Ukrainian President honours the Victims of the Great Terror

President Yushchenko has on behalf of Ukraine sent a message to those remembering the Victims of the Great Terror 1937-1938 in Karelia.

“We share the pain of each nation whose best sons and daughters fell victim to the totalitarian regime”, the address reads.  President Yushchenko stressed that during the Terror, Ukrainians, Belarusian, Russians, Georgians, and people from all the republics of the former USSR suffered and that it is our shared tragedy.

“In Ukraine’s history the memory of Solovky is sacred”.  The President added that hundreds of outstanding sciences, cultural figures, spiritual leaders slaughtered at Sandarmokh were the “executed renaissance” of the nation.

“It is our duty to do all in our power to ensure that future generations never forget these tragic pages of our shared history. The crimes of totalitarianism must be condemned”.

As already reported, in Karelia on 4 and 5 August Days of Remembrance are taking place for the Victims of the Great Terror of 1937-1938.  The International “Memorial” Society, together with the Dmitry Likhachev Fund, and the Government of the Republic of Karelia have invited relatives of the Victims, as well as delegations from various regions of Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, Sweden and Estonia.

A Ceremony of Remembrance will take place in the Sandarmokh Clearing where the last human remains lie of 1,111 prisoners of the Solovky Camp, as well as others from Karelia itself.

International Remembrance Days have been held at Sandarmokh every year since the Memorial Graveyard was uncovered in 1997. 

Today, 5 August 1937 marks 70 years since the beginning of “mass special NKVD operations”.  In the course of these criminal operations, over almost sixteen months, around 1.7 million people were arrested on political charges. More than 700 thousand were executed. The mass executions began on 5 August 1937.