30 October 2024
by Anna Karetnikova and Riva Evstifeeva
Source: Facebook
On 29 October in Strasbourg around 30 people gathered in Republic Square in order to read aloud the names of the victims of Soviet political repression and, for the first time in the history of the “Returning the Names” event, the list now includes the political prisoners killed in Russia in the 21st century.
In Alsace, anti-war Russian residents, along with concerned French citizens and university students (among them, an inconsolable mother mourning two sons stands as a heart-rending reminder of the tragic fate of the neighbouring region), gathered by a monument commemorating the residents of Strasbourg who fell in the First World War.
At the outset, Tatyana Davidis (Memorial-PZK) gave an overview of the history of the event, initially organised in Moscow in 2007, as an effort to preserve collective memory on repression, and a counterweight to the authorities’ opportunistic attempts to hijack and downplay Political Prisoners’ Day held on 30 October in Russia, with the former at pains to make this day of commemoration overly formal and impersonal.
Long queues formed by the Solovetsky Stone, at Lubyanka Square; Tatyana recalls how she stood in line for four hours, yet still didn’t manage to get near the microphone – there were that many people taking part. As of five years ago, conducting such events in Moscow and Russia has been prohibited, but people continue to gather –by monuments, along city excursion routes– all with the aim of restoring the memory of those who have died.
Anna Karetnikova (Memorial-PZK, previously a member of the Social Monitoring Commission and leading analyst at UFSIN) noted bitterly that lessons from history had not been learnt. Today once again in Russia there are thousands of political prisoners (3,000 according to partial estimates), to which 7,000 Ukrainian troops and civilian prisoners could be added, of whose fates almost nothing is known. Besides, the tragic list of political prisoners is growing. Currently there are already around twenty people listed on it who died in detention or directly after their release, as a result of torture or heinous detention conditions. Karetnikova recalled both the political prisoner situation in Belarus –in which conditions are even worse– and also the numerous political prisoners detained under an incommunicado regime, i.e. with a complete ban on correspondence.
Those participating in the event read out the names and short biographies from Memorial database cards about the victims of USSR repression, after which around twenty new names were read out. These were the names of victims of political repression in recent times, who were killed or died as a result of detention in the 21st century. These cards were prepared by participants in the “Memorial-PZK” project, the comprehensive version of this tragic list can be found on: https://memopzk.org/…/spisok-pogibshih-zhertv…/ Names of victims were read out in both Russian and French.
Several event participants recounted how the repression had affected their families and ancestors. One such individual, Karinna Moskalenko, brought along a photo of her grandfather, whom she had never even met. He had fallen victim to the Great Terror of the ’30s and died while under interrogation. Stories were told about those also currently in prison who were personal acquaintances of the event’s participants.
Messages from political prisoners in penal colonies and remand prisons and supporting the “Returning the Names” event were read out. In these messages the prisoners also spoke of how they saw the undoubted importance and topicality of the event.
Evgeny Zharin, a priest at the Apostolic Church, led prayers for the victims of Putin’s regime, for those murdered owing to their political, journalistic or human rights activities, and for the victims of repression who have died while in prison. Aleksei Navalny’s name was heard on multiple occasions at the event.
Once the event had come to a close, Riva Evstifeeva (from the university of Strasbourg) proposed that participants join forces to send letters and greetings cards to political prisoners in Russia and Belarus. She noted that just recently that following their recent release resulting from a prisoner swap, Ilya Yashin, Aleksey Pivovarov and Vladimir Kara-Murza had sincerely thanked those who had supported them on the outside, in so doing helping them to cope with their often-unbearable conditions of detention. Evstifeeva also read out the words of Liliya Chanysheva stating that detainees do not have access to sufficient information about what is going on beyond prison walls, so that even small anecdotes about a new song one is listening to, or new trends on social networks can be a real tonic to those inside.
The forty or so postcards created over the course of the evening by volunteers will be sent to prisons and detention facilities.
The organisers of the event urged those in attendance to keep on supporting prisoners of conscience being held in prisons in Belarus and Russia, as well as to keep fighting to preserve the memory of just how horrendous the scale of political repression can be. The forgetting of these past events has resulted more than once in history repeating itself.
Translated by Nathalie Wilson
