“Return of Names.”

On this day people all over the world gather to read aloud the names of those shot or victimized under Stalin’s terror — and to truly see one another.
During the repressions, over one million people were subject to political persecution and violence by the Soviet regime; 681,692 of them were sentenced to death.
The repressed were meant to be erased from life — their figures airbrushed out in photographs, their relatives exiled to camps, and their children sent to orphanages, labeled as “enemies of the people.”
In 2025 the subject of repression has become relevant again. The number of political prisoners is actively growing. People are expelled from their countries; lawyers are deprived of the ability to defend people; denunciations have returned. Instead of honestly discussing a frightening past, it is being rewritten — access to investigation files is closed, and monuments to Stalin are being erected.
On October 29 we must gather together to say: memory is important. The stories of these people have not been forgotten.