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
Great Terror (Karelia)*
Timeline (1), 1997-2008
In early July 1997, DMITRIEV together with Irina Flige and the late Veniamin Joffe discovered a huge killing field of the Great Terror near Medvezhegorsk in Karelia. Subsequently it became known as Sandarmokh. Weeks later, in early September, he and Sergei Chugunkov identify the Krasny Bor killing field and burial ground not far from Petrozavodsk, … Continue reading Timeline (1), 1997-2008
“We shall go on, naming names” (Razumov)
Anatoly Razumov “Their Names Restored” (St Petersburg) Yury DMITRIEV’s friend and colleague describes recent acquisitions by his Centre and work on the forthcoming second volume of Sandarmokh, a Place of Remembrance, that incorporates Dmitriev’s extensive research on those forcibly deported with their families to Karelia in the early 1930s: From all over the old Soviet … Continue reading “We shall go on, naming names” (Razumov)
Restoring the Names (2)
Since the late 1980s volunteers all over Russia and other former Soviet republics have compiled lists naming the men and women arrested, imprisoned and shot during Stalin’s time, and published regional Books of Remembrance about them. Working with Ivan Chukhin, Yury DMITRIEV compiled such a volume for Karelia. Published in 2002, it contains over 14,000 … Continue reading Restoring the Names (2)
Remembering the victims of Sandarmokh
On Wednesday, 5 August, people marked the annual Day of Remembrance in over 80 towns and cities all over the world (in Bulgaria, Latvia, Ukraine, Scotland and Brittany among others) by reading out the names of those shot at Sandarmokh in 1937 and 1938, during the Great Terror. Due to the Corona virus epidemic no … Continue reading Remembering the victims of Sandarmokh
The Dmitriev Affair 