The first time Yury DMITRIEV came across the unmarked remains of those shot during the Great Terror was in 1988, as he describes in My Path to Golgotha (pt 2). The immediate reaction since the 1950s was to cover up these bones and skulls with their tell-tale bullet holes. Now activists and relatives of those … Continue reading First Discoveries, 1988-1991
AUTHORS
Remembrance (3): Four brothers
Alexander Pokrovsky and his three brothers were born in a village in what today is Russia's Oryol Region. By the early 1930s, they had moved to Moscow. Ivan (1904-1933), Simeon (b. 1911), and Sergei (b. 1915) There in summer 1932 the OGPU (predecessor of the NKVD) arrested them and by October that year all four … Continue reading Remembrance (3): Four brothers
Remembrance (1): Lists and Names
Faced by the grim and relentless persecution of Yury DMITRIEV over the last four years, it’s easy to lose sight of the achievements of the past quarter century, those countless acts of remembrance across Russia and former Soviet states that make any simple return to the past unthinkable. Yury Dmitriev resumes work, 2018 During the … Continue reading Remembrance (1): Lists and Names
A wonderful person, a wonderful historian
On 3 January 2021 Mikhail ROGACHOV passed away in St Petersburg. He created "the best Book of Remembrance in Russia, the Komi Republic’s “Repentance” Martyrology," commented Anatoly Razumov and referred to his deceased colleague as "A wonderful person, a wonderful historian." Mikhail ROGACHOV (born Riga 1952; died 2021 of Covid-19 in Kronstadt hospital) Razumov continued: … Continue reading A wonderful person, a wonderful historian
Unique Tomsk Region Museum safe for this winter at least
The only one of its kind in Russia, the museum in Palochka village in the north of the Tomsk Region opened this August. It is devoted to the memory of over 7,000 forced settlers from southern Siberia who died there in 1931-1933. Partly funded with grants from the presidential administration, it faced fears of closure … Continue reading Unique Tomsk Region Museum safe for this winter at least
The Dmitriev Affair 