For the past nine years, starting from the year 2000, the hearts of the people have been being united by the museal campaign „What our hearts recall“ on the Day of commemoration of the victims of political repressions.
Many of the participants of this campaign are former prisoners of the GULAG special camps, relatives of victims of repressions, members of public organizations, employees of the regional museums and state archives of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, university lecturers and students as well as other representatives of different social classes.
Every year a cutter of the Yenisey inland water navigation company leaves from the Krasnoyarsk Museum Complex of Culture and History to a place somewhere in the middle of the river, in order to lower burning commemorative candles and wreaths to the water of the Yenisey.
Every year on this very day, the 30th October, a historic exhibition is opened, which tells about people, who were to suffer in the „masticators“ of political repressions at Soviet times. A concert, as well as the lowering of commemorative candles and wreaths down to the waters of the Yenisey complete the day. The 30th October became an official memorial day.
The very ardous work to restore the commemoration of the victims of political repressions, which required a great amount of endeavours and patience, was started in the late 1980s upon the initiative of the Krasnoyarsk affiliate of the International „Memorial“ Organization, mainly by ist chairman Vladimir Georigievich Sirotinin. Without the slightest support from the part of the State this organization began to train people’s consciousness and enlighten them by reporting about historic occurrences, facts and people.
V.G. Sirotinin was organizer and participant of numerous expeditions to the very north and the Far East – to places of former GULAG camps, and he spent a lot of time in various archives. The great number of objects they brought home from their trips and the records made from witness statements became concepts of the above-mentioned exhibitions.
Already in 2001 more participants from among regional museums, social
organizations and even very common people from different districts of the region
joined the project „What our hearts recall“. As a solidly united community they
put into practice the idea of lowering burning candles and wreaths to the waters
of rivers all over the region, thus commemorating
the deceased as well as the tragic moments and occurrences of those times.
Nowadays, the idea behind the project „What our hearts recall“ has joined
many regions. Apart from this ist original purpose has been extended and, hence,
received a new name -
„Moments of history“. It came off by the endeavours of people working for the
scientific research department under the direction of V.N. Bondareva in terms of
scientific workshops, master classes for museum project planning based on the
subject of „Political repressions in the USSR“, museum lectures and round-table
discussions. Moreover, and this is what remains as unchanged actions on the 30th
October, people proceed with the grand opening of exhibitions, the lowering of
fresh flowers and wreaths at the memorial stone and the lowering of burning
candles and wreathes to the water of the river Yenisey.