Press Release, 13.06.2023

Photo: Klimentovsky pereulok 9/1. Next to this door was the Last Address sign with the name of  Zinaida Nikolayevna Maevskaya (shot on 29 December, 1937, and fully acquitted in 1989)

It is reported that vandals have recently removed at least eight plaques installed on the houses where the victims of Stalin’s regime had lived. Vladimir Ryzhkov, an MP of the Moscow City Duma from Yabloko, sent an appeal to Oleg Baranov, the head of the Moscow police, demanding to conduct an investigation and bring the perpetrators to administrative responsibility.

“This [the destruction of the plaques] is unlawful: the installation of all plaques was agreed with the owners and tenants of residential premises, they are their property. This is a purely legal aspect. There is also a moral one: it is an attempt to destroy memory and history. The plates must be returned to their places,” Vladimir Ryzhkov, a deputy from Yabloko, wrote about the incident.

Ryazhkov also notes that there are video surveillance cameras on the houses in the city centre, from which the commemorative plaques were torn off, and it will be possible to quickly identify the perpetrators.

The Last Address is a civil project to perpetuate the memory of the victims of political repression during the years of Soviet power. Activists put are steel plates, the size of a postcard, containing information about victims, on the facades of houses, the addresses of which became the last lifetime addresses of the victims of Soviet terror.

It should be noted that the initiative of Vladimir Ryzhkov caused displeasure among the communist deputies of the Moscow City Duma. After communists denying all the crimes of the Soviet regime learned about Ryzhkov’s appeal they began to publicly accuse Ryzhkov of his allegedly “unsatisfactory” work.

VLADIMIR RYZHKOV

is a Member of the Moscow City Duma of the 7th convocation (the Yabloko faction).

Chairman of the public movement The Choice of Russia.

Candidate of Historical Sciences