Let's hug on the clouds

The Krasnoyarsk Memorial Society no longer exists, and the names of those repressed in the region are no longer read out. But they are with us, and they are all now protected, once in the cloud services

In Krasnoyarsk on October 30, on the day of remembrance of the victims of Soviet political terror, three dozen people gathered at the memorial stone: a short bitter speech, poetry, a minute of silence, and the laying of carnations. And - a wreath from the regional administration. However, this is not advertised in any way and it is signed as follows: “To the victims of political repression from the residents of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.” Personally present is Alexey Kulesh, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the region (from Zheleznogorsk and from United Russia), head of the committee on construction, housing and communal services and issues of civil defense and emergency situations. Despite his small post, he is, in general, a significant figure in the regional government. And the number is not being served at all. He doesn’t bother to carry a wreath, he lets all the grandmothers, in general everyone who came, go ahead with flowers.

There are local specifics: descendants of the repressed are everywhere here. Exiled, tortured. They work everywhere here, including in government.

The complete absence of police is striking - in the previous few years, there were always several cars on duty, albeit at a distance. There is no media now either.

The “Return of Names” campaign is no longer taking place in Krasnoyarsk; Krasnoyarsk residents have not read out the names of those executed in an organized manner for several years. One of the preserved traditions is that grandmothers go and distribute chocolates to all those gathered to remember those who died and suffered. And for some reason it always turns out that the nearby paddle steamer “St. Nicholas” is visited by schoolchildren on an excursion, and they certainly ring the bell - and this is the same bell of John Donne (and Ernest Hemingway), and a discordant ringing floats when flowers are placed on the stone, “the death of every person diminishes me too, for I am one with all humanity, and therefore don’t ask never for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for you.”

In the Krasnoyarsk Territory, there were at least one million victims of Stalinist repressions. Every second or third person on this earth. The number was derived purely from data from government agencies (FSB Federal Security Service, Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor's Office, the regional court, the state archive, the Center for the Storage and Study of Documents of Contemporary History), collected and brought together by the Krasnoyarsk Memorial.

This particular company, this legal entity was not declared a “foreign agent,” but it was one of the founders of the International “Memorial,” which was recognized by the state as a “foreign agent” and liquidated. The Krasnoyarsk “Memorial” stood longer - its next meeting was only in March of this year. decided to liquidate the legal entity and continue to operate without an account, seal and other attributes. We were ready for this and went towards it, initially focusing on the digitization of collective memory, on returning names to the clouds - placing them in cloud storage. So that they certainly cannot reach them from here, so that they can only read and remember, but not touch them with their hands.

“We know how to do the work, but there are no bureaucratic procedures,” Alexey Babiy, the leader of Krasnoyarsk Memorial, told Novaya at the memorial stone. — Having made the decision to liquidate, the balance was reset to zero all summer. Well, there were all sorts of other difficulties. The day before yesterday it was all over, the tax office sent a notice that all procedures had been completed...

As for work, we are doing exactly the same as we did - we are processing our own archive, posting echelon lists of Volga Germans deported to the region from the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (and, by the way, in the coming months we will reach the end, we will post all 79,000). I’m working at the state archives on the Book of Remembrance for the Dispossessed - in all these years we have only reached the halfway point. From the list of deprived people, those who are subject to rehabilitation are selected - this is approximately half.

Krasnoyarsk