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Yesterday, on the Remembrance Day of the Victims of Political
Repressions, a large number of people gathered by Solovetsky Stone
in Moscow (Ed. Solovki was one of the largest concentration camps
for political prisoners, also described in "The Archipelago
Gulag" by Solzhenitsin ). They came to commemorate millions
of children and adults.
The children of the "enemies of the nation", now in
their final years, stood with flowers and photographs of their
parents. Some old women cried.
Members of the Memorial Association put up by the Solovetsky
Stone stands with photographs of children from orphanages for
the children of "the enemies of the nation", with the
relics of their parents gathered in large piles, documents and
pictures drawn by the prisoners. There was a note on one of the
stands: "Masha! Live in Novosibirsk. Work as you can. Support
the children. I am sure that everything will be resolved. Adolf,
December 20, 1937, 4 a.m." This man was executed with a shot
to the head in 1938.
Chairperson of the Moscow Association of the Victims of Political
Repressions Valeriya Dunayeva said at the meeting, that the Memorial
Association planned create a Memory Lane by the Solovetsky Stone.
Members of the Association planned to lay down a granite plate
there, under which urns with land taken from thecemeteries where
the ashes of the political prisoners lie would be buried.
The meeting lasted no more than 20 minutes, but the ceremony
of laying wreaths and flowers took a long time.
Chairman of the Commission for Rehabilitation of the Victims
of Political Repressions under the President of the RF Alexander
Yakovlev, leader of the Yabloko faction Grigory Yavlinsky, Minister
of the Moscow government Alexander Muzykantsky, deputies of the
Moscow City Duma, representatives of the embassies of Latvia and
Poland and representatives of municipal authorities were the first
to lay wreaths.
See also:
The victims
of political repressions commemorated in Moscow, Press Release,
October 29, 2001.
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