“I would like to recall them all by name, but they’ve taken the list, there’s no way to find out” Anna Akhmatova wrote Requiem, from which this famous couplet is taken, over almost thirty years (1935-1961). In Russia the poem could not be published in full until 1987. Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova and their son Lev (1915) … Continue reading Those who did not return
Background
essential reading (charges, defence, timeline, etc)
“Judges” and Executioners [2]
In February 2021 after a visit to Petrozavodsk reporters eagerly repeated [Postscript] a suggestion of DMITRIEV’s 88-year-old acquaintance Alexander Selyutsky that the historian might have upset a local relative or descendant of the “Judges” or Executioners of 1937-1938: “He not only came across those who were arrested: the executioners were also named in those documents.” … Continue reading “Judges” and Executioners [2]
Thirty Years On …
On 23 June 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued Edict no 658, declassifying legislative and other acts that “served as the basis for mass repressive measures and violations of human rights”. This clearly applied to KGB [NKVD] archives and the Great Terror of 1937-1938. Yet as Sergei Krivenko and Sergei Prudovsky of Memorial noted in … Continue reading Thirty Years On …
“Judges” and Executioners [1]
It has been suggested that Yury DMITRIEV attracted the wrath of the authorities by exposing the members of the troika that issued thousands of death sentences in Karelia during the Great Terror or by naming the NKVD executioners who shot those thousands of men and women. Ivan Chukhin (photo) Yet as Irina FLIGE describes in … Continue reading “Judges” and Executioners [1]
Half those shot in 1937-1938 … lie buried at Sandarmokh?
During the Great Terror almost 11,000 men and women were executed in Karelia. In his database Yury DMITRIEV followed NKVD reports and noted that during those months the death sentence was carried out 4,975 times “at the Medvezhya gora rail station”. Sandarmokh monument as originally designed with Guardian Angel This is not surprising. The headquarters … Continue reading Half those shot in 1937-1938 … lie buried at Sandarmokh?
The Dmitriev Affair 