Memorial service in Kyiv for the victims of Sandarmokh

On 2 November, top political figures, former political prisoners, relatives of victims of repression, as well as others wishing to honour innocent victims gathered together in memory of those prisoners of Solovky murdered exactly seventy years ago. The President and Prime Minister laid wreaths at the monument to Lec Kurbas, the theatre director who was one of those shot on 3 November 1937. In his address Present Yushchenko stated that he had issued a decree on State assistance to victims of political repression. He also called on the leaders of former Soviet republics to jointly prepare measures for honouring the victims of Stalinism and to make public the truth about the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and the repressive machine existing in the Soviet Union. As we have already written here, 1111 prisoners of the Solovky Labour Camp were murdered from 27 October to 4 November 1937. . Among the victims were 290 Ukrainians, many of them scientists, writers and politicians, including Les Kurbas, the playwright Mykola Kulish and poet Mykola Zerov. www.radiosvoboda.org We would stress that these are only some of the victims of the Terror whose last earthly remains lie in the Sandarmokh Clearing. They are also only a very small number of the victims of all the senseless carnage. Вічна пам’ять Eternal Memory