Press Release, August 28, 2013

Candidate for Moscow Mayor Sergei Mitrokhin and YABLOKO’s activists conducted one-person pickets near the house where Stalin’s victims were shot on August 28. They came out for the maintenance of the historic building and demanded to turn it into a memorial museum devoted to the victims of political reprisals.

Alexander Glushenko showing the letter from the Department of Cultural Heritage of Moscow

The information that the house where Stalin’s victims were shot maybe turned into a museum and the building itself will become one of the main sights of Moscow appeared in the media the day before the pickets. Echo Moskvi radio station quoted Head of Moscow’s Cultural Heritage Department Alexander Kibovsky who said that “it’s too early to talk about what will appear in the building after its restoration is finished”. One of the supporters of the idea to open a memorial museum in the house which was a shooting site is a scientist Alexander Glushenko. He announced that he had received a letter from the Department of Cultural Heritage of Moscow. The letter said that “there will be a large memorial complex in the building devoted to the history of Gulag. A weak earlier the media said that the temporary acting Mayor Sergei Sobyanin proposed to open a café in the historic building.

YABLOKO’s activists conducted the pickets despite the discrepant information. “We are glad that our struggle made the Department of Cultural Heritage of Moscow take such a decision. But it’s not enough, we need Moscow Government’s official regulation that the house will me maintained and all the projects connected with turning it into a cafe or a shopping centre will be cancelled.That’s why we’ll continue to picket”, said the candidate for Moscow Mayor Sergei Mitrokhin.

A journalist asked YABLOKO leader why he was so concerned with that issue and whether it was connected with the election campaign. Sergei Mitrokhin answered that YABLOKO had been concerned with that problem for a long time and it was important for YABLOKO’s members.

YABLOKO member Alexei Nesterenko agreed with Sergei Mitrokhin. He has been picketing the house where Stalin’s victims were shot since April 28, 2011. His father was shot in that house, therefore it’s important for Nesterenko to turn the place into a memorial museum. “Building something else on the bones of 30 thousand shot people is incredible. I doubted whether I will support any mayoral candidate at the elections, but after I found out that Sergei Mitrokhin is the only candidate who is concerned with this situation, I decided to support him”, said the scientist.

Galina Mikhaleva

“We hope that the house will be turned into a museum, but we’ll continue our struggle so that this place reminded the people of the innocent victims of political reprisals that were killed”, said First Deputy Chair of the Moscow branch of YABLOKO.

The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union was situated in this house in the years of Great Terror. “The enemies of the people” were adjudged at the place, among them: writers Isaak Babel, Boris Pilnyak, film director Vsevolod Meyerhold, marshals Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Alexander Yegorov, members of Political Bureau Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenyev and the others.

Alexei Nesterenko

The YABLOKO party collects signatures for turning the house into a museum. 1663 people already put their signatures.