Press Release, 15.06.2023

Photo: The wall of the Kresty (Crosses) prison where a memorial plaque to Anna Akhmatova hung / Photo by Misha Burlatsky

Boris Vishnevsky, MP of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and Deputy Chairman of Yabloko, appealed to the Governor Alexander Beglov and the general director of DOM.RF Vitaly Mutko asking them to take urgent measures so that to return the memorial plaque to renowned poet Anna Akhmatova to walls of the former Kresty prison.

The memorial plaque hung on the wall of the main entrance to the Kresty prison. It depicted a portrait of Anna Akhmatova and the lines from her poem “Requiem”. In the 1930s, victims of Stalin’s repressions accused in propaganda or calls to overthrow, undermine or weaken the Soviet regime served their sentences in Kresty. In 1930s Anna Akhmatova spent months in queues along with other women waiting for news of their loved ones. Her son Lev Gumilyov (who later became a famous historian) was imprisoned in Kresty.

In May 2023, the complex of buildings of the former Kresty pre-trial detention centre was transferred to the DOM.RF company.

“This is a wake-up call: it is not the first time when, against the backdrop of new political repressions, they are trying to erase the memory of the former ones,” Vishnevsky writes.

Earlier, Vladimir Ryzhkov, a deputy of the Moscow City Duma from Yabloko, sent an appeal to the of the Moscow police, demanding to conduct an investigation and bring to administrative responsibility the vandals who tore off the memorial plaques from the houses of the Last Address, a civil project to perpetuate the memory of victims of political repression in the years of Soviet power.

BORIS VISHNEVSKY

is Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko Party,

member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and Bureau,

and an MP of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg