Yesterday people in the capital of Khakassia solemnized the Day in
commemoration of the victims of political repressions. The meeting dedicated to
those who became innocent victims of the regime during the 1930s and 1940s,
traditionally took place at the memorial stone with its hundreds of names, which
today remind us of the high price the events in the Soviet-Union demanded.
There were, of course, many more people who had to suffer from despotism during those years, than the number of names carved in the stone. In Khakassia alone officially almost 4500 people have been acknowledged rehabilitated persons. If we take the country as a whole, the tragedy has a completely different dimension. Some talk of hundreds of thousands, others of millions of individuals who got between the millstones of the Soviet state machinery in those direful years. About the fate of many of them Their relatives were not able to find out details about the fates for many decades.
- My grandfather Grigoriy Stepanovith Kopylov was accused of
counter-revolutionary agitation in 1938 and shot in Minusinsk prison in August
of the same year. However, his mother learned about his fate only in 1989, when
he got his rehabilitation, - recalls Nadezhda Lukashevich, who was born ten
years after her grandfather’s death.
Hundreds of people such as Nadezhda arrive for the meeting every year in order to commemorate and honor their ancestors, lay down flowers and light candles in this saddening memorial place, where so many family names have been chiseled into the cold granite. They believe that new names will never appear on this stone wall again.
Viktor Lebedev
Khakassien, 31.10.2013