De Telegraaf:
Groot kruis voor slachtoffers zuiveringen Stalin

BUTOVO
In Butovo vlakbij Moskou is woensdag een groot houten kruis
opgezet ter nagedachtenis van de slachtoffers
van de bolsjevistische Sovjet-dictator Stalin.

Dat gebeurde op een plek waar op 8 augustus 1937
duizenden vermeende ‘vijanden van het volk’
werden geexecuteerd.
Het kruis van hout uit Siberie is 12,5 meter hoog
en 7,6 meter breed.

Tijdens de ‘zuivering’ van ‘anticommunistische elementen’
werden in 1937/38 honderdduizenden Sovjetburgers gedood;
miljoenen mensen werden naar kampen gestuurd.
De massa-executies gingen ook na november 1938
op een lager pitje door, tot Stalins dood in 1953.

Mensenrechtenorganisaties hekelen
dat de miljoenen slachtoffers van Stalin
nooit een schadeloosstelling hebben gekregen.

Een aantal van de foto’s bij dit stukje
komen uit een boek dat ik onlangs kocht in Amsterdam.
Het boek heet Gulag.
Het is gemaakt door Tomasz Kizny.
Het is een enorm groot boek met prachtige, vaak dramatische foto’s.
Foto’s van hoe Rusland er nu (jaren ’80 en ’90 vorige eeuw)
en toen (archief opnames ed) uitzag.
Solovki (Solovetski), het Witte Zee Kanaal en Kolyma
zijn een paar van de bestemmingen.

BBC newsGiant cross to mark Stalin terror
A giant cross commemorating the victims of Stalin’s terror
70 years after the worst of the purges has reached Moscow
after a journey from northern Russia.
It was taken by boat from the Solovetsky Islands,
site of a prison camp, and will be erected
at a former execution ground outside the capital.
An estimated 20,000 people, 1,000 of them Christians,
were executed at the Butovo range between 1937 and 1938.
The Siberian cedar cross is 12.5m high and 7.6m wide.
Its journey from the islands began on 25 June
and part of its route followed the White Sea Canal,
a Stalinist construction project which claimed
the lives of thousands of convicts.
It was constructed at the Solovetsky Monastery
over six months.
Russian human rights activists fear that the Gulag
and Stalin’s crimes are not being properly commemorated
by the Russian authorities,
and the memory of the victims may be lost to future generations.
“There’s a new regime that wants heroes, not victims,
“Tatyana Voronina, a researcher
at the human rights organisation Memorial,
told AFP news agency.
“They prefer to celebrate the victory in World War II.
It doesn’t make you feel proud when you know
that it’s your own people who did this.”

AsiaNews.it
Churches and monasteries in Moscow
recall the victims of Stalins Great Terror
August 8 on the 70th anniversary of the beginning
of the great repression of “the people’s enemies”,
the Russian Orthodox Church will pray
for the thousands of victims.
At the Butovo shooting range, where the followers
of various religions were massacred,
the great cross of the Solovki Archipelagos
site of the first Gulag will arrive.

Moscow (AsiaNews)
Orthodox Churches and monasteries across Moscow
will join in prayer on August 8th
to remember the victims of the Great Terror
the 70th anniversary of the beginning
of the mass executions of 1937-38 in the Butovo shooting range,
close to the Russian capital.
Here under the Stalinist regime, the NKVD secret police
shot and buried “enemies of the state”x9d,
in this case above all priests, religious and lay of all:
above all the Orthodox, but also Catholics, Jews,
Muslims and Armenians.
The public foundation St. Andrews Flag, has initiated
an international religious education project called
“Under the Star of the Mother of God.”
Under this project, a river cross-procession from Solovki to Butovo
started with a blessing of Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia.
It is devoted to the victims of the political repression of the 1930s.
The Solovki archipelago was the deportation centre
for all opposes of the communist ideologies,
and where in 1923 the first nucleus of what was to become
infamous as the Gulag, the Stalinist concentration camps.
In the Moscow Churches a funeral rite or panikhida,
will be held commemorating the victims of the mass killings of 1937-1938.
According to some of the data which has emerged
from the Lubjanka archives, in Butovo,
in the space of 14 months over 20,675 people were killed.
In all, according to official estimates,
the Great Terror (1937-38) provoked over 700 thousand deaths.

Reuters:
Stalin’s victims honoured in emotional memorial
By Conor Sweeney

BUTOVO, Russia (Reuters) –
Relatives of Stalin’s victims
gathered at a new memorial outside Moscow on Wednesday
beside a firing range which became one of the most notorious killing fields
during the era of Soviet repression.
A new 12 metre wooden cross,
built on the gulag island of Bolshoi Solovetsky near the Arctic circle,
was blessed during an emotional Russian Orthodox service
held on the 70th anniversary of the start of the murders at the site.
Relatives shed tears and laid flowers as they recalled how their loved ones
had perished.
Records at the site show at least 20,760 people were killed and buried
in mass graves at the Butovo firing range in the two years from 1937 to 1939.
Many of the dead were priests.
On the first day of the killings, August 8 1937, 91 people were shot dead,
while the daily toll peaked at 562 on February 28, 1938.
Across Russia, millions more died during Stalin’s purges,
most in prison or forced labour camps, known as gulags,
which were spread across the Soviet Union.
During the service, held in bright summer sunshine
as part of the Church’s commemoration, relatives wept
and told of their search for information about parents and grandparents.
Some clutched photos of loved ones and explained
how they had trawled for information from the secret police archives.
Nina, a middle-aged woman holding a photograph of her grandfather,
was in tears as she told his story.
“I came here today to pay my last respects to my grandfather.
He was buried in one of the 13 mounds where the victims are,
but we don’t know which one,” she said.
“Andrei Sergeyevich was a good character, he wasn’t a bad man,
but they detained him because he was the best in his village.
He didn’t agitate for anything and you see how beautiful he was,
like the tsar, he was innocent,” she said.
Now aged 87 and blind, Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko
was himself arrested three times, the last in 1943,
but came to the ceremony to honour his father,
who was murdered at Butovo.
A historian and director of a gulag museum,
he discovered details about his father in secret police archives
that were partially opened up after the fall of the Soviet Union.
But the frail old man complained that Russia
still hasn’t come to terms with its past.
“I feel pity, because I visited the place where our secret service
killed many Polish officers in 1940, in Katyn,
now there are many memorials there,” he said,
contrasting it with Russia’s failure to identify all the victims of the terror.
“There is no murdered person without a name,
they know everybody who was killed there.
In Russia, we have many victims who are still anonymous,
whereas Polish people respect these heroes very much,” he said.
After the lengthy Russian Orthodox service,
many elderly people climbed the mound of stone erected
around the cross to leave candles, flowers and say some prayers,
though many had no personal link to the site.
“In future we’ll have to love our enemies like our friends,”
said Yevgeny Naumkin, after kneeling before the cross.
In front of the raised mounds containing the remains of the victims,
another young woman, Anya Sverdlova, knelt in prayer.
“I think it’s an important memorial, but not many people know about it,”
she said. “Every Russian family suffered from the political oppression.”