Press Release, 5.08.2024

Photo: Anatoly Razumov, head of the Centre for Returned Names at the Russian National Library, and Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov

A delegation of the Yabloko party, led by party leader Nikolai Rybakov and head of the party faction in the Legislative Assembly of Karelia Emilia Slabunova, visited the Sandarmokh – the site of mass executions during the Great Terror of 1937-1938 in the Joseph Stalin’s period.

Today, on the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Great Terror, Yabloko members from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Veliky Novgorod, Petrozavodsk and Cheboksary arrived in the Medvezhyegorsk District of Karelia.

Yabloko members laid flowers at the memorial “People, do not kill each other”, erected in the place of mass burial by Yuri Dmitriev, head of Karelian Memorial and now political prisoner, read out the names of those shot in Sandarmokh and honoured the memory of twenty-one victims of repression, whose remains were exhumed by the Russian Military Historical Society in 2019 and buried in the Medvezhegorsk cemetery 20 km from Sandarmokh.

Photo: The memorial “People, do not kill each other” in Sandarmokh

Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko party:

— We regularly come to Sandarmokh – one of thousands of places of memory of victims of state terror. Because this is not only a tribute to the memory of the innocent victims. This is a memory of the time when a machine of denunciations, all-consuming sticky fear, a machine for suppressing human dignity was created in our country. The current situation in our society is a long-term result of the work of these “machines”.

We have yet to realise and overcome the legacy of the Great Terror, and through the awareness of this terrible past, through repentance – to come to the future, where there is nothing higher than a person, his/her life and dignity. And, certainly, our trip is in support of the work that is being done to preserve the memory of Sandarmokh. Among them is Yuri Dmitriev, who is currently in prison.

Emilia Slabunova, member of the Federal Political Committee of Yabloko and deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia:

– August 5 and October 30 are very important days for Yabloko. We always visit the places where victims of political repression were shot, either in Sandarmokh, or in Krasny Bor, or at the Zaretskoye Cemetery. We always read out loud the names. This is how historical memory is preserved and supported.

We put a lot of effort into countering attempts to reformat history, in particular Sandarmokh. We stand guard over the preservation of the memory of the place where almost 7,000 people found their final refuge. This is one of the most tragic places not only in Karelia, but in our entire country.

Dozens of masked people, people in Cossack uniforms and sweatshirts with the inscription “The Young Guard” were on the memorial grounds throughout the day before the arrival of the Yabloko delegation. The provocateurs played military songs and launched a drone into the sky, thereby trying to prevent the names of the victims of repression from being read out. A group of provocateurs blocked the passage to individual memorial signs. Offensive posters about Emilia Slabunova were hung on the trees.

These unidentified masked people quickly left Sandarmokh in an organised manner after the Yabloko delegation and followed the Yabloko’s bus to the local history museum in Medvezhyegorsk. However, the provocateurs did not want to follow the Yabloko members to the museum.

More photos are here