Commemorations For Victims Of Political Repression Held In Lithuania, Russia

A woman wearing the white-red-white flag of the Belarusian Democratic Republic places a candle on the steps of Vilnius city hall in Lithuania on October 29.

A total of 132 candles were lit in memory of Belarusian intellectuals, poets, politicians, artists, and scientists who were executed on October 29–30, 1937. 

Onlookers stand by during the solemn memorial.

The persecution in Belarus was part of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's repressive policies aimed at eradicating perceived threats to his regime. The killings that took place on October 29–30, 1937, became known as the Night of the Shot Poets.
 

Poems by executed poets are read aloud in Vilnius as Belarusian exiles wave the white-red-white flag, which became a symbol of political activists after Belarus gained independence in 1991.

The flag was replaced following a 1995 referendum but was then adopted by anti-government protesters in 2020-21 during demonstrations against authoritarian Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Protesters who displayed the flag faced arrest in a violent crackdown.

A child looks on during the memorial in the Lithuanian capital. Vilnius has become home to thousands of Belarusian exiles who left their country after the violent crackdown on demonstrations that erupted after Lukashenka declared victory in a 2020 presidential election widely seen as rigged.

A poster of poet Yuli Taubin, who was 26 years old when he was executed during Stalin's purges.

Millions of Soviet citizens were killed, tortured, imprisoned, or exiled by the Soviet state. 

Belarusian exiles look on during the memorial in Vilnius.

Another poster of an executed victim in Vilnius.

"Against the backdrop of mass killings and arrests, wherever they occur, the reminder of the cost of each individual life is felt all the more poignantly,” the Nobel Peace Prize-winning rights organization Memorial said in an online statement.

As Belarusian exiles lit candles in Vilnius, commemorations for the victims of Soviet repression were also held in Russia on October 29 at an event organized by the Memorial human rights group, which has itself been banned.

In Moscow, members of diplomatic missions carry flowers to a monument near the Federal Security Service building on the eve of Russia's Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression. The ceremony was held at the Solovetsky Stone monument, a large boulder from the Solovetsky Islands, where the first camp of the gulag political-prison system was located.

The October 29 event came amid a Kremlin crackdown on dissent more than 20 months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
 

The Memorial human rights group said two police wagons were parked near the Solovetsky Stone memorial and only groups of three or fewer people were allowed to pass through.

"For the first time, perhaps, when we came to the Solovetsky Stone, we saw that the square was cordoned off. Today, this is the attitude toward the memory of the victims of repression. Not to gather more than three -- it looks like a mockery of the memory of the victims," veteran human rights defender Yan Rachinsky said.

Lynne Tracey, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, was also present.

Since 2006, Memorial has arranged an event called Returning of the Names, during which the names of those who were subjected to repression under Stalin are read out. The authorities, however, refused to grant authorization for the names to be read in 2020.