An evening of mourning for Russian political prisoners and martyrs.
The Russian Canadian Democratic Alliance (RCDA) held its annual Returning the Names event on Oct. 29 in remembrance of the victims of past and present persecution.
The names and a short description of victims of the state’s crackdowns were read aloud. Participants paid tribute to both victims of Stalinist purges and political prisoners who lost their lives in the prisons of modern Russia.
RCDA director and Concordia psychology student Olga Babina mentioned the death of Pavel Kushnir, a 39-year-old Russian pianist, writer, and political activist who died on July 27 while on hunger strike in a pre-trial detention centre in Birobidzhan, Russia. Kushnir was arrested for his anti-war stance.
Babina explained the importance of memory, resilience, and knowledge of history in creating awareness around these issues.
“Memory as we see it is a form of resilience, to remember those names and revealing those crimes give us a chance for the future,” Babina said.
This yearly commemoration began in 2007 in Moscow at the Solovetsky Stone in Lubyanka Square. The Solovetsky Stone comes from a forced labour camp that is now located in front of the headquarters of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). Thousands of people assemble every year in Moscow and several other cities internationally. The ceremony was shared in a live stream.
Russian human rights non-governmental organization Memorial installed numerous commemorative plates in places where people were executed. The Russian government has made the group’s activities prohibited, shut down this group and has begun removing these plates.
“Today, in Russia, these punishers are being portrayed as national heroes in State controlled media and schools,” Pavel Fadeev, a sociologist and research assistant at McGill, explained.
Leonid Dzhalilov, a mathematics professor and a former deacon in Moscow, was also present. He explained that there have been severe ongoing persecutions throughout Russia’s history. Dzhalilov said that Yuri Andropov, the former head of the Soviet Union’s Committee for State Security (KGB) security service, is a role model for Putin.
He said that there is a return today of the ideologies of Stalin’s times and regime, including a state campaign of misinformation that claims some people in Finland’s mass graves were not shot by the Soviets but by the Finnish. This claim has been disproved by historian Yuri Dimitriev, who is currently in prison.
Dzhalilov’s daughter works for Memorial, and his mentor, Ilya Schmael, was imprisoned by the Stalin Regime.
“It’s typical that the regime imprisons all the honest people,” Dzhalilov explained.
Two of Dzhalilov’s great-grandfathers were murdered by the Soviet Regime. Dzhalilov explained that he could track down their orders of execution signed in Stalin’s handwriting in online archives.
“Russia is not a hopeless country when the regime changes and democratic institutions are established,” said Fadeev. “Things will improve. In Russia, these meetings and reading out of the names can get you prosecuted or arrested, Democratic Institutions and civil society are being shut down.”
The event was held at Brasserie Memento, a bar located near Lachine Canal, where some Russian and Ukrainian staff members and patrons have exhibited an openly anti-war and pro-Ukraine stance.
This ceremony was followed by the screening of Letters from Karelia, a documentary film.
