On 21 October 2023 it was reported that a memorial to “the victims of Soviet repression” had been demolished in Vladimir. Yet it was not the city’s only memorial of the kind. In 2021, a gathering led by the local Memorial Society and supported by city authorities was held on the Day of Remembrance for … Continue reading On another front (2023)
executions*
“People, do not kill one another!”
Entrance to the Sandarmokh Place of Remembrance(photo, Vladimir Spiridonov, 1 July 2023) The bas relief has been restored.
Publicising information from 1938 “would threaten Russia’s security”
As reported before, the Tula Region Court has ruled that it is lawful to restrict access by researchers and the public to the minutes of the Special Troika, the body responsible during the last stages of the Great Terror (1937-1938) for sentencing hundreds to death without investigation or trial. The text of this ruling, writes … Continue reading Publicising information from 1938 “would threaten Russia’s security”
“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]
“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]