And then he took part in the opening ceremony of the “Wall of Sorrow” memorial to victims of political repression. If the opening of the “Wall” had taken place before the council, its participants would have had time to turn to Putin with a much larger number of proposals, but this time they had to be limited in time. Read about what fears human rights activists managed to convey to the president.

On this day, many people gathered on Academician Sakharov Avenue. Among those standing in the wind and rain were Gulag prisoners - already very elderly, politicians, human rights activists, and clergy. The thirty-meter-tall composition of bronze and granite seemed to hang over them in the thickening twilight. Chairs were placed in front of the monument for guests, and a low stage covered with black fabric was built for the speakers. When the lights were turned on, the patriarch’s doll shone like a white spot. Vladimir Putin, who arrived at the “Wall of Sorrow” a little late, examined the monument illuminated by spotlights and was pleased: he called the “wall” grandiose and piercing.

The monument, which was assembled in Khimki near Moscow, was delivered to the site back in August, but it was hidden by a dark canvas. The author of the project, a sculptor, selected from among three hundred applicants, spoke of his work as a mission and admitted: “There was nothing more significant in my life.” The sculptor created a pressing wall with rare gaps through which everyone can walk and feel the “sword of Damocles hanging over the crown of the head.”

And although the idea of ​​erecting such a monument in the capital appeared a long time ago, the head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights defended it only in 2014. Putin supported the idea because “repressions cannot be forgotten or justified.” “Everyone could be brought against far-fetched and absolutely absurd charges, millions of people were declared enemies of the people, were shot or maimed, went through the torment of prisons, camps and exile,” he said at the opening of the “Wall of Sorrow.”

Photo: Natalya Seliverstova / RIA Novosti

In his speech, he nevertheless urged not to push society to the line of confrontation and to settle scores. “Now it is important for all of us to rely on the values ​​of trust and stability,” Putin said. In conclusion, the president quoted the words of Natalya Solzhenitsyna, who was present at the opening: “Know, remember, condemn and only then forgive.” “Because we need to unite,” Solzhenitsyna later added.

Putin was late for the opening of the monument for an objective reason: before that, he held a meeting of the Human Rights Council in the Kremlin. And he began it with a minute of silence in memory of the founder of the Fair Aid Foundation, Elizaveta Glinka, and the film critic - they were both members of the Human Rights Council. And then how positive points noted that the number of NPOs recognized as foreign agents has halved - from 165 to 89, and the annual amount of funds allocated to support non-profit organizations has increased sevenfold. Over five years, more than 22 billion rubles have been allocated for their development only within the framework of presidential grant support, Putin specified and invited human rights activists to a discussion.

Agreeing with these figures, the head of the Council asked to allow the Presidential Grants Fund to receive and distribute donations from foreign corporations. According to him, this is especially important for human rights organizations, since Russian charities they are afraid to support them, and “taking money from foreign funds means signing up as foreign agents.”

The head of the Moscow Helsinki Group proposed re-establishing the presidential pardons council and declared her readiness to join it. She emphasized that there may be dishonest people on the regional pardon commissions: “It’s a painful place.” And she casually mentioned that she had known for many years and could vouch for former governor Kirov region, who is under investigation: “He didn’t take bribes - he’s not that kind of person.” Alekseeva finished her thought with a call: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, be a merciful president in the eyes of people! Our people have a high price for mercy!”

Putin agreed to think about re-establishing the pardon council, but he disputed Belykh’s assessment and drew attention to dubious episodes of his actions. “You must agree that the explanation is still strange, according to which the governor of a constituent entity of Russia takes money from an entrepreneur not in Kirov, but in Moscow, not in his office, but in a restaurant, and not in rubles, but in dollars. Well, this is somehow very strange,” Putin said, at the same time noting that Belykh’s guilt would be determined by the court.

law enforcement agencies against demonstrators.

Another speaker, journalist Stanislav Kucher, who noted that the country has “a feeling of cold civil war, obscurantism,” from which people leave abroad, Putin objected: Russia is a free country, and it is normal that a person “worked somewhere, went somewhere, then returned.” In addition, according to his feelings, the number of Russians leaving has sharply decreased, many are returning today.

In his opinion, there are no hysterics associated with protests in Russia, but there are natural outbursts of protest sentiments to which the authorities must respond. “Look at the United States - there are hysterics there,” Putin suggested. - What is happening in Europe? God knows what!

“Millions of people were declared enemies of the people, were shot or maimed, went through the torment of prisons or camps and exile,” Vladimir Putin said at the ceremony, “the terrible past cannot be erased from the national memory” - and at the same time it cannot be justified by “any the highest so-called benefits of the people."

Together with Patriarch Kirill and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, the president laid flowers at the “Wall of Sorrow.”

Throughout Monday evening, live instrumental music will be played on the square near the memorial, the information portal of the Moscow government reports, and thematic stories will also be shown. After the opening ceremony, the “Wall of Sorrow” was open to everyone.

The “Wall of Sorrow” was not closed with barriers even before the opening. It would be difficult to do this: it is a sculptural group of impressive size: a double-sided high relief 30 meters long and 6 meters high, located in a semicircle.

Photo report: The “Wall of Sorrow” was erected in the center of Moscow

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It took more than 80 tons of bronze.

The basis of the composition is made up of faceless figures soaring upward - as sculptor Georgy Frangulyan explained to Gazeta.Ru, they should symbolize fragility human life in the face of a totalitarian system. According to the artist, the shape of the monument should convey to people the feeling of the “roar of terror” and the “gnashing of evil.” In the monument, which actually consists of figures molded together, there are gaps made in the form of human silhouettes through which viewers can pass - this will allow them to feel that anyone can become a victim, explains Frangulyan. Along the edges of the monument there will be stone pillars - “tablets” with the word “remember” in different languages.

The area in front of the “Wall of Sorrow” is lined with stones brought from the places where victims of political repression were imprisoned.

“The image of the monument arose in me in five minutes,” Frangulyan told Gazeta.Ru, “everything on the “Wall of Sorrow” is not at all accidental: it is a complex compositional series. Every stroke is made by my hands. To date, this is my most important work.”

The total cost of the project was 460 million rubles. The Fund “Perpetuating the Memory of Victims of Political Repression” was involved in collecting funds for it. At the same time, the Moscow government allocated 300 million rubles. A significant portion came from private donations. Frangulyan's project won the competition, to which a total of 340 concepts were submitted. The jury included Chairman of the Board of the Memorial Society Arseny Roginsky, Chairman of the Central Election Commission Ella Pamfilova, Coordinator of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alekseeva and Head of the Human Rights Council Mikhail Fedotov. All of them are announced as participants in the ceremony.

The opening date was chosen long ago and in advance - October 30 marks the day of political repression; The HRC meeting on that day was devoted to the problem of perpetuating the memory of victims in Russia. A day earlier, the “Return of Names” event, timed to coincide with the day of remembrance of victims of political repression, took place at another monument that still served as a memorial - the Solovetsky Stone.

About two thousand people lined up to briefly say into the microphone the names, place of residence and date of execution of the victims of repression, including their relatives.

The “Solovetsky Stone” took its place on Lubyanka Square in the late 80s, when the topic of repression began to be actively discussed again for the first time after the “thaw”. A large boulder brought from the islands, where the former monastery housed SLON - the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, which was de facto a political prison. The stone was placed on Lubyanka Square as a sign that one day a full-fledged memorial would be built in Moscow. However, the issue of its construction was returned only 25 years later, when in August 2015 the concept of state policy to perpetuate the memory of victims of political repression was approved.

On Monday, October 30, the first monument to victims of political repression in post-Soviet history was opened in Moscow. At the corner of Sakharov Avenue and the Garden Ring, a 30-meter “Wall of Sorrow” was erected from intertwined faces and human figures by sculptor Georgy Frangulyan. The opening of the memorial coincides with the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression. The monument was built using budget funds, as well as money from the Memory Fund created a year ago, which collected 32 million rubles in donations.

Opening 30 years later

The conversation about perpetuating the memory of several million victims of the Great Terror of the 1930s has been going on for a long time, Alexander Cherkasov, board member of the human rights society Memorial, told DW: “Almost 30 years ago, in November 1987, several people from our organization went to Arbat to collect signatures for the creation of a memorial to the victims of repression. Then it was assumed that there would be not only a monument, but also an archive, a museum, a library.”

Now, 30 years later, the significance of the repressions of Stalin’s time has still not been fully studied and comprehended, Cherkasov believes. “In the poem “Requiem,” Anna Akhmatova wrote that she “would like to name everyone by name.” This task is now not even a quarter completed,” the human rights activist states. “If things continue at this pace, then the simple publication of names will drag on for another century What about deeper research?" According to Cherkasov, until now there has not been a single fundamental study of repression statistics comparing sources from different departments.

People's Memorial

On the eve of the opening of the monument, on October 29, Memorial held its traditional event in memory of the victims of Stalin's repressions near the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka. On this day, everyone comes up to the stone and takes turns reading out the names of the repressed. The event lasts from morning until late evening, a lot of Muscovites usually take part in it, people come to the Solovetsky Stone simple people, and public figures.

In fact, these soldiers died in other places and for completely different reasons, Cherkasov assures. “One of them is a hero of Russia who blew himself up with a grenade. And Karpyuk and Klykh, apparently, first appeared in Chechnya only when the process against them began,” says the human rights activist. According to his assumption, the confessions of the Ukrainians were obtained under terrible torture: “And in the end they were given a completely “Stalinist” sentence, 20 years.”

The human rights activist also mentioned Dmitry Buchenkov, a defendant in the Bolotnaya case, who is on trial for participating in the 2012 protests. “He wasn’t even on Bolotnaya Square, and the investigation uses a photograph of another person as evidence,” says Cherkasov. “At the same time, all evidence indicating Buchenkov’s innocence is not included in the case, in the best traditions of Soviet political cases.”

The very presence of political prisoners in the Russian Federation is a continuation of the Soviet tradition, human rights activist Cherkasov believes, as is the tradition of expelling dissidents abroad: “Just the other day, two Crimean Tatars, Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov, were released and extradited to Turkey.”

This is reminiscent of how dissidents were expelled and exchanged under Soviet rule. In a word, it would be strange to think that the entire history of repression is over, says a member of the board of Memorial: “The past is visible in the present at almost every step.”

See also:

"Perm-36" - a monument to the inglorious past

Hundreds of “especially dangerous state criminals” passed through the camp. Here are just a few names: Vasil Stus, Vladimir Bukovsky, Sergei Kovalev, Valery Marchenko, Natan Sharansky, Gleb Yakunin, Levko Lukyanenko.



"Perm-36" - a monument to the inglorious past

Vasyl Stus

Ukrainian poet Vasil Stus was one of the Perm prisoners. Died in 1985. The colony ceased to exist in 1988.



"Perm-36" - a monument to the inglorious past

Initially, the majority of prisoners were collaborators - citizens of the USSR who collaborated with the occupying forces during the Second World War. But gradually they were replaced by those convicted of “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.”



"Perm-36" - a monument to the inglorious past

"Zeka Vasiliev and Petrov Zeka"

In the mid-1980s, then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to mass amnesties for political prisoners. On December 29, 1987, the majority of prisoners of the Perm-36 colony were amnestied.

On the evening of October 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin took part in the opening of the Wall of Sorrow, a memorial to the victims of political repression. How it was, and now is and will be, was observed by a special correspondent of Kommersant. Andrey Kolesnikov.

The Wall of Sorrow may be the best thing that sculptor Georgy Frangulyan created in his life. And even for sure. At least that's definitely the main thing. A huge double-sided high relief, consisting, as director Pavel Lungin said, of a wordless choir of inanimate people... Several passages in the high relief are slightly higher than human height - so that you can stop and feel like you are part of this great multitude.

Light! - Georgy Frangulyan ran up to Pavel Lungin. - They turned off the lights!

It turned out that at some point the lighting at the front of the Wall was actually turned off. Only the rear part was illuminated. And here another choir was already being built, each person from this choir was under a separate umbrella, because it was raining, it was cold and windy. The darkness was pushed apart by spotlights, it all just made me feel uneasy.

There, on the unlit side, the participants of the ceremony were gathering - about a hundred of them were there, almost all of them in wheelchairs, and it was immediately clear that these were the victims of repression, the surviving victims. They did not yet know that the ceremony had been moved to a place where it had probably never been held: they decided to open the monument from the rear. People were at a loss. They were asked to move there, to the microphone and choir. They moved long and slowly through these passages in their carriages... And what I saw now meant to me that the opening ceremony had already taken place.

And I think I understood what happened. The front part, facing the Garden Ring and Sakharov Avenue, was too open, and perhaps at the last moment it seemed defenselessly open to someone...

But nothing here was more defenseless than these people in wheelchairs.

“You know,” one old man spoke loudly, leaning towards the other: they both apparently had trouble hearing. “I probably could hug the grandchildren of my executioners... Yes, I could.”

What you said?! - And I thought that I didn’t understand: he didn’t hear or was indignant.

Yes exactly. It's not their fault.

Could you have children? - the second one asked him, with a strange mockery.

“There are no children,” the first admitted. “I couldn’t have children yet...

I thought that they have been having these conversations for half their lives, or maybe more, and they know all their questions and answers better than their friends, and will continue to do so for the rest of their lives, because nothing in this life is more important for them.

I saw the editor-in-chief " Novaya Gazeta» Dmitry Muratov with flowers in his hands, who was now interesting because he was on the jury that chose the memorial project. He said that the votes for Georgy Frangulyan were cast almost unanimously, although there were other talented projects. Thus, one sculptor proposed making a memorial from Stalin’s high-rise buildings, which, in turn, proposed to be made from sawmill logs...

Another project consisted of mirrors that reflected everything around except people, because if there is no person - no, as you know, there is no problem...

Or this: towers tilted towards each other at a large angle... True, Natalia Solzhenitsyna, having seen this project, said in fear that this was a monument to protection.

Dmitry Muratov pointed at a rather young man passing by:

This is Roman Romanov, director of the Gulag Museum... Without him, it might not have worked out. He is a hero...

The hero was, as befits any real hero, modest and shy.

Do you know that Frangulyan worked without any profit? - Dmitry Muratov asked me. “He also had victims in those years...

How could I know this? I only knew that, according to unofficial but verified data, 600 million rubles were spent on the construction of the memorial. and that it was mainly money from the Moscow mayor's office. And there were a lot of private donations. That a lot of money was donated, for example, by the then first deputy head of the presidential administration, Vyacheslav Volodin. Because he also had victims...

Members of the Presidential Human Rights Council began to gather, the meeting of which had ended a quarter of an hour earlier in the Kremlin. They arrived on buses, one of which carried the Russian president.

Now they were talking about this meeting, and one of them told me that a year ago they discussed whether this should be a monument to the victims of Stalinist or political repressions.

And the other convinced him:

Of course, political, and starting from October 1917...

And ending?..- I couldn’t resist.

No, I was never able to get a satisfactory answer...

Here the ceremony began, Vladimir Putin spoke, who said that “the repressions spared neither talent, nor services to the homeland, nor sincere devotion to it; anyone could be brought against far-fetched and absolutely absurd charges. Millions of people were declared enemies of the people, were shot or maimed, and went through the torment of prisons, camps and exile. This terrible past cannot be erased from the national memory, and even more so cannot be justified by anything, by any higher so-called benefits of the people.”

All of this was correct and probably very people need, who were now sitting in front of him in wheelchairs and on chairs, words, but only when he was simply silent, having arrived ten years ago at the Butovo training ground, and only looked at the lists of people shot there, this, perhaps, was even more correct.

He remembered this too:

When it comes to repression, the death and suffering of millions of people, it is enough to visit the Butovo training ground and other mass graves of victims of repression, of which there are many in Russia, to understand that there can be no justification for these crimes... And in conclusion, I would like to ask permission from Natalia Dmitrievna Solzhenitsyn, I would like to quote her words: “Know, remember, condemn. And only then - forgive.” I fully agree with these words...

Natalia Solzhenitsyna, of course, was also at this ceremony, for some reason she did not speak, but Patriarch Kirill spoke, and it was also impossible to find fault with a single word.

And then - Vladimir Lukin, head of the board of the Foundation for the Memory of Victims of Political Repression, which ended epically. He said that he has a dream: for future presidents to take the oath of allegiance to their people right here, in this place.

Since Vladimir Putin was now standing in this place and heard everything, it will be possible to check whether he listened.

He laid flowers and left, before going up to these people, and they sat for a long time, not moving, and one of the most elderly women here, who was being urged to go home, because otherwise she would definitely catch a cold, shrugged her shoulders:

Yes, I sat on a blanket... I feel warm here. I feel good here.

Andrey Kolesnikov

"Wall of Sorrow"- a monument to the victims of political repression, opened in the park at the intersection of Academician Sakharov Avenue since October 30, 2017.

The memorial is of impressive size. Its central part was a semicircular bronze wall (35 meters long, 6 meters high) - a double-sided bas-relief depicting about 600 impersonal human figures, directed upward and forever frozen in motion. People's heads are lowered down, and intertwined bodies merge into a single monolith; Between their three-dimensional figures, several arches in the form of human silhouettes are left in the wall, through which you can walk. On both sides of the wall there are bronze slabs on which the word “Remember” is carved in 22 languages, and around it there are several spotlights mounted on massive granite pillars: at night their rays are directed into the sky. Behind the semicircular monument is framed by a retaining wall made of granite slabs, as if they were uplifted rocks. The monolith of the wall symbolizes the tragedy of human destinies and persons erased from life, as if they never existed. This composition of the monument is intended to draw attention to the fragility of human life, vulnerable to the machine of repression, and invites awareness of the tragic consequences of authoritarianism, so as not to repeat the tragedy of the past in the future.

The area around the memorial is lined with stones from the most famous Gulag camps, places of mass executions and burials, regions and settlements whose residents were subject to forced deportation. Among them are stones from Irkutsk, Vorkuta, Ukhta, Bashkiria, Khabarovsk Territory, Pskov, Vologda and Smolensk regions, Levashovskaya wasteland (St. Petersburg), Zolotaya Gora (Chelyabinsk region), Butovo test site (Moscow region) - from a total of 58 Russian regions.

The monument fits well into its surroundings, which also became part of the memorial: the Soviet-era administrative building located behind it, gray and bulky, became against its background a living symbol of power and clumsiness.

History of the creation of the monument

For the first time, the idea of ​​​​installing a monument to victims of repression in Moscow arose back in 1961 and was put forward personally by Nikita Khrushchev as part of the program to combat Stalin’s personality cult, however, this was not realized. IN Soviet years the monument was never erected; Only in 1990, with the participation of activists of the Memorial society, did the Memorial appear on Lubyanka Square, to which the city limited itself. Meanwhile, the interested public believed that this was not enough.

In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin was presented with a draft program to perpetuate the memory of victims of repression, which included the installation of a monument; in the same year, a decision was made to install it and a location was chosen - a square at the intersection of Academician Sakharov Avenue with Sadovaya-Spasskaya Street.

In May 2015, a competition for monument designs began. During the competition, out of 336 projects presented to the public, a winner was chosen - the project of the monument “Wall of Sorrow” by sculptor Georgy Frangulyan, which was approved for work. The total cost of construction of the memorial was 460 million rubles, of which 300 million were allocated from the city budget, and the remaining 160 were supposed to be collected by public donations; however, in the end they were able to collect only 45 million from donations, and the city also took on the missing amount. It is curious that some donated bronze instead of money. The casting of bronze figures was carried out in a workshop in Khimki near Moscow, and the monument was delivered to the installation site in parts.

The opening of the memorial took place on October 30, 2017, the ceremony was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill, members of the HRC and its chairman Mikhail Fedotov, sculptor Georgy Frangulyan and other persons.

In general, the townspeople accepted the installation of the monument quite neutrally - some approved that a memorial to the victims of political repression appeared in Moscow, and some did not like the idea of ​​​​a huge wall of corpses on the Garden Ring, but it did not cause any resonance. Whether the memorial will receive popular recognition or remain just a bronze colossus that you can fly past along Sadovoy is a matter of time.

Monument to the victims of political repression "Wall of Sorrow" located at the intersection of Academician Sakharov Avenue with Sadovaya-Spasskaya Street (in front of the Sogaz building). You can get to it on foot from metro stations "Red Gate" And "Chistye Prudy" Sokolnicheskaya line, "Turgenevskaya" Kaluga-Rizhskaya and "Sretensky Boulevard" Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya.