Putin opened the Memorial "Wall of Sorrow"

Vladimir Putin opened in Moscow a Memorial "Wall of Sorrow", dedicated to the victims of political repression. This was reported on the Kremlin website. In addition to the head of state, at the intersection of Sakharov Avenue with a garden ring, members of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin and Patriarch Kirill, took part.

“This terrible past cannot be deleted from national memory, and even more so - it is impossible to justify anything,” TASS quotes Putin’s speech at the opening of the memorial. “With any higher so -called benefits of the people.”

Meanwhile, on the eve of the ceremony, the former Soviet Political Zyok regarded the opening of the memorial as a manifestation of hypocrisy and cynicism . “It is impossible to allow authoritarian power with one hand to open monuments to the victims of repression, and the other to create arbitrariness and lawlessness,” said in an open letter , which was signed, in particular, Vladimir Bukovsky, Mustafa Dzhemilev, Joseph Zesels, Eduard Kuznetsov, Pavel Litvinov, Gabriel Superfin, Victor Faynberg.

The country was indicated by the signatures, political repressions are exposing - in such a situation, cooperation with the authorities in the installation of the monument "at least immorally."

“It is impossible to divide the victims of political repression into those who can already be erected, and those who can not yet be noticed,” emphasized in the document. “You cannot participate in commemorative events of the authorities, which in words regrets the victims of the Soviet regime, but in fact continues political repressions and suppresses civil freedoms in the country.”

“The monument to the victims of political repressions should no doubt erected in Moscow, but only when the country does not remain political prisoners when the executioners will be punished, and the political repressions themselves will cease to be the topic of news messages and will become exclusively the subject of the study of historians,” the authors of the letter concluded.