Russian Democratic Party YABLOKOYabloko paid tribute to the memory of victims of political reprisals.

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Yabloko paid tribute to the memory of victims of political reprisals.

Leaders and activists of Yabloko took part in the Returning of the Names action

Press Release, 30.10.2019

On 29 October, on the eve of the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Reprisals, Yabloko leaders and activists took part in the action Returning of the Names organised by the Memorial human rights society.

Thousands of people come to the Solovetsky stone in Lubyanka Square – the country’s oldest monument to victims of state repression – to read out loud the names of those who were shot during Stalin’s Great Terror. Participants in the action have been receiving sheets with the name of only one repressed person, due to the large number of participants of the action in the recent years: there is name and surname, age, profession and date of execution. Many of the participants also read out loud the names of their repressed relatives, and demanded freedom for Yury Dmitriev, head of the Karelian branch of the Memorial human rights centre and also urged to release the prisoners of the so-called the “Moscow riots case”.

Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko founder and Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Party, took part in the action.

Photo: Grigory Yavlinsky

Yabloko Chair Emilia Slabunova noted that “the participants came, among other things, to say a decisive “no” to the present political repressions conducted by today’s successors of the Stalinist policies.

“We demand to release all political prisoners in Russia, give a state legal assessment to Stalinism, release Yury Dmitriev, stop mocking [the memory of Stalin’s victims in the largest burial place] in Sandarmokh [in Karelia] and open all the archives relating to Stalinist terror. We demand that all historical and local history museums mandatory make expositions reflecting the national tragedy of Russia!” Slabunova said.

Photo: Emilia Slabunova

Maxim Kruglov, head of the Yabloko faction in the Moscow City Duma, noted that a large number of people who came to the action were saying that “the vector that there were no repressions, no political prisoners is stronger that the vector of those who carry flowers to the grave of Stalin and support all the horror that the country experienced”.