Moscow, October 30, 2018
Photo: foma.ru The Day of the Memory of the Victims of Political Repression is being celebrated throughout Russia and Europe today.
The establishment of this memorial day is connected with two events: Firstly, On October 30, 1974, the political prisoners of the Mordovia and Perm camps declared a hunger strike to protest against the political repressions of the USSR; and secondly, the memory of the victims was first officially marked on October 30, 1991, by order of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
The annual event “Voice of Memory” is being held today at the Butovo firing range outside of Moscow, that was used as a site of executions and mass graves by the godless soviets from 1938 to 1953, reports Foma.
The event includes a memorial service in the Church of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Butovo, and the reading out of the victims’ names on the territory of the graves. According to Pravmir, a reading of names is being held in nearly 30 cities throughout Russia and Europe.
The very ground there is holy, soaked with the blood of a whole host of New Martyrs. Of course, the Soviet Union’s repressions were not only strictly political in nature but were also religious and ethnic.
20,762 were shot and killed at Butovo in 1937-1938, the time of the Great Terror, alone—mostly residents of Moscow and its suburbs. About 1,000 of them are known to have been killed explicitly for professing the Orthodox faith, and more than 300 of them have already been glorified as New Martyrs, with the list being periodically expanded.
A special feature of this year’s commemorations is the ringing of “memory bells” in Moscow, the Moscow and Leningrad Provinces, Krasnodar, Ekaterinburg, and Magadan, for the first time, reports the site of the GULAG History Museum.
Wall of Sorrow. Photo: gmig.ru In Moscow, the event is being held at the Wall of Sorrow that was opened by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill and President Vladimir Putin on this day last year, where people are laying flowers and lighting candles in honor of the memory of the victims of repression.
May the memories of the victims be eternal!
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