Watchdog

MOSCOW -- An annual ceremony honoring the memory of thousands of people executed during Josef Stalin's Great Terror has mixed poignant memories of the Soviet state's victims with pointed calls for the release of "political prisoners" in Russia today.

Thousands of people lined up at the Solovetsky Kamen (Solovki Stone) memorial on Moscow's Lubyanka Square on October 29 to pay their respects at a daylong ceremony called Returning the Names.

Participants -- relatives of the dead, rights activists, and others -- read aloud the names, ages, occupations, and dates of executions of some 40,000 Muscovites -- a fraction of the estimated 1 million or more Soviet citizens killed by the state in 1937-38.

The human rights group Memorial has held the ceremony every year since 2006 at the site in plain view of the building that what was the headquarters of the Soviet KGB and now houses the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), its main successor.

Many who read out names wished "eternal memory for the murdered innocent," with some condemning "the killers" and several calling for the release of people they made clear they believe are "political prisoners" of President Vladimir Putin's government.

One woman, after reading out her grandfather's name and the date on which he was executed by the Soviet authorities, added that she wanted to mention one more name: that of Boris Nemtsov, a Putin foe and former deputy prime minister who was killed in 2015.

"Boris Nemtsov: physicist, politician, statesman. Shot to death on February 27, 2015, near the Kremlin," the woman said at the ceremony, which Memorial broadcast live on YouTube. "The organizers and those who ordered the killing have not been found."

Others called for the release of people behind bars for what supporters and rights activists say are political reasons, intoning: "Freedom for Oleh Sentsov! Freedom for Yury Dmitriyev! Freedom for Oyub Titiyev!"

Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker and Crimea native who opposed Russia's 2014 takeover of the peninsula, is serving a 20-year prison term after being convicted of terrorism in a trial that rights groups, and Western governments contend was politically motivated.

Dmitriyev, the head of Memorial's branch in the Karelia region and a historian who has worked for decades to expose crimes committed in the region by the Soviet state, is under arrest on charges of sexual assaulting his adopted daughter. He and his supporters say the accusation is retaliation for his efforts to expose a side of history that complicates the Kremlin's glorification of the Soviet past.

Titiyev, the head of Memorial's office in Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya, is in jail and on trial on what he and Memorial say is a fabricated drug-possession charge.

A several-minute pause was announced during the ceremony after representatives of the embassies of European Union member states, Australia, and the United States arrived at the ceremony and laid flowers at the memorial.

Earlier in October, Moscow city authorities withdrew their initial permission to hold the ceremony on Lubyanka Square, citing repair work there, but reversed their decision after an outcry and allowed it to go ahead as planned.

Similar events are being held in other Russian cities, and Memorial said that Returning The Names ceremonies were also being held this year in London, Prague, Warsaw, and Washington, D.C.

The Remember the Names ceremony is held one day before the official Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression.

After they revoked the permit and before they relented, Moscow authorities had suggested that the ceremony be held near the Wall of Sorrow, a memorial that Putin opened on October 30, 2017.

At that ceremony, Putin said that the "horrific past" of Soviet-era government oppression must not be forgotten, cannot be justified, and should not divide the country today.

Some human rights activists and Kremlin opponents spoke out against the memorial, saying it was hypocritical of Putin's government to unveil such a monument while carrying out what they called its own political repressions decades later.

While Putin has criticized Stalin at times, he has praised the dictator in the past as an "effective manager" and said in June 2017 that the "excessive demonization" of Stalin is "one way of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia."

With reporting by Merhat Sharipzhan

TASHKENT -- When Tashkent's sumptuous Oqsaroy (White Palace) was converted into a museum devoted to autocratic Uzbek President Islam Karimov after his death in 2016, successor Shavkhat Mirziyoev needed a fresh new base from which to rule Central Asia's most-populous country.

A palatial mansion was quickly built on a plot of land next to the Chirchik River in the small village of Baytqorqon, outside of the Uzbek capital.

Unfortunately, the land around the new presidential palace was already dotted with dozens of houses inhabited by hundreds of people.

Now many of those unfortunate Uzbeks are angry after their homes were razed and they were displaced to make way for Mirziyoev's new residence and a "presidential highway" leading to it.

Many of those forced from their houses by the construction told RFE/RL that they were still waiting for the government's promise of compensation or a new home.

"My house was demolished last week, but no other housing was provided," a 56-year-old housewife, who requested anonymity, told RFE/RL. "We are already cold. Where am I going to live with all my things now?"

"We have neither money nor a new house! Help us," a 35-year-old entrepreneur from Baytqorqon, asking to remain anonymous, wrote to RFE/RL. The man said Miragzam Mirqosimov, the governor of Tashkent's Qibray district, had promised the affected families that they'd be given new homes. But he said district officials later told him, "We are unable to provide you with a new house now, stay with your relatives for the time being."

Uzbek officials have told those who have lost their homes to either shelter themselves or get rooms in a local health facility.

'Brazenly Deceived'

"Residents of demolished houses are temporarily placed in a sanatorium or the homes of their loved ones," an official in the Qibray district told RFE/RL, adding, "They will receive a new home or monetary compensation by the end of the year."

One man said he and another family displaced by Mirziyoev's project were moved to new houses near the village of Yangibozor. But they weren't exactly free.

"Two families' houses in our neighborhood were razed as they turned out to be in the way of the [new president's] residence," he told RFE/RL. A former governor of Qibray, he said, promised to provide new houses and "asked me to sign a couple of documents, which I did."

"But today we learned that those papers were mortgage agreements," the man said. "The house 'given' to us turned out to be...only a mortgage loan. The authorities have brazenly deceived us."

An official from the Qibray district denied that allegation, saying the mortgage loan covered the difference between the promised compensation and the cost of the new house, which he said was more valuable.

"The amount [of the mortgage loan] is quite small," he said.

To complicate matters, some of the razed homes included large extended families living together, and the state is in some cases providing three-or four-room apartments as compensation.

"Some residents of demolished homes are taking advantage of the moment and are trying to snatch more money from the state," the Qibray government official told RFE/RL, suggesting that people were lying about the number of residents who had been living in a demolished house.

"In one old house they managed to register 10 of their relatives, [and] their married daughters are also registered in their father's house," said the official. "The owners of such houses are asking us to give each of the people registered in their house an apartment."

The main part of Mirziyoev's new residence was officially opened on July 24, 2017 -- the president's birthday -- with a fireworks show and Russian entertainers.

Blue Marble, Swarovski Crystals

An engineer who worked on the residence described some of its opulence to an RFE/RL reporter.

"During the interior decoration of the residence, blue marble was brought from Argentina, one square meter of which costs $500, as well as Swarovski crystals," he said. "The building was decorated according to the latest design trends."

The presidential compound covers several hectares of land and is encircled by a four-meter-high protective wall.

But the destruction of villagers' houses is not over yet, as construction continues to widen the road between central Tashkent and the new presidential compound.

An activist in Qibray told RFE/RL that around 200 families in the villages of Argin, Qibray, and Baytqorqon have been told their homes will be razed in the next two months to clear space for the "presidential highway."

The long-serving, palace-loving Karimov also had a suburban mansion, Kuksaroy (Green Palace), and a country residence at Durmen in addition to his main Oqsaroy in central Tashkent.

Uzbek villagers are likely hoping Mirziyoev is satisfied with his new palace and doesn't try to emulate his predecessor by building other mansions.

Written by Pete Baumgartner in Prague based on reporting by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service in Tashkent.