Victims remembered

On the official Day in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, up to fifty people gathered outside Severodvinsk to commemorate those who worked and died in the Yagrinlag camp complex, building what is now the second largest city in the Arkhangelsk Region.

Among those attending were relatives of the deceased prisoners and local historians, reports the **Activatica website** [R].

Throughout Russia local officials, clergy, relatives of the victims, various societies and schoolchildren have been accustomed to gather and mark this day. Such annual ceremonies were recorded in over one hundred locations when “Russia’s Necropolis”, a website of burial grounds and commmemorative sites, was first launched in 2016 (see Advanced Search, “Ceremonial Events”, [C]).

Since the Covid-19 epidemic large gatherings have officially been discouraged. The now traditional ceremony of “Restoring the Names” was still preserved in many places, by a small group who met in Krasny Bor (near Petrozavodsk), for example, and by those who assembled at Butovo near Moscow.