already begin in Russia, but from early in the morning long queues formed in front of the memorial sites, which continued well into the afternoon, especially in Moscow, near the Lubyanka Palace, historic headquarters of the KGB.
During the Covid years, these demonstrations were suspended and only organized online, while with the invasion of Ukraine, the bans were compounded by accusations of “discrediting” the Russian police and army, in an increasingly regressive regime. to Stalinist times and systems. To the list of 40,000 shot in the 1930s of terror in the corridors of the Lubyanka, more and more names are added in Moscow of people who ended up under the hammer of Putinist terror, starting with the martyr Aleksej Naval’nyj.
The names of the oppressed resonate “like sparks in the night”, as Radio Svoboda columnist Sergei Medvedev comments, evoking the courts under the orders of the ČeKa, Gpu, Nkvd and Kgb, and today the Fsb, detentions and torture, poisonings and murders. Once again, despite the prohibitions and restrictions, the celebration took place in more than 100 cities in Russia and abroad, gathering in different places and at different times than usual to avoid police controls, such as in Saint Petersburg, where Agents arrived late and still managed to arrest a few participants, threatening to apply charges of “inadmissible actions that create the conditions for violations of the law.”
In Moscow, at the Solovki Stone, erected more than 30 years ago near the Lubyanka, any mass demonstration was banned with the now ridiculous justification of “coronavirus prevention”, and only a few foreign diplomats were allowed to gather. a group of representatives of the dissolved Memorial association. Much more attended were the celebrations in Prague, where thousands of Czechoslovak citizens were remembered on Uezd Street along with persecuted Russians, including political prisoners still in Putin’s camps.
The Russian censorship agency Roskomnadzor has in recent weeks blocked all web pages calling for the “Restitution of names”, and in any case Memorial activists in Russia and abroad spread the initiatives on YouTube. The memory of the victims has also been severely dismantled in Russia by recent laws on “historical truth”, a formula included in Putin’s 2020 Constitution, which removes from the lists of the rehabilitated all those suspected of “rehabilitation of the Nazism”, especially victims of Ukrainian, Polish, Finnish or Japanese nationality. Talking about “Stalinist terror and repression” is increasingly considered an “anti-state formula” that must be avoided and, in general, the memory of the past becomes a space that is increasingly difficult to assume on a social level, being the ” ancient history of Russia” an intangible heritage of the current regime, on a political, cultural and religious level.
After the commemorative days, the Moscow authorities announced that the Lubyanka Stone was planned to be removed to carry out “renovation works” in the square, which sparked numerous protests that were immediately quelled. In Medvedev’s words, “even if they really remove it, for those who still know, remember and feel, the Solovki Stone will always remain firm in their hearts.” Abroad opponents Ilja Jašin, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Julia Naval’naja have announced that a large anti-war demonstration will be held in Berlin on November 17, a march calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin be tried as a war criminal and all political prisoners detained in Russia be released.
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