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Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression
Every year in Russia, October 30 is the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression. Officially, this Day was established by Resolution of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR of October 18, 1991 № 1763/1-1 “On the establishment of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression” in connection with the adoption on October 18, 1991 of the Law of the RSFSR № 1761-1 “On the rehabilitation of the victims of political repressions" (since October 15, 1993 - Law of the Russian Federation).
The legally established date of October 30 is due to the fact that on this day in 1974, prisoners of the Mordovian and Perm camps went on a hunger strike to protest against political repression in the USSR and declared October 30 as Political Prisoner Day in the USSR. Since then, on October 30, hunger strikes by political prisoners have taken place annually in the Soviet Union, and since 198, the demonstrations have taken place in major cities of the country.
According to the Law of the RSFSR of October 18, 1991 “On the rehabilitation of the victims of political repression” in force in the Russian Federation (as amended on December 28, 2022), political repression “recognizes various coercive measures applied by the state for political reasons, in the form of deprivation life or freedom, placement for compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospitals, deportation from the country and deprivation of citizenship, eviction of population groups from places of residence, referral to exile, deportation and special settlement, involvement in forced labor under conditions of restriction of freedom, as well as other deprivation or restriction of the rights and freedoms of persons recognized as socially dangerous to the state or political system based on class, social, national, religious or other characteristics”.
At the moment, it is not possible to establish the exact number of people who were subjected to political repression during the years of Soviet power, mainly due to the secrecy of some archival materials. In 1954, in a certificate addressed to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N. S. Khrushchev signed by the Prosecutor General of the USSR R. A. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S. N. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K. P. Gorshenin, the number of people convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the period 1921–1954 amounted to 3,777,380 people: sentenced to capital punishment, execution – 642,980; for detention in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below - 2,369,220; for exile and expulsion - 765 180. “Certificates of the 1st special department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR on the number of those arrested and convicted by the bodies of the Cheka - OGPU - NKVD - MGB of the USSR in the period 1921-1953” dated December 11, 1953, signed by the head of the archive department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Pavlov, which, in all likelihood, were based on the above-mentioned certificate of 1954, the number of those accused of committing counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes amounted to 4,060,306 people, of which 799,455 sentenced to death, 2,631,397 to detention in camps and prisons, 413,512 to exile and deportation, 215,942 to “other measures.” The discrepancies in the data can be explained by the fact that in the certificates of the archive department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1953, criminal offenders were also taken into account.
According to statistics compiled in 1988 based on data from KGB departments for 31 union and autonomous republics of the USSR and 54 regional departments, which is stored in the Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation, in 1918–1953. State security agencies arrested 4,308,487 people, of whom almost every fourth (835,194) were shot. At the same time, the summary statistics available in the Department of Registration and Archival Foundations of the FSB of the Russian Federation note that over the entire Soviet period (1918–1990), 3,853,900 people were convicted of state crimes and some other articles of criminal legislation of a similar nature people, of which 827,995 were sentenced to death.
Political repressions reached a special scale in the 1930s and early 1950s, when only in 1937 and 1938. (years of the Great Terror), 1 million 345 thousand people were convicted on political charges and 682 thousand were sentenced to death, which is approximately 82% of the number of those executed during the entire Soviet period. In the 1930s–1940s. Whole population groups, in particular the so-called “kulaks” and individual peoples (Koreans, Germans, Ingrian Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks) were also subjected to political repression. About 1.2 million people died in places of deportation (including peasant families and deported peoples). In total, the victims of political terror in the USSR (executed and died in places of detention and exile), according to various data, based mainly on documentary materials, were from 2.6 to 4–6 million people.
The rehabilitation of the victims of political repression in the USSR began after the death of J. Stalin in 1953. In the 1960-1970s. the process slowed down and was resumed again during the years of perestroika. On August 13, 1990, USSR President M. S. Gorbachev signed a decree “On the restoration of the rights of all victims of political repression of the 1920s-1950s”. On April 26, 1991, the Supreme Council of the RSFSR adopted the law “On the rehabilitation of repressed peoples”. On October 18, 1991, the President of the RSFSR Boris Yeltsin signed the law “On the rehabilitation of the victims of political repression”.
In 2015, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev approved the concept of state policy to perpetuate the memory of victims of political repression, the implementation period of which, on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation, was extended until 2024. The concept involves the creation of educational programs, the creation of conditions for free access users to archival documents and other materials, development and implementation of effective public policy in the field of perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression. In 2021, on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, the non-profit organization “Memory Foundation” began the development of a unified database of victims of political repression, which will include the currently identified names of over 3.2 million repressed people.
One of the first monuments in memory of the victims of political repression in Russia was the Solovetsky Stone, installed on October 30, 1990 in the park near the Polytechnic Museum on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. A similar stone was installed in 2002 in St. Petersburg on Trinity Square, not far from the House of Political Prisoners. On the territory of the Solovetsky Islands from 1923 to 1933 the Solovetsky Special Purpose Forced Labor Camp (SLON) was open, and from 1933 to 1939 - GUGB NKVD prison. In 2017, a national memorial to the victims of political repression, the “Wall of Sorrow” was opened in Moscow on Academician Sakharov Avenue.
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Based on the Presidential Library's materials:
Индивидуальный и массовый террор в годы Гражданской войны // 1918 год: [цифровая коллекция]