The population of Russia could not escape political repression, and these bloody events will forever remain in the annals of the country's history. Hundreds of thousands of people were subjected to brutal reprisals, executed, exiled to camps, exile, and special settlements. Relatives of those repressed also suffered. It was in honor of preserving the memory of those terrible years that this holiday was established.
When is it celebrated?
The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression is celebrated in Russia on October 30. The date was set by the corresponding Resolution of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR dated October 18, 1991 No. 1763/1-1. The document was ratified by the First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR R.I. Khasbulatov. In 2019, the event is celebrated at the official level for the 29th time.
Who's celebrating
On this memorable day in Russia, they remember everyone who was subjected to political repression for their beliefs on national, social and other grounds and became a victim of the tyranny of a totalitarian state. The event is celebrated by the entire population of the country.
history of the holiday
On October 30, 1974, a joint hunger strike was held between prisoners of the Mordovian and Perm camps. It was announced as a sign of protest against ongoing repression and humiliating, inhumane treatment of political prisoners in prisons and camps. Subsequently, similar hunger strikes took place annually on October 30, and starting in 1987, demonstrations began to be held in cities.
On October 30, 1989, almost 3,000 citizens with lit candles, symbolizing the memory of the innocent victims, closed a “living circle” around the building of the USSR State Security Committee, and then moved to Pushkin Square to hold a rally.
It was this date that was chosen by the Supreme Council of the RSFSR as the celebration of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression.
Everyone is familiar with the photograph with Stalin and the girl sitting in his arms “Stalin and Gelya”. The parents of this girl (Geli Markizova) were among those repressed. The father was shot, and the mother and daughter were exiled. After this, the inscriptions were changed on all works made from this photograph. Instead of the usual one, “Stalin and Mamlakat” appeared. The story of this pioneer, Mamlakat Nakhangova, was also invented.
In 1918, 3,000 clergy came under repression. All of them were shot.
In the period from 1938 to 1941. More than 35,000 people out of 38,900 repressed were shot.
Rows Soviet army were also purged. About 45% of the military commanders were considered politically unreliable.
The period of time from 1937 to 1938 became the bloodiest in the history of the state. According to official statistics, more than 1.5 million people were arrested; 1.3 million were convicted by non-judicial authorities and almost 700 thousand were executed. On July 5, 1937, the Politburo decided that the wives and children of “enemies of the people” should also be “punished.” Wives were arrested and sent to camps for a minimum term of 5 years, and children were sent to camp colonies of the NKVD or to special regime orphanages.
The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression in Russia is celebrated annually on October 30. It was on this day in 1974 that political prisoners in a camp in Mordovia went on a mass hunger strike, protesting in such a demonstrative way against political repression in the Soviet Union. The official status of Remembrance Day was assigned to this date by a special resolution of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, dated October 18, 1991.
Traditionally, on this autumn day, crowded rallies, actions and various events are held to remind of this national tragedy, to honor the memory of the numerous victims of repression, as well as to attract the attention of young people and the whole society to the problem of intolerance and violence towards people with different political views and beliefs.
Day of Remembrance, Day of Mourning, Day of Sorrow
Left a mark on your heart forever.
When the leaders shouted to everyone about peace,
You have experienced death, hundreds of troubles.
Auschwitz and the Gulag firsthand
Familiar to you until it hurts at the temples,
Concentration camp... like a nuclear outbreak
He exterminated all the “rebels” then.
We will not forget and remind the children
What a cruel path you have walked,
And your pain will not be scattered by the wind,
We will learn a lesson from your words...
May the sky be peaceful and transparent,
And let peace reign throughout the entire earth,
We will not forget the victims of political repression:
Their feat burns with flame in the heart.
Let us remember all the victims of repression today,
Who suffered for politics?
Let the feat not sink into eternity,
Let both old and young know everything.
I wish you to live under a peaceful sky,
Have your own position
Express your ideas
Without fear of burning for words.
Today we remember the victims of repression,
We are sad that there was such evil in the world,
And we sincerely wish everyone in the world,
So that this terrible time goes away
And never came back again
So that our good people live in peace,
And families were never destroyed,
And peace reigned in the world year after year!
There are so many lies and evil in politics,
She took so many lives!
Repressions, executions and interrogations,
Many people were simply bombarded with threats!
There were many “victims of the regime” back then
The cruelty of those authorities is incomprehensible!
The number of people is scary
What perished at the hands of the former “leaders”!
Let's remember those who suffered
Who gave their lives for nothing,
You can't put up with injustice
To all those who went through the camps, barking dogs and convoys,
Who was convicted under article fifty-eight,
Who was betrothed with shackles, thorns, chains,
From us there is only sorrow, only tears and eternal memory...
On the penultimate day of October
We will remember this terrible “page”:
Repression and torture, camps -
May this never happen again!
To everyone who suffered for their beliefs
And for political views,
We'll show respect today
Because you didn't ask for mercy!
You walked forward proudly and did not break,
We fought for the idea to the end,
Although you may have been afraid of death,
The peace never left your face!
Victims of political repression,
How many of you were there? Can't count!
Everyone who suffered in this process,
Let's remember today!
When they cut down a forest, they don’t spare the chips,
The authorities once said so,
Turning purple from the people's blood,
Those in power have reigned to their hearts' content!
Let there be no more terrorism,
Political repressions and massacres,
For the sake of life on earth and humanism,
Let us tame the evil spirit of terror!
We remember the victims of political repression
On this sad holiday, saying,
That we don’t want such grief,
Let the Earth see no more evil!
Let there be only freedom of opinion
To reign throughout the vast Earth,
And people from future generations
They can live here with kindness in their hearts!
Today is the time for us to remember
Victims of political repression,
Prayer will come from your lips
Religions of all and all faiths.
Let descendants always remember
About those who fell for their beliefs,
Let their feat inspire us
For fantastic achievements.
Light the candles today
So that they burn in the heart,
For those who are still alive
We experienced hell ourselves.
Who needs the millstone of politics
Grind fate
For those who bear the mark of a traitor
Didn't survive prison.
Let's take a minute of silence
We are victims of political repression,
Having paid tribute
Your honor has been violated.
Congratulations: 28 in verse.
October 30 is the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression. This day should have been a day of universal mourning, because the country experienced a national tragedy, the echoes of which are still felt. IN Peaceful time people lost their lives or were taken away from it for a long period of time. Moral and physical torment affected not only the repressed themselves, but also their relatives and friends - fathers, mothers, wives, children. The whole society suffered, entire classes suffered damage - nobles, Cossacks, clergy, peasants, intelligentsia, workers. And this tragedy began not in 1937, when the Great Terror peaked, but immediately after October 1917. Already in the first years of the Bolsheviks' stay in power, peasants - participants in anti-government protests, strike workers, members of socialist parties and anarchist organizations, clergy, sailors - participants in the Kronstadt "rebellion" of 1921. Already 1918 was marked by the execution of 3,000 clergy. In 1928, over 500 executions took place, in 1930 - 2,500 executions (executions). In 1938-1941, 38,900 people were repressed, over 35 thousand of them were shot. In total, during the years of Soviet power, up to 200 thousand clergy suffered in one way or another.
In 1918-1922, the most severe measures - confiscation of farms, exile of families to special settlements, execution of rebels - were accompanied by the suppression of peasant uprisings that covered almost the entire country (Don, Western Siberia, Volga region, Karelia, etc.). In the late 1920s - more than 500 thousand peasants were convicted in the early 1930s. In total, during the years of collectivization, more than one million peasant farms were “dispossessed”, about five million people were expelled from their homes to special settlements.
The trial in June 1937 of Tukhachevsky, Yakir and other military leaders became a signal for mass repressions among the military. Over 40 thousand people were injured. In total, 45 percent of the command personnel were “purged” from the ranks of the army as politically unreliable. During the war and the first post-war years, Soviet citizens who escaped encirclement, prisoners of war and repatriated were subjected to brutal repression. Total military personnel repressed during the war amounted to 994 thousand people, of which 157 thousand were shot. In January 1953, the newspapers published the message “Arrest of a group of pest doctors.” Thus, a high-profile case was made public, which is not forgotten today. Then journalists enthusiastically described the “feat of the modest doctor” Lydia Timashuk, who allegedly exposed the “murderers in white coats.” Less than a month after Stalin's death, the "Doctors' Plot" was terminated.
Already in pre-war years mass eviction of entire peoples began. The victims of deportation were Poles, Kurds, Koreans, Buryats and other peoples. 3.5 million is the number of people repressed on ethnic grounds from the mid-40s to 1961. Persons of German nationality were evicted from the Volga region, Moscow, the Moscow region and other regions by force, under pain of execution. Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars and other peoples were evicted from their homes. The deportation affected 14 nations entirely and 48 partially. In the post-war years, any open anti-government protests were mercilessly suppressed, for example, worker unrest in Novocherkessk in 1962, caused by rising prices while simultaneously reducing wages. The main object of the regime's repressive policy in the 1960s - 1980s was “dissidence.” During the period from 1967 to 1971, the KGB "identified" more than three thousand groups of a "politically harmful nature", 13.5 thousand of whose members were repressed. Since the mid-50s, psychiatry has been widely used to combat dissent. In total, from 1921 to 1953, the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (that is, extrajudicially) subjected over four million people to repression for political reasons, including about 800 thousand people sentenced to capital punishment. In quantitative terms, the peak of repression occurred in 1937-1938, when in two years 1.3 million people were convicted under the well-known Article 58 (“counter-revolutionary crimes”), of whom more than half were executed. During the Stalin years, about 60 peoples were repressed. This is two million 463940 people, of which 655674 are men and 829084 are women, children under 16 years old - 970182. The number of those repressed among the Chechen and Ingush peoples is 400478, Karachais - 60139, Balkars - 32817, Kalmyks - 81673, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Greeks - 193959, Germans - 774178.
Rehabilitation of victims of political repression began in the USSR in 1954. In the mid-1960s, this work was curtailed and resumed only in the late 1980s. The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression in Russia was first celebrated in 1991 in memory of the hunger strike of camp prisoners in Mordovia, which began on October 30 in 1974. Rehabilitation of victims of political repression began in the USSR in 1954. In the mid-1960s, this work was curtailed and resumed only in the late 80s. The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression in Russia was first celebrated in 1991 in memory of the hunger strike of camp prisoners in Mordovia, which began on October 30 in 1974. In Russia, resolutions have been adopted and are being implemented aimed at supporting victims of repression, and special commissions have been created for the affairs of those rehabilitated. On October 18, 1991, the RSFSR Law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression” was adopted. The purpose of the law is to rehabilitate all victims of political repressions subjected to such on the territory of the RSFSR since October 25 (November 7), 1917, restoring their civil rights, eliminating other consequences of arbitrariness and providing currently feasible compensation for material and moral damage. The law addresses the general provisions, procedure and consequences of rehabilitation. In 1992, the Presidential Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression was created. On March 14, 1996, the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On measures for the rehabilitation of clergy and believers who have become victims of unjustified repression” was issued. The decree was adopted "in order to restore justice and the legal rights of Russian citizens to freedom of conscience and religion, guided by a sense of repentance, based on the conclusions of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression." Despite the measures taken, social problems still remain for the rehabilitated fellow citizens who innocently but cruelly suffered during a tragic period for the country. On April 26, 2001, in the city of Magas (Republic of Ingushetia), a congress of repressed peoples of the USSR was held, dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the adoption by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the law “On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples.” The congress was attended by representatives of the Ingush, Korean, Balkar, Chechen peoples, Meskhetian Turks, and Germans deported during the Stalin years. As a result of the congress, an appeal was adopted to the Russian leadership demanding the implementation of the law on the rehabilitation of repressed peoples, the creation of a permanent working body to coordinate and carry out work to fully restore their civil rights.
Currently, the main tasks of the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression (the Regulations on the Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression were approved by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation on August 25, 2004) are: creating conditions for the President to exercise his constitutional powers as a guarantor of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen in the execution of the Law Russian Federation“On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression”; study, analysis and assessment of political repression; assistance in coordinating the activities of federal executive authorities related to the rehabilitation of victims of political repression; providing methodological assistance to commissions to restore the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation; informing the public in the prescribed manner about the scale and nature of political repression; preparation of reports to the President of the Russian Federation on issues within the jurisdiction of the Commission.
The topic of repressions of the Soviet period remains a cause of discord in Russian society, although it has been on the public political agenda for thirty years. The sound and balanced position of the state leadership is that we must learn to accept our history in its entirety, with all its victories and tragedies, achievements and crimes.
Every year on October 30, Russia celebrates the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression. Events dedicated to this memorable day traditionally cover almost the entire country.
“The topic of national tragedy has become not one that unites society, but one that creates another split”
The day before, in the center of Moscow at the Solovetsky Stone, the memory event “Return of Names” was held for the tenth time. Its participants read out the names, professions and dates of those executed during the years of repression. The action was attended by Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova, head of the Human Rights Council Mikhail Fedotov and ex-Ombudsman, member of the Federation Council Vladimir Lukin. Next year on this day in Moscow it is planned to open the “Wall of Sorrow” monument dedicated to these tragic events national history.
On the eve of Remembrance Day, Tatyana Moskalkova went on a tour to the Gulag History Museum, reporting that school curriculum There will be a direction dedicated to the rehabilitation of victims of repression.
The theme of repression unexpectedly acquired a new meaning in last years in the public life of Russia. Since the mid-1980s, it has become one of the main accusations against the Soviet period of Russian history. Loud revelations, horrific details, shocking figures on the number of repressed people became an important part of the agenda of late and post-Soviet society.
However, almost 30 years of promoting this topic have led to a result that was clearly unexpected by many activists working on this topic. Russian society in a sense, “closed” from her.
There are several reasons for this, but probably the main ones are the following.
Firstly, many of the most famous figures who promoted the topic in the public sphere were discredited. Numerous inaccuracies, exaggerations, fabrications, and even outright lies in their statements and works became public knowledge.
Secondly, the theme of repression was carefully “pulled” onto all other themes of that historical period, especially those that are the subject national pride: from the Great Patriotic War before space flights.The topic of repression during the Soviet period in the eyes of society turned from an object of research and public understanding into a tool of crude and dirty propaganda, which was used to throw mud at and discredit the entire Soviet period, and then the country as such.
This entailed, in general, a natural reaction of rejection. In recent years, activists have become more and more vocal and assertive that there were no repressions, and that what happened was, in fact, justified; the people who fell under the steamroller of the state machine were not at all innocent and got what they deserved.
As a result, in recent years, scandals and discussions have increasingly arisen where opposing parties take radical and irreconcilable positions. Suffice it to recall the fierce controversy that Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment about Stalin caused.
The theme of national tragedy has become not unifying, but generating another split.
Somewhat surprisingly, in this situation it was the state leadership that took the most balanced and adequate position in Russia. It refuses to look at Russian history through black and white glasses. A history in which good and bad, exploits and crimes have always coexisted, where a huge price was paid for every breakthrough and every victory. And this does not detract from the victories, grandiose breakthroughs and achievements of our past.
The state accepted responsibility for the repressions that actually took place, under which millions of people were caught.
The state is ready to accept our history in all its contradictions and complexity, without rejecting even the most difficult and dark pages. The state persistently strives to convey this idea to society, which continues to “fight” in in social networks and media.
Chairman State Duma In Russia, Vyacheslav Volodin, on the eve of Remembrance Day, visited the workshop of sculptor Georgy Frangulyan, the author of the monument being created. He said that “even the most difficult, bitter and difficult periods” of Russian history cannot be forgotten or ignored.
And the current very mature position Russian state regarding the history of the country, including the topic of repression, there is another very important aspect. For the first time in history, the state realizes the importance and necessity careful attitude to the people of the country, achieving set goals and implementing planned projects not at any cost, but with as little sacrifice as possible.
And this, like nothing else, gives hope that the tragedy of repression in the country will not happen again.
It was such a terrible time.
The enemy of the people was the people themselves.
Any word, any topic...
And as the country progresses... forward!
N oh we remember! Now we know.
There are bans on everything, a seal on everyone...
The crowd of people was driven along the stage,
To make it easier to manage...
On July 2, 1937, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution PB-51/94 “On Anti-Soviet Elements.” In pursuance of this, on August 5, 1937, the NKVD of the USSR issued order No. 0044, which marked the beginning of the operation of mass purges. By mid-November 1938, 681,692 death sentences had been issued without trial and carried out immediately. More than 1.7 million people were sent to camps.
Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression - takes place in Russia and other former USSR republics annually on October 30, starting in 1991. On this day, rallies and various cultural events are held, during which victims of political repression are remembered; some schools organize “live” history lessons to which witnesses to these tragic events are invited.
According to the Memorial human rights center, there are about 800 thousand victims in Russia (according to the Law on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, their number also includes children left without parental care).
Traditional venues for rallies and mourning events
- amara : Sign of memory in the park named after. Gagarin (in production earthworks In this park one of the places of mass graves of executed repressed people was discovered).
-Tomsk : Square in memory of the victims of Stalin's repressions, located next to the former NKVD building, which now houses memorial museum"Investigation prison of the NKVD." The Stone of Sorrow is installed in the park. In just a few years Stalin's repressions About 20 thousand Tomsk residents suffered from them.
Memorial stone to those politically repressed in Omsk:
Historical reference
October 30, 1974 - 36 years ago - Political Prisoner Day was marked by one- and two-day hunger strikes in the Mordovian and Perm camps, as well as in the Vladimir prison. This breadth of coverage was unwittingly facilitated by the camp administration, which suspected that something was being prepared and could not find anything better than to scatter the “conspirators” into different camps. The last place where they learned about the Day of Political Prisoners was Vladimir Prison.
At the same time, on October 30, A.D. Sakharov and the initiative group for the defense of human rights in the USSR organized a press conference.
Correspondents were given open letters prisoners and other materials received from the camps and written specifically for the Day of Political Prisoners. Among them were letters, appeals and interviews with prisoners in Mordovian and Perm camps so that Mordovian materials could see the light of day.
Subsequently, Political Prisoner Day was also celebrated with hunger strikes in the camps. The most a large number of Participants in protests in the camps were noted in 1981, when about 300 political prisoners took part in hunger strikes and strikes.
Since 1978, the Country and World Society has annually published on October 30 the “List of Political Prisoners of the USSR.”
Since 1987, Political Prisoner Day has been accompanied by demonstrations in Moscow, Leningrad, Lvov, Tbilisi, etc. If dozens of people took part in the first demonstrations, then in 1988 there were already hundreds, the number of participants in the “human chain” organized public organization The “Memorial” around the KGB building on October 30, 1989 already numbered from 2 to 10 thousand, and demonstrations took place in dozens of cities from Kaliningrad to Irkutsk. In 1987-1988, demonstrations were dispersed, and their active participants (V.V. Navodvorskaya) were arrested for 15 days. Later, the authorities came to terms with the demonstrations; in 1990, KGB representatives even laid a wreath at the Solovetsky Stone.
On October 30, 1990, on Dzerzhinsky Square (now Lubyanka), a boulder was installed, brought from the Solovetsky Islands, where in the 20s-30s of the last century there was one of the most terrible Soviet camps - the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp (SLON), in which About a million people were killed. The inscription was carved on the stone: “This stone was delivered from the territory of the Solovetsky special purpose camp by the Memorial Society and installed in memory of the millions of victims of the totalitarian regime on October 30, 1990, the Day of Political Prisoners in the USSR.” The funeral service for those killed was celebrated by Father Gleb Yakunin.
From that moment on, Solovetsky Stone became one of those places in Moscow where victims of repression can remember their relatives and friends.
In 1991, by decision of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation, October 30 was declared a national day of remembrance for victims of political repression. And on October 18, 1991, the Law of the Russian Federation “On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression” was adopted.
The state admitted guilt to the citizens of its country for the crimes of the Bolshevik party-Soviet regime.
In 2004, by Decree of the Governor of the Omsk Region, the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Rehabilitated Victims of Political Repression of the Administration of the Government of the Omsk Region was created.
“...The future of Russia and its people does not lie in returning to the past, but in moving forward, in persistent and persistent creative work. The older generation, who survived the repressions, remembers this tragic time. Victims of political terror appeal to the memory of their descendants. Our duty is to restore historical justice, to justify the honest names of the slandered and innocently repressed citizens of Russia.” These are the words from the Omsk Book of Memory of Victims of Political Repression “Not Subject to Oblivion,” created over the course of more than ten years by the creative editorial team by order of Governor L.K. Polezhaev (1995).
The published eleven volumes of the Book of Memory are a stunningly powerful historical document, composed of painfully brief, just a few lines, descriptions of the destinies of innocently convicted people: born, worked, arrested, convicted under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, shot (in bold) or served his sentence... rehabilitated for lack of corpus delicti. Thirty-two thousand of our fellow countrymen, in alphabetical order forever written on the pages of eleven 400-page volumes! The Book also contains more detailed essays about the fates of those repressed, as well as documents from that time, and other materials.
In an interview with the newspaper “Omsky Vestnik” dated July 25, 2007, “Crying over the hair, removing the head,” an employee of the book’s editorial office, a member of the Union of Writers of Russia, the famous poetess Tatyana Georgievna Chetverikova says: “The published eleven volumes of the Book of Memory, as it seems to us, in some This has changed the climate in the region. He became warmer and more trusting, because thousands of Omsk residents learned about the fate of their loved ones who died during the years of repression. Many, many were restored good names citizens, our fellow countrymen: peasants, workers, doctors, teachers, clergy...". The State Archive of the Omsk Region contains about thirty thousand files on repressed peasants. There is a need to publish new volumes of the Book of Memory dedicated to the dispossession of peasants: robbery and expulsion from native land thousands and thousands of families.
“...Most of the victims were children. Those who had to grow up with an unhealed wound in their hearts and yet, in a difficult hour for their homeland, stand up and protect it at the cost of their lives. They and their parents, hardworking peasants, deserve to be remembered so that there are no broken links in the chain of our family trees. This is especially important for our children, let them know how deep and strong their roots are in their native land.”
In 1991, by decision of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation, October 30 was declared a national day of remembrance for victims of political repression. On this day, former prisoners, their relatives and friends gather at memorial signs and at mass grave sites to honor the memory of the victims and demonstrate their firm commitment to never allow a return to lawlessness.
The Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression is a special day. This is a sad date in our history. It is impossible to leave it without the attention of the younger generation, since historical and artistic material on this issue contributes to the formation of civic qualities of the individual, an active life position, and makes it possible to form the moral foundations of everyone young man. At the same time, this is a complex and controversial date - the day of repentance of the state before its people, and when holding events on this topic, it is necessary to present any information related to this topic as objectively and historically as possible.
Events dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression are recommended to be carried out with middle and high school students. On this topic, you can design exhibitions, hold rallies, memorial hours, invite real witnesses and participants in the tragic events of the past, design stands and library posters, discuss literary works dedicated to the topic of the consequences of the regime of political terror for an individual, people, and the state as a whole (Shalamov V .T. - “Kolyma Tales”, A. A. Akhmatova - “Requiem”, A. I. Solzhenitsyn - “The Gulag Archipelago”, E. I. Zamyatin - “We”, A. P. Platonov - “The Pit”) . The purpose of such events is to arouse in schoolchildren interest and an emotional response to the events of the history of our country during the times of totalitarianism and Stalinist repression, and to form an idea of the inadmissibility of state lawlessness against citizens.
Annex 1.
Full text of Dmitry Medvedev's address
on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression (2009)
Today is the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression. 18 years have passed since this day appeared on the calendar as a memorable date.
I am convinced that the memory of national tragedies is as sacred as the memory of victories. And it is extremely important that young people have not only historical knowledge, but also civic feelings. They were able to emotionally empathize with one of the greatest tragedies in Russian history. But here everything is not so simple.
Two years ago, sociologists conducted a survey - almost 90% of our citizens, young citizens aged 18 to 24, could not even name their last names famous people who suffered or died during those years from repression. And this, of course, cannot but worry.
It is impossible to imagine the scale of the terror from which all the peoples of the country suffered. Its peak occurred in 1937–1938. Alexander Solzhenitsyn called the endless “stream” of those repressed at that time “the Volga of people’s grief.” Over the course of 20 pre-war years, entire strata and classes of our people were destroyed. The Cossacks were practically eliminated. The peasantry was dispossessed and bled dry. The intelligentsia, workers, and military personnel were subjected to political persecution. Representatives of absolutely all religious denominations were persecuted.
October 30 is the Day of Remembrance of millions of crippled destinies. About people shot without trial or investigation, about people sent to camps and exile, deprived of civil rights for the “wrong” occupation or for the notorious “social origin.” The stigma of “enemies of the people” and their “accomplices” then fell on entire families.
Let's just think about it: millions of people have died as a result of terror and false accusations - millions. They were deprived of all rights. Even the rights to a decent human burial, and for many years their names were simply erased from history.
But you can still hear that these numerous victims were justified by some higher state goals.
I am convinced that no development of the country, no successes, no ambitions can be achieved at the cost of human grief and loss.
Nothing can be put above value human life.
And there is no justification for repression.
We pay a lot of attention to the fight against falsification of our history. And for some reason we often believe that we are talking only about the inadmissibility of revising the results of the Great Patriotic War.
But it is no less important to prevent, under the guise of restoring historical justice, the justification of those who destroyed their people.
It is also true that Stalin’s crimes cannot detract from the exploits of the people who won the Great Patriotic War. Made our country a powerful industrial power. Raised our industry, science, and culture to the world level.
It is equally important to study the past, overcome indifference and the desire to forget its tragic sides. And no one but ourselves will do this.
A year ago, in September, I was in Magadan. The Ernst Neizvestny Memorial “Mask of Sorrow” made a deep impression on me. After all, it was erected not only with state funds, but also with donations.
We need museum and memorial centers that will pass on the memory of what we experienced from generation to generation. Of course, work must continue to search for places of mass graves, restore the names of the victims, and, if necessary, their rehabilitation.
Without the complex history, the essentially contradictory history of our state, it is often simply impossible to understand the roots of many of our problems, the difficulties of today's Russia.
But I would like to say again: no one but ourselves will solve our problems. It will not instill in children respect for the law, respect for human rights, for the value of human life, for moral standards that originate in our national traditions and in our religion.
No one except ourselves will preserve historical memory and pass it on to new generations.
Appendix 2.
Repression: how it happened
Scenario for the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression
The music “Requiem” is playing.
1st presenter: Good afternoon dear friends! Our meeting is held on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression. And we will begin it with verses:
2nd presenter:Everyone,who was branded by Article fifty-eight,
who even in a dream was surrounded by dogs, a fierce escort,
who in court, without trial, by special meeting
was doomed to a prison uniform until the grave,
who was betrothed to fate with shackles, thorns, chains,
They are our tears and sorrow, our eternal memory!
1st presenter: October 30 was not chosen as the Day of Victims of Repression by chance: 19 years before, this day was chosen, if you like, by God. On this day in 1972, Yuri Galanskov died in a Mordovian camp, having received a sentence for his protest against the imprisonment of Sinyavsky and Daniel, writers convicted of publishing their stories abroad.
Two years later, in October 1974, a group of Galanskov’s convicts managed to convey to the public a proposal to celebrate this day throughout the world as the Day of Political Prisoners. This is what was accepted by the international community. And it was carried out in Soviet camps - through hunger strikes - despite the inevitable punishment cells, bans on visits, transfers to prison regime and other delights. Until 1974, another date was celebrated as the Day of Political Prisoners - September 5 - the anniversary of the famous decree of 1918 “On the Red Terror”, which, in addition to the execution of “all persons related to White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions, introduced concentration camps in Soviet Russia...”.
2nd presenter:The presidential decree marked the new state's break with the repressive Soviet regime. To what extent is this gap confirmed? new practice, we can judge for ourselves.
But did the president, when signing his decree, think about the fact that the word “repression” hardly corresponds to what happened with the establishment of Soviet power in our country.
3rd presenter:Not the thousands of engineers arrested in connection with the “Shakhty case”; nor the hundreds of thousands tortured, shot, and killed in 1937–1938. party members who naively believed that they, the mind, honor and conscience of the era, were building a bright future for all working people; nor the millions of peasants who believed the “new economic policy”, announced in 1921, and 7 years later found themselves victims of the “policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class.” Neither the executed marshals and generals - almost the entire Soviet generals, nor the poets: Gumilyov, Tabidze, Smelyakov, Zabolotsky - fought against the authorities; neither the artists - Ruslanova, Dvorzhetsky, Mikhoels, nor the author of the trajectory of the future American flight to the Moon Kondratyuk, or future leader Soviet space program Korolev, or aircraft builder Tupolev, nor geneticists Vavilov, Pantin, Timofeev-Resovsky, nor our physicist Rumer, astronomer Kozyrev, historian Gumilyov, nor the completely destroyed Jewish anti-fascist committee, nor the victims of the post-war “Leningrad affair,” not to mention the millions captured soldiers...
The largest camps in which prisoners served their sentences were located on Solovki and Kolyma. The conditions of detention of prisoners in these camps led to great loss of life. The security on Solovki consisted of OGPU employees who were convicted of sins in their service and were sent to Solovki for correction. And they did arbitrariness there. New prisoners were greeted with the words: “This is not the Soviet Republic, but the Solovetsky Republic!” Get it! The prosecutor has never set foot on Solovetsky soil, and never will! Know! You weren't sent here to fix it! You can’t fix a hunchback.”
Life was like a theater of the absurd. They published their own magazine “Solovetsky Islands”. And since 1926, an All-Union subscription was announced for it. There was also its own drama group, because there were a lot of cultural figures there. And botanists and art historians were members of the Solovetsky Society of Local Lore.
There were only two escapes from the Solovetsky Islands. There were different measures for killing people. Of the 84 thousand, 43 thousand people died.
In Kolyma different years 2.5 million people served their sentences, 950 thousand of them died. They died from exhaustion and related diseases. The size of the ration became the main means for the camp administration to force prisoners to give all their best at work. Shock workers were entitled to increased rations and the possibility of early release, and those who did not fulfill the quota had their rations mercilessly cut.
Since 1938, they began to carry out mass executions, thereby getting rid of unwanted prisoners.
4th presenter: This is not repression , This - stupid violence, which can’t even be called political. Simply the violence of power, which feels itself to be power only in acts of violence, the more causeless, the more delightful!
The Soviet regime did not invent anything new in this regard. If you think about it, violenceserved as the main productive force. True, this system was unable to produce anything but violence. But she produced this on an expanding scale.
1st presenter:Years of the “Great Terror”(1937-38) claimed a hitherto unknown number of lives of our compatriots. They even amaze officially published results of this company: 1,344,923 arrested, 681,692 executed.The famous historian R. Conquest gives other numbers: 12-14 million arrested, at least 1 million. shot; Commission of the Central Committee (1962) and even more: 19 million arrested, at least 7 million executed.
As it were, both names - Yezhovshchina and Great Terror - are inaccurate. The NKVD, which carried out mass arrests and executions in those years, was indeed headed by N. Yezhov, but the idea of this action was not his. If we were to associate this with someone’s name, then we should call the word Stalinism. Suffice it to remember that during the great terror, members of the Central Committee were destroyed - almost all of Lenin’s closest associates, 95% of the top generals - the creators of Lenin’s Red Army. All of them are by no means enemies of Stalin, much less of the Soviet regime.
1st reader:
No, and not under an alien sky,And not under the protection of alien wings, -
I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.
These are lines from Anna Akhmatova's Requiem.IN terrible years After Yezhovshchina, she spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad. One day someone “identified” her. Then the woman standing behind her with blue lips, who, of course, had never heard her name in her life, woke up from her characteristic daze and asked her in her ear (everyone there spoke in a whisper):
– Can you describe this?
And Akhmatova said:
- Can.
Then something like a smile crossed what had once been her face.
2nd reader:
Mountains bend before this grief,The great river does not flow
But the prison gates are strong,
And behind them are “convict holes”,
And mortal melancholy.
For some the wind is blowing fresh,
For someone the sunset is basking -
We don't know, we're the same everywhere
We only hear the hateful grinding of keys
Yes, the soldiers' steps are heavy.
They rose as if to early mass,
They walked through the wild capital,
We met there, more lifeless dead,
The sun is lower and the Neva is foggy,
And hope still sings in the distance.
Sentence…. And immediately the tears will flow,
Already separated from everyone,
As if with pain the life was taken out of the heart,
As if rudely knocked over,
But she walks...Wobbles...Alone.
Where are the involuntary friends now?
My two crazy years?
What do they imagine in the Siberian blizzard?
What do they see in the lunar circle?
To them I send my farewell greetings.
2nd presenter: The Great Terror was carefully planned - as a kind of military operation. Moreover, the murder of Kirov on December 1, 1934 only outwardly looked like a reason for unleashing terror; rather, it was one of the measures of his personnel and psychological preparation.
The plan of the Great Terror itself, with a breakdown of the entire population into groups and categories, percentage standards for each category and limits on arrests and executions by region and republic, was submitted by Yezhov for approval by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on July 2, 1937. Liquidation or imprisonment was subject to not only the remnants of the “hostile classes” (including children), former members hostile parties and participants white movement(and their children), but also communists - former members of all opposition movements in the CPSU (b) - 383 lists of the most prominent party and government figures.
3rd reader:
It was when I smiledOnly dead, glad for peace.
And dangled like an unnecessary pendant
Leningrad is near its prisons.
And when, maddened by torment,
The already condemned regiments were marching,
And a short song of parting
The locomotive whistles sang,
The death stars stood above us
And innocent Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the black tires there is Marussia.
3rd presenter:Ideologically, the Great Terror was justified back in 1928 by Stalin’s thesis about the intensification of the class struggle as we move towards socialism; this thesis was proven by the repressions themselves: “Shakhtinsky trial” - summer of 1928, more than 2000 engineers were arrested, 5 of them were shot; the process of the “Industrial Party” - 1930, Chayanov and Kondratiev - world-class economists - were shot; “case of sabotage at power plants” - 1933, hundreds of specialists were arrested in Moscow, Chelyabinsk, Zlatoust, Baku.
4th reader:
And the stone word fellOn my still living chest.
It's okay, because I was ready
I'll deal with this somehow.
I have a lot to do today:
We must completely kill our memory,
It is necessary for the soul to turn to stone,
We must learn to live again.
Otherwise... The hot rustle of summer,
It's like a holiday outside my window.
I've been anticipating this for a long time
Bright day and empty house.
4th presenter:On November 25, 1938, Beria was appointed to the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, most of the Yezhov investigators were arrested and shot, 327,400 “Yezhov” prisoners were released. Yezhov himself was appointed People's Commissar of Water Transport, then this People's Commissariat was abolished, and Yezhov was arrested and shot. But his arrest, trial and execution were never officially reported; only the word “Yezhovshchina” appeared in the language, but it was not used officially either.
Counting in the millions, the number of victims of the Great Terror remains uncertain; their burial places are discovered by chance. The heirs of the NKVD are doing everything to prevent the publication of the executed lists. For example, a mass grave was discovered in Karelia near Medvezhyegorsk. Here on October 27, 1937, 1,111 people were shot.
5th reader:
I learned how faces fall,How fear peeks out from under your eyelids,
Like cuneiform hard pages
Suffering appears on the cheeks,
Like curls of ashen and black
They suddenly become silver,
The smile fades on the lips of the submissive,
And fear trembles in the dry laugh.
And I’m not praying for myself alone,
And about everyone who stood there with me
And in the bitter cold and in the July heat
Under the red, blind wall.
2nd presenter:But there was another result of BT - the one for which all these hecatombs of corpses were piled up - the completion of the creation of a system of violence as the productive force of society. This is also mentioned above. One way or another, the “cleansing”, to use modern slang, was carried out, although its terms had to be extended twice, as well as regional limits on executions had to be increased (based on requests from the localities). Socialism, as the leader and teacher understood it, was “basically” built on 1/6 of the land. It was possible to move on to preparing its distribution to the remaining 5/6.
Music sounds. Oginsky's Polonaise “Farewell to the Motherland.”
1st presenter: Insure yourself against numerous professions.2nd presenter: Insure yourself against the proletarians of all countries.
3rd presenter: Insure yourself against political repression.
4th presenter: Insure yourself against funeral telegrams.
1st presenter: Protect yourself from discolored skies.
2nd presenter: Insure yourself from the inevitable fuss.
3rd presenter: Insure yourself against the impersonal sky.
4th presenter: Insure yourself from hopeless fuss.
1st presenter:Dear guests! We wish you health, long life, a prosperous old age, prosperity for you and your families, and also to be insured against various disasters and surprises!
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Appendix 3.
There can be no oblivion
Scenario of literary and musical composition,
dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression
To everyone who was branded under Article fifty-eight,
who even in a dream was surrounded by dogs, a fierce escort,
who in court, without trial, by special meeting
was doomed to a prison uniform until the grave,
who was betrothed to fate with shackles, thorns, chains,
Our tears and sorrow belong to them, our eternal memory!
Tariverdiev “Two in a cafe”, 3. Slide War
Many severe trials, sacrifices, and hardships befell our country in the 20th century. Two world and Civil War, hunger and
Devastation and political instability claimed tens of millions of lives, forcing the reconstruction of the destroyed country again and again.
But even against this background, political repression became a terrible page in our history. Moreover, humiliated and destroyed
the best of the best, who never even dreamed of fighting against their people. Thousands of engineers, hundreds of thousands tortured, executed,
ruined party members, millions of peasants who found themselves victims of dispossession, marshals and generals, scientists and poets, writers and artists who were truly devoted to the Motherland.
Chopin "E minor", 4. Slide "boy"
Nowadays we know incredible numbers of people executed, repressed, imprisoned, and scattered in orphanages.
Only according to incomplete data their number exceeds ten million people. The system fought against completely innocent people, inventing an enemy for itself,
and then mercilessly destroying these people.
Doga “Waltz”, 5. Slide “Burning Candle”
Much has been written about the mass repressions of the 1930s. Many camp memoirs and manuscripts of former prisoners of Kolyma and the Gulag have been published, and documents from the NKVD archives have become available. But the most impassive witnesses in the court of history are letters from camp prisoners.
“Polonaise” by Oginsky, 8. Slide "Archival documents"
Letter
May 5, 1938 “My dear Anechka, Lorochka and Lyalechka! Yesterday we were brought to Kotlas. We are now at the transit point of the Ukhtapechora NKVD camp. From here they must be sent to a place where they will have to serve out their long term of camp imprisonment. When and where the shipment will take place is unknown. What kind of work you will have to do is also still unknown...”
July 8, 1938 “.. I am writing from the Ustvymlag transit point. They brought me here the day before yesterday, and from here they will take me further to Zheldorlag. It seems that this will be the last stage of our journey to the place of our imprisonment... My whole soul, my whole spirit is only you, my dears. Don't forget yours
unfortunate daddy... Be healthy. I kiss you deeply, deeply. Your father"
September 11, 1938 “...Today I am sent for treatment to point 42, and from there to Knyazh-Pogost, obviously, to an inpatient hospital. Bye
It doesn't matter to me at all. I’m all swollen and swollen, I can’t walk, I’m suffocating. But I hope that all this is a temporary phenomenon and good treatment in the hospital
Everything will pass quickly and I will be able to work. Be healthy. I kiss you deeply, deeply. Your father"
Chopin "E minor" 9. Slide “Crying wives”
The largest camps in which prisoners served their sentences were located on Solovki and Kolyma. Conditions of detention
prisoners in these camps resulted in great loss of life.
With the receipt of operational order No. 00486 of August 15, 1937, arrests of wives of traitors to the Motherland began throughout the country.
10-11. Slide "Camps"
Tariverdiev “Two in a cafe”, 12. Slide "Father's arrest", 13. Letter
From the memoirs of the daughter of the professor, head of the department of Kazan University, Deputy People's Commissar of Education of the TASSR Galina Tarasova:
“Father was arrested on the night of January 26-27, 1937. The days of bewildered silence and fear have come. Every night they took away one of the neighbors. Our yard is empty, no kids. They stopped coming to our house. Neither my mother nor my brother and I believed that our father was guilty. In March, the director called my mother and offered her to leave work. at will. We had absolutely nothing to live on. On the night of August 20-21, my mother was arrested. When she was arrested, she was told that she did not need to take anything with her. So in prison she ended up wearing only a summer dress, but in the camp she went barefoot. Kind people shared their clothes with her when she walked along the stage, barely alive.
For two years she did not know where her children were or what was happening to them. Mom will sit in the corner of the cell, look at the constantly burning light bulb and remain silent. My brother and I were sent to an orphanage.”
Melody Clauderman, 14. Slide "Burning tree"
As throughout the country, repressions in the Omsk region were widespread and affected all levels of society. In total, about 32,000 people were affected.
15. Slide shoe
In our village there are witnesses to those ancient and terrible events. They were torn from their usual life, experienced hunger and cold, and separation from relatives.
Tariverdiev “Two in a cafe”, 16-37 Slides “Repressed”
How can family forget? Karl Emmanuilovich Shaibel about that terrible time? A wave of repression overtook their family in 1941. They lived in the Saratov region, in the Volga region. He even the exact date I still remember August 28th. My father was taken to the labor army, and the entire village was told to take no more than one suitcase with them and prepare for eviction. He was then four years old. They were evicted to the Tyumen region, Ishim station. They were separated from their mother, she was sent to the labor army, and he and his younger brother, who was a little over a year old, were sent to an orphanage. They stayed there for three months, and the fear of getting lost forced them to hold hands the entire time. By some incredibly lucky chance, when they were about to evacuate the orphanage, it turned out that the mother was working nearby. And it’s quite a miracle that she managed to get them out, beg them from the authorities, take them away from orphanage with them, And now they are already traveling in calf carriages to Vorkuta, but the fear that they will now be separated again, taken away from their mother, makes them huddle under the bunks and beg their mother not to tell anyone that they are there.
On the way, the only bundle was stolen and they were left in what they were wearing when they arrived at the place of settlement at the Zapolyarny state farm. It was a colony. They were housed in a barracks where more than 200 people lived. The mother worked for days, and they were left alone. The living conditions were unbearable: hunger, bedbugs, rats. Women with older children lived on the second tier, and with infants on the lower bunks. This is how rats chewed off babies' fingers while they slept. Karl Emmanuilovich remembers all this as if it were yesterday. All this time they knew nothing about their father. There was no news about him for 10 years. The mother wrote to all authorities, many times, repeatedly, and one day she received an answer that he was in Yakutia, in the gold mines. He answered their letters and even sent money so that the mother and children could come to him. Having received this money, she bought clothes for the children, and distributed the rest to the same lonely and needy women she lived next to. Later, the father himself returned to them, the family united. The children studied, Karl Emmanuilovich graduated from the Izhevsk Medical Institute and was assigned to Yakutia, where he met his future wife and moved with her to Muromtsevo. This is fate.
Stepushkina Lyubov Lavrovna. They had an ordinary peasant family - father, mother, five children. A little arable land, a house, a horse and a cow, one problem - my father was literate. They fell under dispossession. Everything was taken away from them, life became unbearable, and the father was forced to move with his family to the Krasnodar region to live with relatives. Living here already, he, perhaps by chance,
let slip that he was dispossessed, and later they found out that this was done through a denunciation. He was taken away and shot at the age of 45. Then half the village was arrested and the children were taken away in an unknown direction. Children were taken from their mothers, but their mother for a long time she was hiding in the cellars, so she saved all five. She raised them alone. Is it possible to convey how difficult it was for her then? For everyone, they were enemies of the people, and wherever they turned for help, they were driven out from everywhere. The children had nothing to wear or put on. They waited for each other to grab clothes and go to school, even becoming swollen from hunger. But their mother went out, raised them all, and died without ever receiving news from their father. “Mom waited for him until her death, believed that he was alive, that he would return, he was not to blame for anything!” - Lyubov Lavrovna recalled. One day, to her next request to government agencies, she received an unexpectedly quick answer: he died in custody from anemia, and they even awarded him a pension. And in 1938, the NKVD “troika” sentenced him to death. They were shot in a prison in Minusinsk on the banks of the Abakan River. There were many of them then, sentenced to death, they were taken ashore, shot, and their corpses were thrown into the river. Before today Lyubov Lavrovna remembers everything.