Russia marks 70th anniversary of bloody Stalin purge

[peejay 327]

Putin honors Stalin victims 70 years after terror

BUTOVO, Russia (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin paid his respects on Tuesday to millions of people killed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and called for the country to unite to prevent a repeat of its tragic past.

Putin, a former KGB spy, marked Russia's annual day of remembrance for the victims of Stalin's purges with a visit to Butovo, a military training ground near Moscow where tens of thousands of people were executed by firing squads.

Millions of people were executed under Stalin and many more perished from abuse and disease in a vast network of prison camps, known as the Gulags.

The victims included priests and royalists but also huge numbers of people who were simply caught up in an indiscriminate spiral of killing. This year Russia marks the 70th anniversary of the bloodiest period of the purges.

Putin attended a memorial service with Patriarch Alexiy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, after passing a field criss-crossed with mass graves.

"We know very well that 1937 was the peak of the purges but this year was well prepared by years of cruelty," Putin said beside a mass grave after laying flowers at a memorial.

Putin said such tragedies "happen when ostensibly attractive but empty ideas are put above fundamental values, values of human life, of rights and freedom."

"Hundreds of thousands, millions of people were killed and sent to camps, shot and tortured," he said. "These were people with their own ideas which they were unafraid of speaking out about. They were the cream of the nation."

In an appeal for national unity, Putin said: "To develop the country and choose the right path, we need political debates and even battles but to make this process creative they should not be conducted outside the cultural framework," Putin said.

Historians estimate that between 20 million and 40 million died during Stalin's rule, tearing families apart and creating a climate of fear that haunted the Soviet Union.

Also on Tuesday, dozens of mainly older Russians laid flowers at a stone memorial outside the headquarters of the former KGB -- now known as the Federal Security Service -- to remember Stalin's victims.

GREAT TERROR

Stalin, who succeeded Vladimir Lenin, started a series of purges in the 1930s that became known as the Great Terror. The NKVD security service, the predecessor to the KGB, killed hundreds of thousands of people on trumped up charges.

Butovo was just one of hundreds of killing grounds. More than 20,000 people are known to have been executed there between August 1937 and October 1938 alone, though local priests say the figure could be as high as 60,000.

"According to documents we have seen, most of the people shot here were peasants and workers, but there were many dignitaries as well," said Deacon Dmitry, a priest at the site.

"There was even a complete theatrical troupe from the Baltics massacred here," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071030/wl_nm/russia_purges_dc

[russ 1]

While in Russia this summer, we went to an old Orthodox Church (there are many). The clergy and nuns had been executed, and the church then used as a tire warehouse. Then the tires we set on fire to destroy the church. Very sad thing to see.

Even speaking Russian, the church is difficult to understand, as they speak Old Church Slavonic (which most Russians don't.)

[peejay 327]

While in Russia this summer, we went to an old Orthodox Church (there are many). The clergy and nuns had been executed, and the church then used as a tire warehouse. Then the tires we set on fire to destroy the church. Very sad thing to see.

Even speaking Russian, the church is difficult to understand, as they speak Old Church Slavonic (which most Russians don't.)

My grandparents immigrated from Byelorussia before the Bolshevik Revolution. Their siblings and parents (my mom's grandparents, aunts, & uncles)stayed behind in what eventually became the USSR. Between the Communists and the Nazis, that area of the world got heaped on them a ton of misery.

We maintained contact with my grandmothers side of the family through the years, but we don't know what ever happened to my grandfather's people after the war. Nobody knows.

My wife is originally from a remote area of Russian Siberia before moving to Belarus in the 1980's. She often says that it was too far from the Center (the Soviet authorities) to even be noticed. Her family's experiences in the USSR are much different than my mom's relatives.

[almaty 19]

Sanita lost most of her relatives.....when Stalin forced relocated all the Chechens to Kazakhstan...her mother ...lost all her family..and her father lost all of his,.,1/2 of the Chechens died the 1st winter there..

Edited October 30, 2007 by almaty

[peejay 327]

On my first trip to Belarus to meet relatives there in 1992 I traveled to the rural village my grandparents were born in. My relatives there took me to the old house my grandmother and her siblings were born in. My grandmother was born there in the house in 1894. I have no idea when it was originally built. They told me it is the oldest original existing structure in the old village. The Communist commissars ordered everything burned to deny the Nazis anything when they invaded Byelorussia in 1941 and the Red Army retreated east to Moscow. Afterward the Nazis bombed and burned everything when they finally were beaten back in 1944 in retreat back to Germany fleeing the Red Army back to the west. Somehow the old house survived all this mayhem. Nobody lives there anymore, but my mom's spinster 1st cousin still lives on the land and farms there. She lives in a more modern house 50 feet away and uses the old house for storage. I don't think the roof is original because Russian / Byelorussian roofs of that period were thatched.

The Germans also occupied the area during WW1. After WW1 the Poles seized the area in battles with the Bolsheviks and it remained in Polish control until Stalin reclaimed it in 1939. The French occupied the area when Napolean invaded Russia and was eventually defeated by General Winter (the harsh Russian winter) in 1812.

Belarus is unfortunate to be located at a crossroads and has been invaded and occupied repeatedly for centuries. My grandparents were ethnic Byelorussians and spoke the Byelorussian dialect, but my modern day relatives are primarily Russian speakers.

Over the years I have been fortunate to travel to visit my mom's relatives that live in Russia and Belarus. I got to see Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk, and other cities in Eastern Europe on the cheap.