Victims of Stalin’s Terror to Be Remembered in Moscow

File Photo of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin

MOSCOW. Oct 19 (Interfax) – Victims of Stalin’s terror will be remembered at the Solovetsky Stone monument on Moscow’s Lubyanka street on October 29 in a ceremony titled “The Return of the Names.”

The ceremony will be held ahead of the Day of Memory for Victims of Political Reprisals, marked on October 30, and it is being organized by the rights society Memorial.

Flowers are laid, candles are lit and photographs of victims are traditionally put up at such ceremonies.

“We will be reading the names of victims, executed in Moscow during Stalin’s era, announcing their age, profession and date of execution, from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. on October 29,” Memorial’s Executive Director Yelena Zhemkova told Interfax.

“The ceremony has been authorized. Not more than 500 participants can attend it at one time. There will not be viewers at the ceremony. Only participants,” she said.

By tradition, the ceremony will be opened by Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin who will be the first to read out the names. The ceremony will be attended by guests from other cities and from abroad, among them European Parliament members, Zhemkova said.

The first Return of the Names ceremony was held in 2006.

About 30,000 people were executed in Moscow in the period of Stalin’s terror in 1937-1938, according to Memorial.

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