Remember the Date: 30 October - Day to Commemorate Victims of Political Repression

posted 30 Oct 2015, 00:27 by Rights in Russia   [ updated 30 Oct 2015, 00:44 ]
In Russia 30 October is the official Day to Commemorate the Memory of Victims of Political Repression. On 30 October 1974, on the initiative of a number of political prisoners, the Day of the Political Prisoner was first marked in the USSR. According to Arseny Roginsky, head of the International Memorial Society, the action began in Mordovan camps, and then spread to camps in Perm and Vladimir prison. The prisoners, Roginsky has said, wanted to 'announce: "We are here, we are struggling, we haven't been broken".' Many went on hunger strike. That same day a press conference was held for foreign correspondents in the apartment of Andrei Sakharov at which Sakharov, Sergei Kovalev and Tatyana Velikanova set out the demands of the political prisoners. On 18 October 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR adopted a law on the rehabilitation of victims of political respression and established 30 October as the Day to Commemorate the Memory of Victims of Poltical Repression.

Photo: International Memorial Society

Source: 'Zapomni etu istoriiu,' Bol'shoi Gorod, 29 October 2011

See also: 'Жертвы политического террора в СССР,' Memorial
'Great Purge,' Wikipedia
'Timeline of the Great Purge,' Wikipedia
N.G. Okhotin, A.B. Roginsky, "Great Terror": Brief ChronologyMemorial, 2007
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