Who is remembered on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression

The day of remembrance of the victims of political repression was established as a mournful date in 1991, shortly before the end of the existence of the Soviet Union as a single state.

October 30 was the day when all those who had finished their days at the Kolyma fellings, in the cellars of the NKVD, the GPU, the Cheka, the MGB and other punitive institutions serving the communist regime were commemorated.

Why exactly in 1937?

Part of the truth about what happened to the convicts under Article 58, Soviet citizens learned in 1956, having familiarized themselves with the materials of the XX Congress. Intention to question the cornerstone of the socialist state system in the First Secretary of the CPSU NS. Khrushchev was not, he believed in the inevitability of the victory of communism. A bold attempt was made to inspire the working people with the idea of the accidental nature of millions of tragedies.

In memory of the victims of political repressions, several episodes of feature films were devoted, which, as a rule, ended more or less safely, and the figure "1937" was firmly entrenched in the mind as a symbol of lawlessness and arbitrariness. Why did you choose this year? After all, the number of people arrested and shot in previous, and subsequent periods, was not less, and sometimes even greater.

The reason is simple. In 1937, the leadership of the CPSU (B.) Took up the purge of the ranks of its own party. The role of "enemies of the people" was tried on by those who recently themselves were engaged in determining the degree of loyalty of a citizen, deciding his future destiny. Such a life crash is remembered for a long time.

Victims or executioners?

Establishing the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions, many deputies of the Supreme Council, following the communist convictions, again tried to convince the general public, and sometimes themselves, that socialism with some special, "human" face is possible. As examples, "bright images" of such communist-Leninists as Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, Blyukher, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov or Kamenev were cited. The calculation was uncomplicated, despite the general secondary education and the accessibility of studies in higher education institutions, the citizens of the country of the Soviets treated the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism formally, on the principle of "memorized, passed, forgot."

It was assumed that on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression the people would remember the executed members of the Lenin Politburo, the executioners of Kronstadt and Tambov, the theoreticians of the proletarian dictatorship and other representatives of the Bolshevik elite rehabilitated in the late fifties or in Gorbachev's years.

Memory of the people's colors

The truth, however, is the incontrovertible fact that the purge of the ranks of the CPSU (b) was a logical continuation of the Party's general line for the supreme suppression of any dissent. Beginning in 1917, a deliberate extermination of the color of Russian society was carried out. The mass executions of peasants, clergymen, professors, engineers, military men, representatives of creative professions for twenty years were considered a historically natural process, they were applauded and joyfully hooted by Bukharin, Radek, Zinoviev and similar "loyal Leninists" as long as they themselves Did not fall under Stalin's ax.

On the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, it is possible to recall those who resisted totalitarianism in the post-Stalin years, and there were many of them. The beginning of the sixties was marked by several large-scale popular uprisings that broke out in Novocherkassk (1962), Krasnodar (1961), Odessa (1960) and other cities. Shooting demonstrations, secret trials on "organizers", executions of sentences became the result.

The Solovetsky stone on the Lubyanka became the place where former prisoners, their descendants and anyone who remembers the truth or wants to know it lay flowers on the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Repression. Such, unfortunately, is becoming less.