Calling out from oblivion...

On August 4, 2020, the Petrozavodsk City Court received two appeals against the verdict in the case of search engine Yuri Dmitriev - both from the city prosecutor’s office and from Yuri Alekseevich himself. The court’s website states that “ the date and time of consideration by the court of appeal of the received appeals and presentations will be announced additionally .”

On August 5, the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalin's Terror in Sandarmokh, there was no traditional mass memorial event due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, despite the rain, people came in small groups, laying flowers at the monuments of the victims of the shootings and reading out their names.

More than 40 countries around the world and many Russian cities have joined Sandarmokh. In Moscow, the action of reading the names took place at the Church of the Holy Life-Giving Trinity in Khokhly. Its rector, Father Alexei Uminsky, noted in his opening remarks that the few years that Dmitriev has been sitting in a pre-trial detention center are “an amazing example of how a person can remain internally free, unbroken and unshakable ” . “ I think this is a huge lesson for our entire generation ” , said Father Alexey.

Translator Svetlana Panich, concluding the international ceremony, addressed the participants of the action with the following short speech: “ By this time, all of us, living in different countries - from Australia and New Zealand to the United States, in European countries, in different places in Russia - have read all the lists executed in Sandarmokh. Thanks to everyone who joined us.

Why is this necessary? Why have we been gathering and calling these names for the second year now? One of the features of the totalitarian system, an ominous feature, is that it seeks not only to destroy people solely because they are people, because they are a living, unique, free being, but it seeks to destroy, tear apart the fabric of memory, erase of their victims from memory, to make the former non-existent.

Every time we read the names, we bring out a variety of people - different as the world, different as the universe, people of different classes, occupations, nationalities, professions, confessions - it’s as if we are calling them out of oblivion. And we thereby protest against totalitarian unconsciousness, whatever forms it may take.

Actually, this protest against totalitarian unconsciousness was made by Yuri Alekseevich Dmitriev. Thanks to him for returning names to our history. Thanks to him, our torn history, with huge white, black, and bloody spots, is sewn together, becoming holistic and humane. And thanks to everyone who, regardless of their beliefs, joined our readings today ” [ 2 ].