Press Release, 6.08.2025

On the International Day of Remembrance for Victims of the Great Terror on 5 August, a Yabloko party delegation visited the Sandarmokh site in Karelia – the place of execution and burial of more than 6,000 people in 1937-1938. The memorial event was attended by Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov, Karelia Legislative Assembly deputy Emilia Slabunova, Yabloko Deputy Chairman Vladimir Dorokhov, Yabloko Federal Political Committee member Ivan Bolshakov, head of the Yabloko apparatus Yevgenia Vlasova, Moscow Yabloko Deputy Chairman Kirill Goncharov, Petrozavodsk Council deputy Dmitry Rybakov and other party members.

Participants in the Sandarmokh event laid flowers at the memorial and read out the names of those who were repressed.

Photo: Yabloko delegation at Sandarmokh: Emilia Slabunova, Kirill Goncharov, Nikolai Rybakov, Ivan Bolshakov, and  Vladimir Dorokhov

Yabloko party Chairman Nikolai Rybakov drew attention to the phrase carved on the memorial: “People, do not kill each other!”

Photo: Yabloko delegation at Sandarmokh: Emilia Slabunova,  Nikolai Rybakov, and  Dmitry Rybakov 

“I believe that today’s gathering is a step towards ensuring that the words at the entrance to Sandarmokh cease to be a dream and become reality. We must stop killing each other – in war, in prisons, and in political terror,” Nikolai Rybakov said.

It should be noted that, as last year, the participants of the event in memory of the victims of political repression had to face provocations from several dozen people with covered faces and chevrons from a nationalist organisation. Unidentified people in an organised manner tried stood in the way of all who had come to Sandarmokh.

Photo: Unidentified individuals among visitors to the Sandarmokh site

On this matter, Emilia Slabunova noted that the state was failing in its function of protecting the monument of regional significance – such status had been granted to the Sandarmokh site:

“This is one of the most tragic places in our country. Here lie representatives of more than 60 peoples and nationalities. These are people who died without court decisions, by the arbitrariness of the people who made such decisions. No one is permitted to mock the memory of people of all nationalities who died tragically here. It is precisely our memory, in addition to the official state protection charter, that is the best, the strongest protection charter for years and centuries of this tragic place. Thanks to such memory, we will do everything to ensure that such tragic events are not repeated in our history.”

Historian and head of the Returning of Names centre Anatoly Razumov spoke about the terrible events of Stalin’s terror in 1937-1938: fateful decisions by the authorities for Soviet citizens and the feelings and emotions of people who directly or indirectly encountered repression.

Photo: Yabloko delegation at Levashovo Cemetery by St.Petersburg

Another party delegation – from St.Petersburg and Veliky Novgorod – remembered victims of the Great Terror at Levashovo Memorial Cemetery in the outskrits of St.Petersburg. Levashovo is the burial place of about 45,000 people who were shot or died in detention during the years of Stalin’s terror. The memorial events were attended by Yabloko Deputy Chairpersons Anna Cherepanova and Boris Vishnevsky, St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly deputy Alexander Shishlov, St.Petersburg party branch Chair Olga Tsepilova, and Novgorod and St.Petersburg Yabloko members.

Boris Vishnevsky noted that “memory of repression must be preserved: this is needed not for the dead, but for those who live”.

Yabloko delegation at Levashovo Cemetery: Boris Vishnevsky

“It is necessary to understand that state decisions can be criminal, and those whom it persecuted can be innocent. It is precisely this memory they want to erase, destroying memorials, cemeteries, and cancelling rehabilitation decisions,” the Yabloko Deputy Chair said.

Yabloko delegation at Levashovo Cemetery: Alexander Shishlov

Anna Cherepanova stated that the time of political terror and repression is returning.

“It is very frightening to say this. Yabloko’s mission is to correct this situation by political methods – to give an assessment of Stalin’s terror.”