Press Release, 1.11.2022

Photo: Chelyabinsk

Past week, regional branches of Yabloko over Russia held actions in memory of victims of political repressions and in support of the present political prisoners. Yabloko party members and supporters organised actions of writing letters to political prisoners, laid flowers at memorial complexes, held lectures on the history of political repressions and excursions to memorable places, as well as participated in commemorative rallies and readings of the names of the repressed.

More than 2,000 names of those killed during the years of repressions of 1930s were voiced at the marathon “People, Do Not Kill Each Other” organised by the Yabloko party. For eight hours, more than 200 people from 55 regional branches of the party read out loud the names of the victims of terror in their regions, as well as honoured the memory of their ancestors who had been killed or recognised as gone missing.

Yabloko organised actions of writing letters to political prisoners, those who are unjustly deprived of their freedom today and need support, – in Novgorod, Vladivostok, Voronezh, Vsevolozhsk, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Kirov, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-Don, Saratov, Smolensk, Cheboksary, Chelyabinsk and Yaroslavl.  In St. Petersburg, the action was combined with a meeting with Mikhail Novitsky, musician, actor and civil activist. Hundreds of letters and postcards prepared by Yabloko members and activists are sent from the regional branches of Yabloko to the recipients.

Photo: St.Petersburg

In Chelyabinsk, Yabloko organised an excursion, the participants of which walked the last road of the repressed: from the place where the execution room was (the courtyard of the buildings of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) to the memorial cemetery Zolotaya Gora (the Golden Rock, former mines of a goldfield), visiting, along the way, the village of Shershni, where the remains of the victims of the repressions of the 1930s had been discovered.

Photo: Tula

The Tula regional branch of Yabloko conducted an excursion for those who first came to the Tesnitsky shooting ground in Tula.

In Saratov, Yabloko organised a lecture “Political Repressions of the 20th century in the Saratov Region”, which was attended by about 50 people.

Photo: Voronezh

The Voronezh branch of Yabloko held a volunteer clean-up day in Dubovka – one of the burial places of the victims of the Great Terror of 1930s in Voronezh and the Voronezh region. Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov and Kirill Goncharov, a member of the Federal Bureau of Yabloko, took part in the action within the framework of their visit to the region.

Photo: Moscow

In Moscow, Nikolai Rybakov and Grigory Yavlinsky laid flowers at the Solovetsky stone, a monument to victims of political repression in the centre of Moscow in Lubyanka square.

Photo: Moscow

More photos at https://www.yabloko.ru/cat-news/2022/11/01