In the northwestern Russian republic of Karelia, an annual commemoration for victims of Stalinist repression was interrupted by Cossacks and other government supporters, according to a Monday report from the Memorial Human Rights organization. The event, honoring those who suffered during Stalin’s era of political persecution, was disrupted by these people who appeared to be emanating from centuries of the darkest nightmares of Russian Jews.
Sandarmokh is a mountainous forest some 7.5 miles from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia, where thousands of victims of Stalin’s Great Terror, many of them Jews, were executed and buried there by the NKVD (the KGB predecessor) in 236 communal pits over 14 months in 1937 and 1938.
The Memorial Society issued the following announcement on Telegram:
Today, August 5, continuing a long-standing tradition, dozens of people came to the Sandarmokh tract near Medvezhegorsk in Karelia to remember the people shot and buried here during the Great Terror.
Representatives of embassies and consulates from various countries — France, Sweden, Germany, Poland, and Norway — also came to Sandarmokh.
They also brought in whole buses of Cossacks, representatives of the Young Guard, and other activists close to the security forces. They are wearing militarized uniforms; many have St. George ribbons and masks. At the Jewish memorial, you can hear: “Jews sponsored Hitler.”
Strange posters are hung on the trees and near the monuments — for example, about Finland and about Emilia Slabunova from the Karelian Yabloko.
Since the morning, pressure has been coming to activists in Petrozavodsk – many have been visited by security forces, and some are now in police custody. A search was conducted at the home of blogger Alexey Trunov. The activists were planning to participate in the Memorial Day that is taking place in Sandarmokh today.
Recall that several media outlets were searched several days ago.
Despite all this, people have updated memorial signs, laid flowers, read names, and lit candles at the monuments to those shot in Sandarmokh.
The Moscow Times reported that activists previously accused the Russian authorities of trying to cover up evidence of Stalin-era repressions in Sandarmokh by carrying out archaeological digs for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed when Karelia was occupied by Nazi-aligned Finland during World War II.
