MOSCOW: Priests consecrated a towering wooden cross Wednesday at a site south of Moscow where at the height of Josef Stalin's political purges 70 years ago firing squads had executed thousands of people.
Created at a monastery that housed one of the first Soviet labor camps and brought by barge to Moscow along a canal built on the bones of gulag inmates, the 12-meter (40-foot) cross has been embraced as memorial to the mass suffering under Stalin.
"This cross is devoted to those who lost their lives at two Russian Golgothas," said Igor Garkavy, the head of the memorial center at the former Butovo firing range.
The ceremony at the Church of New Martyrs and Confessors, built recently at the Butovo site, is one of a series of events planned throughout this year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Great Purge of 1937, when millions were labeled "enemies of the state" and executed without trial or sent to labor camps.
Hundreds of people, most of them women wearing colorful headscarves, laid flowers and lit candles under the cross. The crowd, led by Russian Orthodox priests carrying icons, continued to the execution and burial site for a service. Some of the women were crying.
Created at a monastery that housed one of the first Soviet labor camps and brought by barge to Moscow along a canal built on the bones of gulag inmates, the 12-meter (40-foot) cross has been embraced as memorial to the mass suffering under Stalin.
"This cross is devoted to those who lost their lives at two Russian Golgothas," said Igor Garkavy, the head of the memorial center at the former Butovo firing range.
The ceremony at the Church of New Martyrs and Confessors, built recently at the Butovo site, is one of a series of events planned throughout this year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Great Purge of 1937, when millions were labeled "enemies of the state" and executed without trial or sent to labor camps.
Hundreds of people, most of them women wearing colorful headscarves, laid flowers and lit candles under the cross. The crowd, led by Russian Orthodox priests carrying icons, continued to the execution and burial site for a service. Some of the women were crying.
There were no representatives of the government, which has shown little interest in the anniversary of the Great Purge. This is in keeping with efforts by President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, to restore Russians' pride in their Soviet-era history by softening the public perception of Stalin's rule.
"We have been ordered to be proud of our past," said Yan Rachinsky from Memorial, a non-governmental group dedicated to investigating Stalin's repression.
"I know no other example in history when 700,000 people were killed within 1 1/2 years only for political reasons," he said in an interview Wednesday.
The wooden cross was carved at a monastery on the Solovki Islands in the White Sea, one of the earliest and most notorious camps in the gulag.
It arrived in Moscow on Monday after a 13-day journey that took it down the Belomorkanal, a 227-kilometer (141-mile) canal linking the White Sea with Lake Onega, which was built between 1931 and 1993 entirely by gulag inmates.
An estimated 100,000 people, many of them victims of political repression, died as they built the canal using only wheelbarrows, sledgehammers and axes. The construction was supervised by the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB.
The Butovo range was used for executions in the 1930s and until after Stalin's death in 1953. Some 20,000 people, including priests and artists, were killed there in 1937-38 alone.
Putin said in June that although the 1937 purge was one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalin era, no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about it because "in other countries even worse things happened."
The Russian president, who was speaking to a gathering of history teachers, suggested the United States' use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II was among those things.
"We have been ordered to be proud of our past," said Yan Rachinsky from Memorial, a non-governmental group dedicated to investigating Stalin's repression.
"I know no other example in history when 700,000 people were killed within 1 1/2 years only for political reasons," he said in an interview Wednesday.
The wooden cross was carved at a monastery on the Solovki Islands in the White Sea, one of the earliest and most notorious camps in the gulag.
It arrived in Moscow on Monday after a 13-day journey that took it down the Belomorkanal, a 227-kilometer (141-mile) canal linking the White Sea with Lake Onega, which was built between 1931 and 1993 entirely by gulag inmates.
An estimated 100,000 people, many of them victims of political repression, died as they built the canal using only wheelbarrows, sledgehammers and axes. The construction was supervised by the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB.
The Butovo range was used for executions in the 1930s and until after Stalin's death in 1953. Some 20,000 people, including priests and artists, were killed there in 1937-38 alone.
Putin said in June that although the 1937 purge was one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalin era, no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about it because "in other countries even worse things happened."
The Russian president, who was speaking to a gathering of history teachers, suggested the United States' use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II was among those things.
7 comments:
How very nice to see the Russian clergy and people at the new Christian shrine to those who died in Stalin's purges.
I can't quite see this being allowed in China.
I suppose Putin is in one sense correct to say that "worse things happened elsewhere".
In terms of numbers, many millions more died in China under Mao Tse Tung.
Millions died in Germany under Hitler, but fewer, it is estimated, than died in Russia under Stalin.
I can't see it's anything to be proud of.
That Creep Putin can take a FLYING LEAP off a very short bridge chains wrapped around his throat. DEAD is DEAD. No matter how it's done. If Japan hadn't have attacked the US in the first place, they wouldn't have had to worry. What does it say about the Japanese that it took TWO nukes for them to surrender? They would have fought to the last man otherwise, causing millions of more deaths.
That creep Putin is a typical Atheistic prize. Dead is DEAD. Whether shot with a fowling piece or nuked. One is not "deader" than another. The fact that it took, not ONE but TWO nuclear devices to end WWII in Asia, tells you that millions more would have died had it not been for the nukes. The Japanese would have fought to the last man. They almost required a THIRD nuke, until they came to their senses and finally threw the towel in.
Karen,
Dropping the Bomb on Japan forced them into unconditional surrender, thereby saving a military campaign and the countless number of lives an invasion would have cost.
Correct me if I've got my history wrong, but was it also not the case that President Truman knew he had to bring a swift end to the war in the Far East to forestall an invasion by the Soviets.
(And we know what that would have meant : look at eastern Europe after it was "liberated" by the Russian army.)
In addition, hubris is invariably followed by nemesis.
Japan really shouldn't have taken on the might of the U.S.A. when it attacked Pearl Harbor ...
Isn't it interesting that a nation which worshipped the Sun in the person of the Emperor should have had two of its cities destroyed by the forces that drive it?
Dr. Wright: ABSOLUTELY right!!! Don't mess with Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam won't mess with you. And, as a matter of fact, Stalin DID invade northern China in the last week before the Japanese threw in the towel.
There is a little something to be said in favor of PAtton. The movie portrays him as wanting to kick the Russians back into Russia "where those *@)#E)FS belong! -- you give me THREE DAYS, and I'll do it and I'll make it look like they started it." Would have saved us 40+ years of the eastern block capitulation to Soviet Rule.
I, for one, will be furious if Russia slides back into communism. The sooner Putin is gone, the better. He's nothing but a Felix Dzhersinsky[sp!!!] in modern clothing. Putin delenda est! Sic semper Tyrannus!
I am sorry Yeltsin wasn't around longer. There was a true patriot and a real man.
And sorry for the double post before...I thought Bill Gates had vaporized the first.
Karen H. San Diego, Ca.
Karen,
Thanks for your opinion.
I'm afraid I'm no expert in modern history, with few books on the subject in the house.
Yes, I gained the impression that Putin is a revisionist historian, re-writing the past to suit himself.
I'm told a famous dictum of the communist party is :
"The Truth, comrade, is whatever serves the interest of the party."
Post a Comment