Press release, 31.10.2018

On 30 October, the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Reprisals, activists of the St. Petersburg branch of the Yabloko party took part in the Returning the Names memorial action to pay tribute to the victims of Joseph Stalin’s reprisals.

The participants of the action, one after another, read out the names of people executed in the Soviet Union. The totalitarian state not simply killed people – it tried to erase their names, do away with the memory of them.

The total number of those who were arrested on political grounds over the period of 1918-1953 makes at least 4,750,000 people. The repressions reached their peak in 1937-1938 when over 1,700,000 people were arrested – over 670,000 of them were executed in less than 16 months. Returning the Names action was founded to preserve the memory of the victims of political reprisals. St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko takes part in the memorial ceremony every year.

Yabloko took part in the Returning the Names memorial action across Russia. Grigory Yavlinsky, Chair of Yabloko Federal Political Committee, said that Russia’s current political system could easily turn towards the developments of the 1930s. “The current political system – taking its logic, methods and approaches into account – is the direct heir of the regime of terror and is a step away from becoming a political mechanism of terror itself.”

According to Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova, “if society preserves memories of the developments of the 1920-1930s, a similar scenario will be prevented”. She also said that the government must make a legal and political estimate of Stalin’s crimes.