Kabardinka remembers victims of Stalin's repressions

At a rally in Kabardinka, those gathered remembered the victims of Stalin's repressions. During the Great Terror, NKVD officers arrested 13,500 Greeks, 11,000 of whom were shot, reported historian Ivan Dzhukha.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," historian and researcher of the deportations of Soviet Greeks Ivan Dzhukha reported that during the NKVD operation against Greeks in the Krasnodar Territory, more than 5,000 people were shot. Attendees of the historian's lecture called the memory of the repressions important and called for preventing a repeat of the tragedy.

Today, a memorial event for the victims of repression was held in Kabardinka (a village administratively belonging to Gelendzhik, - Caucasian Knot). According to historian Ivan Dzhukha, who was unable to attend the gathering at the monument to the repressed in Kabardinka, there were few people at today's event.

"About thirty people. There were schoolchildren, as a participant explained to me, in guards uniforms. They put on whatever was at hand. The head of the village spoke. There were no leaders from Gelendzhik. They had been there before, but they weren't there last year or the year before. In addition to the head of Kabardinka, the head of our group in memory of the repressed spoke. We held a memorial service according to tradition. "The Gelendzhik Requiem, beautiful music," Dzhukha said.

According to him, Stalin's role in the repressions was also mentioned in passing in the speeches. "They talked about Stalin, in the sense that this happened during Stalin's time," he noted. Jukha.

The historian reported that during the "Great Terror," during the so-called "Greek operation," the NKVD arrested more than 13,500 Greeks.

Of these, 11,000 were executed. In the gene pool "This certainly had an impact on the Greek population, because they mostly took men of childbearing age. There were approximately 300,000 Greeks at that time, according to the 1926 census. Of this total, 50,000 were adult men of childbearing age, of whom 14,000 were arrested and 11,000 were shot, that is, 20% of this reproductive-age population. I cannot say that this is genocide, because genocides have their own precise definitions, numerical ones, but this is a serious blow," said Jukha.

He pointed out that most of the repressed Greeks were ordinary peasants.

"They were mainly collective farmers, like my grandfather, who worked the land. There were rural residents who were engaged in individual farming and were dispossessed. The intelligentsia layer was insignificant. Among the famous people repressed was Konstantin Fedorovich Chelpan, the creator of the engine for the T-34 tank. There was The family, mother, aunt, and brother of Georgiy Kostaki, a famous collector of Russian avant-garde art, were repressed. Grigory, the cousin of pilot Vladimir Kokkinaki, was also repressed. Konstantin Karakozov, a member of the Politburo of the Greek Communist Party, was shot. His father was a priest in the Greek church in Gelendzhik and was also shot. Among those repressed was the editor-in-chief of a Greek newspaper in Mariupol, the poet Georgiy Kostoprav. But I repeat, these were mostly ordinary working people,” Dzhukha explained.

As a reminder, October 30 has been celebrated in Russia as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression since 1991. In 2021, in particular, residents and visitors of Sochi laid flowers at the monument to the victims of repression on this day. The era of the 1930s in the USSR can be compared with the present day, when people were convicted for political People end up in prison, Sochi residents interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" indicated at the time.

As "Caucasian Knot" reported, on October 29, 2025, in Yerevan and Tbilisi, participants honored the memory of the victims of repression as part of the "Return of Names" campaign, reading out the names of those executed. Some participants noted that it is important not only to preserve the memory of those killed during the years of Stalin's terror, but also to support those currently imprisoned for political reasons. Volgograd activists moved the campaign online for security reasons.

Under Stalin, mass arrests, deportations, and executions were carried out on ethnic grounds, entire peoples were declared "hostile," according to a report by the "Caucasian Knot" "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.