In his Last Words to the court in Kislovodsk (Stavropol Region), Ahmed Barakhoyev (b. 1954) said:

“You know, your honour, it’s very tough when my son brings me a parcel in prison. Why? Because it is now the 21^st century but 1937 lives on. … Vyshinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov and Stalin have risen from the grave. Stalinist policies are again alive and at work.”

“But 1937 is alive today, …

Vyshinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov and Stalin are rising from the dead.”

On 15 December Barakhoyev was sentenced to nine years imprisonment in a general-regime penal colony at a trial concerning unrest in Ingushetia in 2019 over proposed changes to the border with Chechnya.

In May 2021 he was awarded the Moscow Helsinki Group prize for “displaying courage in the defence of human rights” [R].

NOTE

The Ingush and Chechen nations (over half a million men, women and children) were deported eastwards in February 1944 to other parts of the Soviet Union. Many of Barakhoyev’s generation were born in exile.

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As if to prove Bakhroyev’s point, this January 2021 photo of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a police station shows a picture of Yagoda on the wall behind him.