Moscow residents, including well-known dissidents, take part in the “Restoration of Names” ceremony, an annual commemoration of Soviet-era repressions.
Russians commemorated the victims of Stalinist terror on Sunday, more than 20 months after the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, accompanied at home by a strong crackdown on dissent.
The Kremlin has doubled down on its version of history with troops fighting in Ukraine, which often glosses over Stalinist crimes, with public commemoration of Soviet-era repression seen as unpatriotic.
Many Russians took part in the “Return of the Names” event organized by the Nobel Memorial Prize, a rights and historical memory group, which closed weeks before Moscow launched its 2022 military campaign.
Each year, the event sees people take turns reading the names of those executed during Stalin’s Terror between 1936 and 1938.
In Moscow, it is traditionally held at the memorial to the victims of the Solovetsky Stone, opposite the KGB’s Lubyanka headquarters, now occupied by its modern successor, the FSB.
But Memorial said before the event that authorities banned it from holding the commemoration in the central Lubyanka Square.
Journalists said the site was surrounded by metal barriers, with police gathered there.
Oleg Orlov, Memorial’s co-president recently fined for denouncing the Ukrainian campaign, nevertheless approached the stone to pay his respects.
Several Western ambassadors, including the American envoy, laid flowers.
Forbidden to gather at the Lubyanka, Memorial instead organized the reading of names in the symbolic places linked to dissidents around the Russian capital.
This year’s event comes as Memorial says there are a growing number of political prisoners in Russia.
Thousands of Russians have been arrested, jailed or fined for opposing the conflict in Ukraine.
Image: Getty Images
Image:Getty Images
