Volgograd activists moved their memorial event for the repressed online.

The reading of the names of the repressed as part of the "Return of the Names" campaign in Volgograd took place in homes, as security forces have been on duty at the monument to the victims of political repression for over six months.

As "Caucasian Knot" reported, on October 29, 2024, the "Return of the Names" campaign, in which participants read the names of the repressed, took place in 134 cities, including Pyatigorsk, Yerevan, Vanadzor, and Tbilisi. Activists in Volgograd, due to security concerns, postponed the event to an earlier date and held it on October 27 and 28. In 2025, dozens of people participated in the events in Yerevan and Tbilisi.

Holding protests at the monument to victims of political repression in Volgograd has become dangerous, a civilian activist who wished to remain anonymous told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"Since February 16, 2025, civilian-clothed Center E officers have been permanently stationed at the "Departing to Heaven" monument to victims of political repression in Volgograd, so the organizers of the memorial events have decided to abandon the protest this year in the form it has taken in Volgograd in recent years," he said.

According to the activist, residents Residents of the Volgograd region were asked to simply come to sites associated with the repressions in their city on October 29 and 30 to honor the memory of the victims. "Memorial* in Volgograd is currently unaware of anyone being detained on October 29 for laying flowers. Some Volgograd residents also read the names of the terror victims for Radio Sakharov—this is currently one of the safest and most anonymous ways to participate in the event," he said. Historian Andrei Kudinov reported that his family traditionally commemorates relatives who suffered under Stalin's repressions on October 30. According to Kudinov, six of his ancestors and close family friends were repressed for political reasons. Both families—on both sides—were dispossessed in 1931 and exiled to Siberia.

"It's customary in our family to remember them. For 30 years now, we've been gathering on October 30th in a small family circle and commemorating them, drinking without clinking glasses. Some lived to see their rehabilitation, while others remained forever in a foreign land. So, on October 30th, we'll gather again at our home and commemorate them. Broken destinies, broken over the knees of families, the scale of grief is enormous," Kudinov told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The historian noted that he received all the necessary information about his repressed relatives from the regional Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs archive back in the 1990s, while his relative found some documents in the FSB and party archives.

"I completed my genealogical research in the early 2000s. I don't know how it is now, but the father of a family I know tried to find materials about a relative arrested by the NKVD in recent years and was denied them. They explained that he was charged with a regular criminal offense (embezzlement), not a political one, which, by law, requires rehabilitation and so on," Kudinov said.

According to Kudinov, work to find the names of the repressed and clarify their fates in the Volgograd region "is currently completely stopped." According to the historian, it stalled 20 years ago; By that time, the number of people repressed during the Stalinist repressions had been determined "approximately and far from completely" – 250,000.

"They haven't even published a Book of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression in our region. I don't know the reason why, but I can guess: there was no political order from the authorities, as there was, for example, in neighboring Voronezh. There's no one to do this. There used to be human rights activists and historians who were interested in this, but now there aren't any, because this topic is becoming increasingly dangerous," the historian noted.

Pavel Surkov, a pensioner from the regional center of Srednyaya Akhtuba, who lived and worked in Volgograd in the early 2000s, often participated in events held by the regional administration on the day of remembrance for the victims of political repression. He hasn't received invitations to such events for the past five years.

"As far as I understand, official memorial events have long since ceased to be held. And I don't go to protest events like these," the pensioner explained to a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Surkov said his aunt's husband was captured during the first year of the Great Patriotic War. He spent part of his captivity in a concentration camp; he was liberated by American soldiers and handed over to SMERSH. After being vetted, his relative was immediately sent to a Siberian camp and then into exile. When he was exiled, Surkov's aunt went to join her husband and got a job as a tractor driver at the company where her husband worked. "They didn't like to talk to us about it. Her husband drank himself to death after his release from vodka. My aunt returned home and remarried. She also worked as a tractor driver, creating forest belts in the Trans-Volga region. She was a heroic woman; she had been through a lot," said Pavel Surkov. Lawyer Roman Melnichenko participated in the online reading of the names of political prisoners on October 27, publishing a video of the event on his YouTube channel. He read the names and brief biographies of two Ukrainians executed in 1937-1938. Melnichenko noted that in the early 2000s, he did not participate in memorial events for the repressed, a decision he regrets. "I thought we'd turned that page irrevocably, because no normal people would return to concentration camps. But I was wrong, and now I bear responsibility for it. I see a state that is reviving the system built by Lenin and Stalin (...) Last year, I read these names in the center of Volgograd near the monument, but today they're gone," he said.

Under Stalin, mass arrests, deportations, and executions were carried out based on ethnicity, and entire nations were declared "hostile," according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "10 Myths About Stalin's Role in the Great Patriotic War." The decision on which peoples to repress depended directly on Stalin, historian and member of the Association of Russian Society Researchers Boris Sokolov told the Caucasian Knot in 2022.

* is listed as a foreign agent.

** Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.