Lubyanka*

The view from above (29 October 2017)

/ editors (JC)

Two last shots of Sunday’s unofficial commemoration, “Restoring the Names”. Someone took these and many other photos from the viewing platform of the toy shop Detsky Mir across Lubyanka Square (see https://www.facebook.com/Memorial.International/?hc_ref=ARRrH5pwXB-ynweSTfLoh5aK8Fk6QbY_9HGh–pFEZODZ3krh5kAP4Sstx-Ym4P7-oY)

Behind the hoardings stands the pre-Revolutionary Polytechnical Museum, where lectures were read and poetry recitals were given — by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Osip Mandelstam among others.

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“Restoring the Names”, 29 October 2017

/ editors (JC)

Yesterday’s event in Moscow, from 10 am to 10 pm on Lubyanka Square (photos – Alexei Koreshkov)

Restoring the Names, 29 October 2017 (15).jpg

This year 5,286 people took part in “Restoring the Names” a commemorative event held annually on 29 October (in 2007, the event’s first year, they numbered only 263). People queued up to 4½ hours in order to read out one name or several.

During the minute’s silence the embassies of 28 countries placed flowers on the monument to the victims of totalitarianism.

“Until 1 pm we were still trying to keep track of how many people called for the release of Yury Dmitriev. Then we lost count, but it seems that every sixth speaker called for the head of Memorial in Karelia to be freed.”

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Alexei Vangengeim (1882-1937)

/ editors (JC)

According to the weather forecast, it will be warm and rainy today in Moscow, 4-5 degrees Centigrade. “So wrap up well, put on boots and a raincoat, and take an umbrella with you,” suggests Memorial to the hundreds of people intending to take part in the “Restoring the Names” ceremony on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square.

In January 1934 the head and founder of the Soviet Meteorological Service, ALEXEI WANGENHEIM (1881-1937), was arrested and charged with “counter-revolutionary sabotage” in the organisation he had created. He spent the last three years of his life on Solovki before being shot, at this time of year, with the rest of the “missing” Solovki transport.

Alexei Wangenheim, 1882-1937

Wife and husband; daughter and mother; prison photos

The last resting place of Wangenheim (Vangengeim) and his comrades in misfortune was not established until almost sixty years later, when Yury Dmitriev, Irina Flige and Venyamin Joffe found the killing fields of Sandarmokh, early in July 1997.

 

“Restoring the Names”, 2017

/ editors (JC)

“From 10 am to 10 pm on Sunday, 29 October, we shall be reading out the names of the victims of political repression here in Moscow,” announces an item on the Restoring the Names page on Facebook. “The Memorial Society has organised this event for ten years, ever since 2007. One after another, people will get up and read from the list. Yet thus far we have barely read half of the names of  the 40,000 people executed in and around Moscow during the pre-war period.”

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