Remembering the repression of the Stalin era in Russia, return the human dimension to death

On October 29, all over the world, the memorial event for the victims of political terror, “Returning the Names,” took place. The names of the repressed — including those being repressed today — were read aloud in European cities, on both American continents, in Asian countries, and in Australia. And, of course, in Russia, where people remembered the victims of terror despite the opposition of officials and security forces.

The Barents Observer spoke with five participants of the “Returning the Names” event who are now living outside of Russia. The Russian state "awarded" one of our heroes with the title of a foreign agent when he left the country. Another heroine is facing threats from former countrymen. And only one of our interlocutors left the country of his own free will.

“Time is always ‘like that’”

Elena, Tbilisi (name changed at the request of the heroine). Left Russia for ideological reasons in the autumn of 2022.

You asked about what I feel. And I somehow didn’t admit it to myself, but probably it’s… it’s a feeling of guilt. Guilt because I still haven’t studied this story in any way. 

They did not speak in the family about the fact that there was a repressed person in our family. And even now they don’t speak. But my grandmother mentioned in passing that her father was taken away in 1937 because of a denunciation, and since then his fate was unknown. Grandmother couldn’t remember his patronymic, age, place of birth — all this is unknown. But the fact that he was taken away in 1937 — that’s for sure; grandmother was five years old then.

The family did not search for him and could not search. They themselves once fled from Latvia from the civil war and, as grandmother herself says, kept their heads down, lower than the grass, quieter than the water. In general, many things were not spoken about in the family.

Many participants of the “Returning the Names” event include the names of their relatives in the lists they read. But I can’t even do that, because I know almost nothing. When I became interested, it was already the beginning of the full-scale war, and “Memorial” was closed, and when I decided that I had to dig something up, I no longer understood where to turn and how to search at all.

So I read the names of people unknown to me. And it’s good that at least some names are known. And I really believe that it’s important — to name them.

My great-grandmother fled from the war, but did not find her homeland. They lived modestly, hiding, in fear. And now I myself feel like an exile. In Russia now there are people who are being killed in prisons. All this has returned because we, as a society, lacked openness and honesty. Because the people in power remained the same. My mother says about Stalin’s repressions: “That’s just how the time was.” I disagree. Time is always “like that.”

“Stalin ate him”

Alexey Duplyakov, Turku. Born in the Moscow region, received political asylum in Finland. While living in Russia, he took part in the protest movement, was a member of the “Yabloko” party. Left Russia after the announcement of mobilization. In 2024 organized the “Returning the Names” event in Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland. This year became the organizer of the event in the city of Turku in the southwest of Finland.

My own great-grandfather was a poorly literate peasant in a Ukrainian village. They had a community of Old Believers in Zhytomyr region. And no one knows why he was shot.

I found out about this rather by chance. At some point, I realized that my grandmother somehow didn’t share anything at all about her family, about her childhood, never mentioned her parents. And all I managed to get out of her was that she remembered her father poorly, because Stalin ate him. That was the exact phrasing.

I learned about my great-grandfather’s fate a few years ago: I went to study the “Memorial” database and stumbled upon his surname. I know about him that he was a laborer. He was accused of anti-revolutionary propaganda and shot by a troika verdict in the fall of 1937. It remains only to guess: perhaps they could have been repressed for their faith, for something carelessly said — but no one knows that.

That is, from my great-grandfather there remained only a scant summary from the archives. He was taken away at the end of 1937; my grandmother was 5–6 years old at that time, and she apparently really remembered her father poorly. But the fear that settled in the family was so deep that even decades later they did not speak about it.

 And it was not even part of family memory; there simply was no such person. But inside them something clearly was going on, and one can only guess what exactly. And when I think about how hard it is for me, I try to think about how hard it was for them, for my family.

On February 24, 2022, I woke up with the understanding that the country had changed. That is, everything we were doing already made no sense under conditions of a real war.

In the first days, I took part in protests against the so-called special military operation. I practically didn’t sleep for several days; everything merged into one big action… In the end, I was detained; a protocol was drawn up for participation in a rally. For me, this was not the first such fine, but this time something changed. The district policeman came and said that now was wartime, and if you get caught somewhere again, we’ll be talking to you differently.

We are already at the stage when people are being imprisoned for songs, when for a like on the internet one can easily get a real prison term. And if repetition has become possible, if repression has returned, then the memory of these events and their victims must also return. And it must be some kind of institutionalized memory that would be a guarantee that this time we will not let those who conduct and organize these repressions escape responsibility.

And I think it is very important to talk about history right now: what we can influence is precisely the work with memory, with legacy.

You read these names and realize — this person worked at a factory, and at the moment of death he was 28 years old, he is younger than you… This can be felt, lived through again — and opposed to the dehumanization that the state is imposing on us.

There is a famous phrase: “The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” We live in a time of war, every day we read in the news how another Russian missile hit another house in Ukraine, and people died there, and this just becomes a number. “Returning the Names” is an attempt to return the human dimension to death — and to repressions in general. There was this fate, and it was gone — simply because someone wanted it so.

“With their own death they paid for my right to speak freely”

Valery Potashov, Leipzig. Journalist in exile. Left Russia after the second search, during which handcuffs were put on him. At the moment of crossing the Latvian border, he received the status of a foreign agent from the Russian Ministry of Justice. Lives in Germany on a humanitarian visa.

Most people know the loud names of those repressed — directors, actors, priests. And behind them — hundreds of thousands of those whom today almost no one remembers. After all, the goal of repression is to grind a person into powder, into camp dust; and the meaning of the event is precisely to pronounce these names, to return them.

And also for me, for the past ten years, this event has been an act of solidarity with those who today resist the revenge of the NKVD. We went out to the streets with posters in support of Yury Dmitriev, and it was written there — “No to the NKVD’s revenge.” And some passers-by asked — what kind of revenge are we talking about? Well, today we have it in its pure form. When street musicians are given a repeated arrest for performing songs by “foreign agents” — that’s exactly what it is.

I have been participating in the “Returning the Names” event for a long time. Before that, I went to Sandarmokh, to Krasny Bor. And, as a rule, at such memorial events I remember, first of all, my grandmother’s brothers — one was shot, and the other died in the Gulag. And second — my fellow villagers from the village of Shizhnya and the village of Luzhmavarakka, which no longer exists.

Just to understand the scale of repression, it’s enough to enter the surname “Kanshiev” into the “Memorial” database. And one can see that, for example, from the village of Shizhnya four people were convicted who have this surname and the same patronymic. Most likely, they were brothers. Two of them died in the Gulag almost immediately; perhaps they died of disease, or they were shot during the transfer.

I believed that my grandmother’s brother Ivan, who was shot in Sandarmokh, and my grandmother’s brother Fyodor, who died in the camp, paid with their death for my right to speak freely. And literally until the summer of this year I was using this right; but the present state couldn’t care less about our rights and freedoms.

Society has not digested the lesson that was given in the last century. And it is precisely for that reason that this lesson is now being repeated. How was Germany able to build a democratic society? Only because they lost the war and went through repentance. We have had no repentance, and that is why we will repeat this lesson again and again.

“Now, it turns out, in my biography too my descendants will have something to study”

Irina Nippolainen, Leipzig. Originally from Karelia, lives in Germany on a humanitarian visa. Left the country after a search that took place at her place and at her friend’s place.

I am being threatened in my homeland. One businessman wrote that he would not let me live in peace if I return. Some woman was very indignant that I receive a Russian pension and very strongly wished that it would be taken away. And once I wrote on social networks that as soon as the regime changes, I will return on the first flight. And one of my students (I worked at school for 20 years) replied with malice: “That means you will never return.” That is, this is the classic story about “enemies of the people.”

Such a collapse, such disappointment in people. And now my hands are down, because I see no sense in anything at all; but repression is something the whole world must remember, hammer into every person’s head.

Of course, I consider myself repressed. If we had stayed, there would have been both trial and sentence. When I was engaged in genealogy, studying the history of my ancestors, I thought: “Well, just look at what kind of life they had…” That was in the early 2000s. And now it turns out that in my biography, too, my descendants will have something to study.

I found a lot of information about repressed ancestors; those are the names I read aloud at the recent event. While living in Karelia, I went to Sandarmokh; there I met Yury Dmitriev — and there, in Sandarmokh, the brother of my great-grandmother was killed. That is, this is the story of my family.

My mother’s grandfather refused to join the collective farm when collectivization happened. And he was labeled a kulak, given ten years in camps; I still don’t know where he died. His wife was taken to a camp for wives of enemies of the people; after the war she was released.

And I found another great-grandfather on the website “Returned Names.” And I literally got goosebumps, because my father didn’t know that he had been shot. I made an inquiry, and the FSB sent many documents about my relatives. And when you see this word — “to shoot” — it really sends chills down your spine.

One of the documents was signed personally by my great-grandfather; and his handwriting is just like my father’s! The great-grandfather was 60 years old; he had three children, including a minor one. And when I went to Sandarmokh and saw these execution pits, I imagined how he, an innocent man, was simply taken and killed.

One cannot not remember this — it’s simply impossible. People who don’t know this are now restoring monuments to Stalin, you understand? And this needs to be studied by the whole country. And history must not be distorted, as they are trying to do now with Sandarmokh.

Now I feel very much pain and very much fear from the fact that this is repeating, that people have not learned the lessons. Well, the archives are open, this has been spoken about, written about, right? One wanted to think that we, as a civilization, are moving forward. But it seems to me that this country will just keep going around in circles. No conclusions have been made, and the crowd again rushes with cries at “foreign agents,” at the “fifth column.”

“To intimidate and keep under control”

Mikhail Kopotev, Helsinki. Linguist, works at the University of Helsinki. Originally from Karelia, lives in Finland.

The Finnish part of my family in 1943 was exiled from Karelia to Siberia. My grandmother was pregnant with my mother, labor began, and they were unloaded at a random station in Ural — they didn’t make it to Siberia. And the rest of the relatives were taken further. Some kind people sheltered the small family, and that saved them.

By the way, I found out why, in fact, they were unloaded. My colleagues from the project “Echo of the Gulag” explained that in this way the convoy guards controlled the level of mortality: it was more profitable to unload people who might not make it, so as not to spoil the statistics.

I left Russia in 1999. I clearly remember that I came for the first Putin elections to vote against. Many were inspired by the young leader; for me, for example, it mattered that he spoke German. I don’t want to say that I predicted war — but his KGB past outweighed that unambiguously. There was such a feeling — “We don’t believe in this system.”

For those who are in power in Russia today, repression is an instrument they use whenever they need it. They needed to eliminate Politkovskaya to silence the tragedy in Chechnya — they eliminated Politkovskaya. And if in some situation they need to intimidate entire groups of people, they will do it.

The scale of Putin’s repressions is, after all, smaller than Stalin’s: back then there was some idea — a massive re-plowing of society through the destruction of entire classes, the resettlement of peoples. And Putin, it seems to me, has an idea — to intimidate and keep under control.

The format of the event — reading of names — is a very precise find. We show the scale of the tragedy. You receive a sheet of paper, and it says there — “peasant, engineer, teacher”; and it goes in such a flow, flow, flow… And this shows very well how monstrously massive the repressions were!

My wife and I recently watched a film about the Holocaust. There is a dark spot in Finnish history — eight Jews were handed over to the Nazis — and recently a film was made on that subject. And we were reasoning: should Finns be reminded of this endlessly? And should Russians be reminded of the tragedy of repressions? After all, we won’t endlessly talk about events, say, of the 5th century AD. Where is the boundary of our memory and responsibility?

And we came to the conclusion that if in the structure of society this danger remains, then one must remember. Soviet history — it is still ours. And if we still feel belonging to a certain period of history, we must remind of what was done in that period — of the successes, and of the terrible things.

There is a Harvard professor, Steven Pinker, who believes that over time the bloodthirstiness of societies decreases, and with each turn of history fewer people perish. If we speak about some foreseeable horizon, I am very pessimistic: I think Russia for decades is bogged down in this semi-repressive, semi-dictatorial swamp. But in some long-term perspective, the wheel of history will pull all countries out of this swamp. Only, I’m afraid, this will not happen in our lifetime.