Remembrance Day Russia: Honor Victims of Repression, Not Soldiers

For twenty years before the World War II entire strata and classes of our society were eliminated. The Cossacks were virtually liquidated. The peasantry was expropriated (or 'dekulakised') and weakened. Intellectuals, workers and the military were subject to political persecution. Representatives of absolutely all religious faiths were subject to harassment.

October 30 is a Remembrance Day for millions of crippled destinies. For people who were shot without trial and without investigation, people who were sent to labour camps and exile, deprived of civil rights for having the 'wrong' occupation or 'improper social origin'. The label of 'enemies of the people' and 'accomplices' was then pasted on whole families.

Let's just think about it: millions of people died as a result of terror and false accusations – millions. They were deprived of all rights, even the right to a decent human burial; for years their names were simply erased from history.

But even today you can still hear voices claiming that those innumerable victims were justified for some higher national purpose.

I believe that no national progress, successes or ambitions can develop at the price of human misery and loss.

Nothing can take precedence over the value of human life.

And there is no excuse for repression.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday millions of people died in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin because of terror and false accusations.

In a speech marking the country's Day of Remembrance, the Russian leader rejected claims that "state interests" provided justification for the government's actions, the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported.

"I am convinced that no development of the country, no successes and ambitions can be achieved at the expense of human grief and losses," he said.

Medvedev said it is important for young people to know about what he called "one of the greatest tragedies in Russian history."

In the 1920s and 1930s, 52 million people were sentenced for political reasons, six million were exiled and one million were executed, the latest data shows.

Remembrance Day was instituted in Russia in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union.