Press release, 29.10.2017

Yabloko leaders and activists participated in an annual action commemorating victims of political reprisals. Thousands of people come to the Solovetsky Stone at Lubyanka Square to read aloud the names of the people who were executed during the Great Terror. This year so many people came that each person received a sheet of paper containing information about only one executed person – his or her family name,  first name, patronymic, age, profession and obit. However, many of those who came  were commemorating their relatives – those who died of were sent to Gulag.

A lot of people spoke in support of today’s political prisoners. For instance, the name of Yuri Dmitriyev, head of the Karelian branch of the Memorial human rights group, was mentioned many times.

“On behalf of thousands of people I express solidarity with Yuri Dmitriyev, who is now kept in a pretrial detention centre. He did so much to conduct this action, and it is not a confidence that as a result of a provocation he was taken to custody. Let’s support him, Yabloko’s presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky said.

Sergei Mitrokhin, Moscow Yabloko Chair

Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova also expressed solidarity with Yuri Dmitriyev. “It is a shock that a person who discovered a mass grave site of political reprisals victims 20 years ago was arrested himself. Free Yuri Dmitriyev! Shame on the executors of the past an the present,” she said.

Emila Slabunova reminded that over 700,000 people had fallen victims of Stalin’s reprisal in 1937-1938. The fact that thousands of people come to the Solovetsky Stone and other memorials across the country to commemorate the victims of political reprisals shows that our society is ready to become a wall in the way of the state terror aimed at the citizens.

Emilia Slabunova, Yabloko Chair

The state terror destroyed the best people, is was the most terrible and blood terror, Yavlinsky said. The politician explained that one could not improve today’s situation without analysing and assesing the mistakes of the past. “We need to realise the following thing: the Bolshevik system, which lead our country to the major tragedy in our history, is not gone. The system remains today’s reality, though it is of a new, hybrid and softened character.”

Please find below Grigory Yavlinsky’s article on the Stalin’s legacy in today’s Russia: The Great Terror and Modern Bolshevism

Grigory Yavlinsky, a presidential candidate