What's written on the wall of sorrow. “The terrible past cannot be justified by any of the highest so-called blessings of the people

"Wall of Sorrow"- a monument to the victims of political repression, opened in the park at the intersection of Akademik Sakharov Avenue since October 30, 2017.

The memorial is impressive in size. Its central part is a semicircular bronze wall (35 meters long, 6 meters high) - a double-sided bas-relief depicting about 600 impersonal human figures, directed upwards and forever frozen in motion. The heads of people are lowered down, and the intertwining bodies merge into a single monolith; between their volumetric figures in the wall there are several arches in the form of human silhouettes through which one can walk. On both sides of the wall there are bronze slabs, on which the word "Remember" is carved in 22 languages, and around it there are several searchlights installed on massive granite pillars: at night their rays are directed into the sky. Behind the semicircular monument is framed by a retaining wall made of granite slabs, as if they were heightened rocks. The monolith of the wall symbolizes the tragedy of human destinies and faces deleted from life, as if they never existed. This composition of the monument is intended to draw attention to the fragility human life, vulnerable to the machine of repression, and invites to realize the tragic consequences of authoritarianism, so as not to repeat the tragedy of the past in the future.

The area around the memorial is lined with stones from the most famous GULAG camps, places of mass executions and burials, regions and settlements, whose residents were subjected to forced deportation. Among them are stones from Irkutsk, Vorkuta, Ukhta, Bashkiria, Khabarovsk Territory, Pskov, Vologda and Smolensk Regions, Levashovskaya Wasteland (St. Petersburg), Golden Mountain (Chelyabinsk Region), Butovo Testing Ground (Moscow Region) - all from 58 Russian regions.

The monument fits well into the surroundings, which also became part of the memorial: the administrative building of the Soviet years, located behind it, gray and cumbersome, has become a living symbol of power and sluggishness against its background.

The history of the creation of the monument

For the first time, the idea of ​​erecting a monument to the victims of repression in Moscow arose back in 1961 and was personally put forward by Nikita Khrushchev as part of a program to combat the cult of Stalin's personality, however, this was not implemented. In the Soviet years, the monument was never erected; only in 1990, with the participation of activists of the "Memorial" society, appeared on Lubyanskaya Square, to which the city was limited. Meanwhile, the concerned public believed that this was not enough.

In 2014, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin was presented with a draft program to perpetuate the memory of victims of repression, which included, among other things, the installation of a monument; In the same year, a decision was made to install it and a place was chosen - a square at the intersection of Akademik Sakharov Avenue with Sadovaya-Spasskaya Street.

In May 2015, a competition for the designs of the monument was launched. During the competition, out of 336 projects presented to the public, the winner was chosen - the project of the monument "Wall of Sorrow" by sculptor Georgy Frangulyan, who was approved for work. The total cost of the construction of the memorial was 460 million rubles, of which 300 million were allocated from the city budget, and the remaining 160 were supposed to be collected through public donations; however, only 45 million were eventually raised from donations, and the city also took over the remaining amount. It is curious that some donated bronze instead of money. The casting of bronze figures was carried out in a workshop in Khimki near Moscow, the monument was delivered to the installation site in parts.

The opening of the memorial took place on October 30, 2017, the ceremony was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, members of the HRC and its chairman Mikhail Fedotov, sculptor Georgy Frangulyan and others.

In general, the townspeople accepted the installation of the monument rather neutrally - someone approved that a memorial to the victims of political repression had appeared in Moscow, and someone did not like the idea of ​​a huge wall of corpses on the Garden Ring, but it did not cause any resonance. Whether the memorial will receive popular recognition or will it remain just a bronze colossus, past which you can fly with a breeze across Sadovoe is a matter of time.

Monument to the Victims of Political Repression "Wall of Sorrow" is located at the intersection of Akademika Sakharov Avenue with Sadovaya-Spasskaya Street (in front of the Sogaz building). You can get to it on foot from metro stations "Red Gate" and "Chistye Prudy" Sokolnicheskaya line, "Turgenevskaya" Kaluga-Riga and "Sretensky Boulevard" Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya.

On October 30, 2017, a national memorial "Wall of Sorrow", dedicated to the victims of political repression of the Soviet era, was opened in Moscow, IA Regnum reports.

The opening ceremony was attended by the President Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, Mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin. They uttered solemn words and laid flowers at the monument.

The opening of the "Wall of Sorrow" took place after a meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society, at which issues related to ensuring the environmental and electoral rights of citizens were discussed. Vladimir Putin, speaking at this meeting, stressed that the year of the centenary of the revolution should draw a line under the split in society.

“The memory itself, the clarity and unambiguity of the position in relation to these gloomy events serves as a powerful warning against their repetition. The terrible past of repressions cannot be erased from the memory of the people and cannot be justified in any way, ”said Vladimir Putin.

According to the president, the consequences of political repression “are still felt”, but this is not a reason to settle scores. The monument, located on Sakharov Avenue and representing a thirty-meter high bronze bas-relief, was described by Vladimir Putin as "grandiose and piercing."

After the President's speech, a mourning composition was performed by a choir. Then the cordon around the monument was removed, and everyone could enter the territory. People laid flowers, prayed and lit candles. Opponents of the “Wall of Sorrow” also gathered at the ceremony, some of them staged solo pickets.

Memorial "Wall of Sorrow"

The memorial "Wall of Sorrow" was established in accordance with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin dated September 30, 2015 No. 487 "On the construction of a memorial to the victims of political repression."

In 2015, the State Museum of the History of the Gulag held a competition for the projects of the memorial. The jury consisted of 25 public figures and human rights activists: L.M. Alekseeva, N. D. Solzhenitsyn, V.P. Lukin, D.A. Granin and others. A total of 336 projects were presented. The winner of the competition was the project of the sculptor G.V. Frangulyan "Wall of Sorrow".

To raise funds for the creation and installation of the memorial, the Foundation for the Perpetuation of the Memory of Victims of Political Repression was established. The fund has collected over 43 million rubles in donations. The Moscow Government also took part in financing the project.

The composition of the square on which the memorial is erected includes “weeping stones” brought from 82 regions of Russia. The stones bear the inscription "Know ... Do not forget ... Condemn ... Forgive!" authorship of N.D. Solzhenitsyna.

The Wall of Sorrow is a double-sided high-relief wall with several arches, composed of the outlines of numerous figures symbolizing those killed as a result of the repression. The length of the wall is 30 meters, the height is 6. Along the edges of the monument there are two relief tablets with the word "Remember" written in 22 languages ​​(in 15 languages ​​of the former republics of the USSR, in German and 6 official UN languages).

The monument was erected at the intersection of Akademik Sakharov Avenue and the Garden Ring.

Memorial "Wall of Sorrow" is open to all comers.

Memory of the victims of political repression

The process of rehabilitation of victims of mass political repression in the USSR in the late 1920s - until the early 1950s. began after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.

In 1961, at the XXII Congress of the Communist Party Soviet Union(CPSU) First Secretary of the Central Committee (Central Committee) of the CPSU Nikita Khrushchev first announced the idea of ​​erecting a monument to the victims of political repression.

At the same time, archives and museums began to collect memoirs and biographical data on the executed and injured citizens. In 1964, after Leonid Brezhnev came to power in the USSR and the end of the Khrushchev "thaw", the process of rehabilitation and perpetuation of the memory of victims of repression was suspended.

In September 1987, a commission of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee was created to further study materials related to political repression. In 1987-1990. A number of legislative acts were issued, including the resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the construction of a monument to victims of repression" (July 4, 1988) and "On the perpetuation of the memory of victims of repressions during the 30-40s and early 50s" (June 28, 1989 of the year).

Monument "Solovetsky stone"

In the late 1980s - early 1990s. activists of the "Memorial" society proposed to erect a monument to the victims of political repression in Moscow. By agreement with the Moscow City Council, a place for it was chosen in the park of the Polytechnic Museum on Dzerzhinsky Square (now Lubyanskaya square) opposite the building of the former NKVD (KGB).

The monument was a granite boulder brought from the territory of the former Solovetsky camp special purpose (Arkhangelsk region). The stone was chosen by the journalist Mikhail Butorin (at that time the chairman of the board of the Arkhangelsk regional organization "Conscience") and the Arkhangelsk architect Gennady Lyashenko.

The grand opening of the monument called the "Solovetsky Stone" took place on October 30, 1990. The artist-architect S. Smirnov and designer V. Korsi took part in the creation of the sculptural composition.

In February 2008, it became known about plans to transfer the Solovetsky stone for construction works... In May 2008, after protests by human rights defenders, it was decided to leave the stone in place and assign it the status of a landmark.

Other famous monuments to victims of political terror

Today, hundreds of monuments, obelisks, steles, foundation stones, memorial signs, crosses and memorial plaques associated with the history of repressions and the memory of their victims have been erected in Russia at the sites of mass executions, on the territory of former camp sites and in settlements of special settlers.

Large monumental forms were also installed - chapels, belfries, walls of memory, sculptural compositions, memorials, memorial complexes.

Here are some of the most famous monuments and memorials to victims of political terror:

Monument to the Victims of Political Repression in St. Petersburg... Located opposite the Kresty prison on the Robespierre Embankment). Opened on April 28, 1995. The author of the project is sculptor Mikhail Shemyakin. The sculptures in the form of two bronze sphinxes were cast in the USA and donated by the author to the city.

Sculpture "Moloch of totalitarianism"... Opened on May 15, 1996 at the entrance to the Levashov Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg. Authors: Nina Galitskaya and Vitaly Gambarov.

Memorial "Mask of Sorrow" in Magadan... Opened June 12, 1996. Authors: Ernst Unknown and Kamil Kazaev.

Memorial and Museum Complex of Memory deported peoples in the village of Nasyr-Kort (Ingushetia)... Opened on February 23, 1997. Project author: Murad Polonkoev.

Bas-relief "Shooting with the Guardian Angel" in the Sandarmokh tract in Karelia. Opened on August 22, 1998 (since 2006 under reconstruction) on the territory of the memorial cemetery. Authors: Grigory Saltup and Nikolay Ovchinnikov.

Memorial complex "Katyn" in the Smolensk region. Opened on July 28, 2000. It unites the Polish military cemetery and the graves of Soviet citizens - victims of political repression. The authors of the project for the Polish part: sculptors Zdzislaw Pidak, Andrzej Solyga, Wieslaw and Jacek Synakevichy. Russian part designed in the creative workshop number 4 of the Union of Architects of Russia under the leadership of Mikhail Khazanov.

Memorial complex "Mednoe" in the Tver region. Opened September 2, 2000. Here are buried Polish prisoners of war, who were shot in 1940, and Soviet citizens (victims of the repressions of 1937-1938). The project of the Russian part of the Memorial was carried out by Workshop No. 4 of the Union of Architects of the Russian Federation under the direction of Mikhail Khazanov, the chief architect is Nikita Shangin. The authors of the concept of the Polish cemetery: a creative team led by sculptors Zdzislaw Pidek and Andrzej Solyga.

"Monument to the Victims of Political Repression" in Ufa (Bashkortostan). Installed December 23, 2000. Authors: Yuri Soldatov and Leonid Dubinsky.

Worship cross on the territory of the former Butovo training ground(one of the places where mass executions were carried out; near the village of Drozhzhino, Leninsky District, Moscow Region). It was erected on August 7, 2007 on a foundation made of stones from the Solovetsky Islands and elements of previously destroyed Orthodox churches.

On December 10, 2014, the "Last Address" campaign started in Moscow. The purpose of this project is to install personal signs of a single sample on the facades of houses, the addresses of which became the last lifetime addresses of the victims of these repressions. St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Barnaul, Irkutsk and other cities of the Russian Federation are already participating in the program.

Photo: Victoria Odissonova / "Novaya Gazeta"

“The terrible past cannot be erased from national memory. Moreover, it is impossible to justify anything: no higher so-called blessings of the people, - said President Vladimir Putin at the opening ceremony of the Wall of Sorrow monument dedicated to the victims of political repression in the USSR. - When it comes to repressions, death and suffering of millions of people, it is enough to visit the Butovo training ground, others mass graves victims of repression, of which there are many in Russia, to understand that there can be no excuses for these crimes. "

The unveiling of the monument - a thirty-meter double-sided bronze bas-relief by sculptor Georgy Frangulyan - took place on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression. In addition to politicians, human rights defenders, historians, cultural workers and clergymen, the victims of illegal repression themselves and their children - only a few very elderly people - attended the unveiling of the monument.

In his speech, Putin said that the consequences of the repressions are still being felt, whole estates and peoples, workers, peasants, engineers, military leaders, priests, government officials, scientists and cultural figures have been subjected to them. “The repressions spared neither talent, nor service to the Motherland, nor sincere devotion to it. Anyone could be charged with far-fetched and absolutely absurd accusations, "he said and added that the very memory, clarity and unambiguous position in relation to these gloomy events" serves as a powerful warning against their repetition. "

At the end of his speech, Putin quoted the words of Natalya Solzhenitsyna, who had also come to the opening, to know, remember, condemn and only then forgive. After that, the president said that one should not call for the settling of scores and "again push the society towards a dangerous line of confrontation." The president did not mention Stalin's name in his speech - as well as any of the perpetrators of political repression.

Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, Federation Council member Vladimir Lukin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Victoria Odissonova / "Novaya Gazeta"

In turn, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill said at the opening that "monuments are needed to heal a person." “Coming here, remembering tragic events of our history, people should not feel despondency and despair, they should think about their descendants and about what country and what history they will leave as a legacy, ”said the patriarch.

The last speaker at the opening was a member of the Federation Council, chairman of the Fund for the Memory of Victims of Political Repression Vladimir Lukin.

After a minute of silence and laying flowers at the monument, it was opened to visitors. Recall: the monument is located at the intersection of Sakharov Avenue and the Garden Ring.

direct speech

Photo: RIA Novosti

"The crippled destinies appeal to our memory from the memorial wall"

Speech by Federation Council Member Vladimir Lukin at the opening of the monument to the victims of political repression

- A man is weak ... And at these moments I cannot but think about the fate of my family. Especially two women. Both are my grandmothers.

One of them, besides my mother, had three more sons. The elder was brutally killed in one of the clashes of the civil war. The life of the second was cut short here, in Kommunarka. He ended up on one of the 1937 execution lists signed by five then members of the PB of the Communist Party, headed by Stalin personally. The third, despite the reservation that was issued by prominent scientists, joined the ranks of the militia and died defending Moscow in the fall of 1941. Three sons - three deaths.

The youngest daughter - my mother - was arrested in the same year 1937, right after my birth. She was tortured like my father. But they were lucky: in 1938, after the fall of Yezhov, they were released, and they both managed to take part in the defense of Moscow. My father was the commissar of the 7th Bauman militia division, a monument to the soldiers of which, as many of you know, stands on the 242th km of the Minsk highway.

And his younger brother was forced after the arrest of my father to disown him in order to save himself and the remnants of his family.

Imagine the feelings of my second grandmother, whose sons never shook hands with each other, even at her grave.

And there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of families with such or a similar fate in our country. It is no longer possible to count.

It is they, their crippled fates, calling out to our memory, our conscience from the memorial wall.

The twentieth century for our country is a century of great victories, but also of great tragedies. Our society, the young generation knows quite well about the most important great victory, although there are also gaps here.

About the main great tragedy - mass repressions, terrible terror associated with the revolution, civil war, Stalin's totalitarian dictatorship, the younger generation knows little.

Is that bad. Ignorance is not an argument, Spinoza said. There are no wise lessons to be learned from ignorance.

Some of our citizens believe that stirring up a bloody past is unpatriotic. I am convinced that this opinion is wrong.

Motherland and Truth are equal concepts. You cannot love the Motherland without loving the Truth. Not distinguishing good from evil, truth from untruth, fanaticism from humanity. The sovereign right to life, security, freedom and personal happiness of a person is no less important than any sovereignty. It is remarkable that our current Constitution begins precisely with this normative provision.

“All progress is reactionary if a person collapses,” said the poet.

Only a free person can be a true patriot!

The current and future generations of our citizens should, first, be aware of this terrible drama. Not wanting to know is intellectual cowardice, a grave moral sin. And there is a great danger. After all, hiding the truth is a sure way to relapse into tragedy.

Secondly, it is important to remember what happened to the country in the twentieth century. Remember the victims of mass state terror - The best way to get rid of the illusion that all the country's complex problems could be solved quickly and abruptly - as they liked to say at the time - by a dashing "cavalry attack".

Thirdly, it is necessary to condemn clearly, decisively and irreversibly the acts of those who unleashed the "red wheel" of mass terror. There are no and cannot be excuses for them. Even taking into account the fact that in this bloody carnival, in the trail of their victims, their executioners also disappeared.

And finally, fourthly - and this is the most difficult thing - we need to try to forgive the participants in this terrible historical drama.

Of course, to forgive not their terrible deeds, but their tragic mistakes that led to them, their self-deceptions, their utopian fantasies.

In my opinion, to forgive means, first of all, to try to expel from one's own souls the atmosphere of hatred and intolerance towards everything else, towards everything “not ours”, towards everything “incomprehensible”.

Get rid of the sweet but poisonous illusion of your own unique righteousness and infallibility.

We cannot change the past. We cannot pretend that it did not exist at all. But we can, remembering the past, try to suppress the viruses of anger and hatred in ourselves.

And thereby block the access to the present and the future for the bloody passions of the past.

Memory of terrible tragedy that happened on our land in the twentieth century should become part of our historical memory. We, the heirs of the victims of mass repressions, are grateful to all those who contributed to the creation of the Monument of Memory.

On the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, in Moscow, at the intersection of Akademik Sakharov Avenue and the Garden Ring, the Wall of Sorrow was erected - the first national monument to victims of political repression. Decades of bashful suppression of the "camp theme" and the fear of talking "about it" even in the family are over. The "Wall of Sorrow" reinforced concrete changes the balance of power.

In two different parts of Russia - in Kolyma and Solovki - rocks with broken crowbars are pressed into the sea with the same words: "The ships will come for us! 1953". And in 2017 the last ship came for them.

Let's assume that the Wall of Sorrow is the last ship that came for those who could not return in 1953, who died, "says Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights. for them came the ship of our memory.

The "Wall of Sorrow" consists of symbolic corridors-arches, passing through which everyone divides the story for himself into "before" - when everyone could become a victim of the "Great Terror", and "after" - when the "Wall of Sorrow" opened in Moscow gives inside a person grow in the understanding that the trauma of repression must be remembered and carried as part of our roots.

Not to be divided into victims and executioners, not to take revenge and even "not to forgive and forget everything," but to make history as it is, a part of the genetic memory of the nation.

Schoolchildren from the Rostov region earned 75 thousand rubles for the monument

It is hard, slow and painful, but this is what happens: according to the Memory Fund, the monument to the state cost 300 million rubles, and the amount of voluntary donations from the people reached 45,282,138.76 rubles. And although by the construction of the "Wall" society recognizes the policy of terror and repression as a crime, the people by their participation in raising funds for the monument do not just comprehend the tragedy. People in the Memory Fund bring not only savings.

Those who do not have them, for example, pieces of bronze, like Ivan Sergeev, a pensioner from the Saratov region. Or the smallest contribution to the "Wall" - 50 rubles - was made by a pensioner from Yoshkar-Ola, who wished to remain anonymous. She subscribed to the requisites: "Daughter of the repressed. Forgive me, as much as I can."

But the most significant private contribution to the "Wall of Sorrow" was the money earned by the children of the village of Kirovskaya in the Kagalnitsky district of the Rostov region - 75 thousand rubles.

The Rostov story shocked me, ”says Roman Romanov, director of the GULAG history museum. - She is an example for me that young people do not want to "at any cost" or "quickly forget the terror." They want to know their history and put it together with their best efforts. For me, 75 thousand rubles earned by children is also an answer to those who want to create a tourist cluster on the basis of the GULAG camps with the "flavor" of a zone and camps. With barracks where you can live in an "economy" version, with bunks where you can sleep; with tinware and "camp" food. Children from Rostov silently convince by their deed: "the aroma of the GULAG zone" or now fashionable quests on this topic - the road to historical oblivion. And what Rostov schoolchildren and hundreds of thousands of donors have done for the "Wall of Sorrow" is the path to real living history.

Romanov admits that he trusts these people. They will certainly be able to find memory in safes and put in their places terrible numbers: according to the Memory Fund, 20 million people went through the GULAG system, over a million were shot (the figure is not final. - "RG"), more than 6 million became victims of deportations and exile.

Direct speech

An Honest Story Shapes One Nation

Natalia Solzhenitsyna, President of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Foundation:

The fates of those who went through the Gulag should not remain family stories. They must and will now become a part of national history. We cannot afford not to know our recent history - it is like walking forward blindfolded, and therefore inevitably stumbling. This is exactly what is happening to us, because in the era of the Great Terror, the foundations of a split society were laid. It will remain shattered until we begin to rebuild an honest history. An honest story forms a united nation. And without unity and spiritual healing, simple economic revival is impossible.

A nationwide monument to victims of repression is a step towards reconciliation. Because reconciliation is impossible on the basis of forgetfulness.

"Forgetfulness is the death of the soul," said the sages. The "Wall of Sorrow" contains the idea of ​​memory. And to experience or not to experience guilt - depends on the development of consciousness, conscience, understanding. And this is a personal feeling, not a collective one.

Our country is completely different today! With all the shortcomings of our existence, going back seventy years is no longer possible. And, probably, descendants should not keep the wolf scars of separation that time left. We need an honestly told chronicle of victories and defeats.

Such a history of Russia in the 20th century can be respected.

Point of view

From varnished history to genuine history

Vladimir Lukin, member of the Federation Council:

I am convinced that the most important thing today is to combine the broken historical mosaic into something whole. To do this, we need to overcome both the Stalinist interpretation of history and the apologetics of anti-Sovietism. The "wall of sorrow" along this path reduces the tone of the fierceness of the discussions and brings us closer to understanding the greatness of the event. Zhou Enlai, an eminent Chinese leader, when asked if he considered the French Revolution of 1789 a great one, replied: "It's too early to judge. Let another hundred years pass." So we are only at the beginning of society's pushing through the lacquered history to the present.

No matter how much we are engaged in perpetuating the victims of political repression, everything inevitably in 1789 rests on the question: "How many people died?" I always answer: "This we will never know." It's not just the secrecy of some of the archives. And not that when the Shvernik-Shatunovskaya commission reported to the XX Congress of the CPSU that 1934-1941 alone 19 million 800 thousand people were repressed, and 7 million 100 thousand of them were shot, the congress was horrified and closed these figures. And not even that historians after Peter and Paul Fortress Petersburg, execution pits were discovered, where unnamed victims of February 25, 1917 lie, it is suggested that this date be considered the beginning of the mass repressions of the 20th century in Russia. And the point is that Great and Tragic whole, which we must assemble from the broken historical mosaic.

Action "RG"

The Internet project "RG" "To Know, Do Not Forget, Condemn. And - Forgive" gathered an audience of reconciliation

The action to create the Wall of Sorrow, Vladimir Kaptryan said in an interview with RG, is only the first step towards restoring historical justice and the desecrated connection of times. And also the restoration of a terrible understanding: everyone at that time could have turned out to be a hero, and an "enemy of the people", and an executioner. War is like war. At the front, too, not everyone was a hero. Therefore, it seems to me honest in relation to the victims of the GULAG and in relation to ourselves, first on the day of the installation of the "Wall of Sorrow" in Moscow, and then on that day every year to go out into the streets for a memorial meeting. Like the Immortal Regiment. Let it be the "Shelf of Memory". I would join it. ()

One of the most positive and passionate stories is the story of the "anti-Soviet" Yuri Naydenov-Ivanov. He told how three comrades - 19-year-old student Yuri Naydenov-Ivanov, 20-year-old Yevgeny Petrov and Valentin Bulgakov in 1951 found the magazine "America". Naydenov also corresponded with friends from Odessa. All three were accused of anti-Soviet propaganda and of "wanting to cross the Black Sea in a boat." All were given ten years in the camps. Petrov ended up in the mines of the North, Bulgakov - in Siblag, Naydenov - in the mines of Kazakhstani Karaganda. He talked about the secrets of survival in the camps. And how he accidentally got the "life number" that saved him. ()

Another story - about how the victims of repression won the courts even from the NKVD and moved into their apartments, returning from the camps (""), made up the golden fund of the video interview of the stories "My Gulag".

Now they are the Regiment of Historical Memory. It was these stories that gave rise to a large author's documentary project and a series of feature films and performances that will be filmed over the next five to seven years. All this will be done under the creative direction of film director Pavel Lungin and artistic director of the Theater of Nations Yevgeny Mironov.

Direct speech

Each of us has a shard of the "Wall"

The arches cutting through the entire length of the monument are made so that everyone has to bend down to get through. Bending down, the man rests his eyes on the tablet: "Remember!" Like an inaudible prayer, the word is written in twenty-two languages ​​- in fifteen languages ​​of the nations the former USSR, in five UN languages ​​and in German - one of the languages ​​of the European Union.

"Remember!" you have to carry thirty-five meters - the entire length of the monument. Everyone will be able to go through it and feel themselves in the place of the victim. Thus, the "Wall" reproduces the feeling of the sword of Damocles. Only in this way, with the understanding that each of us has a fragment of the "Wall", can we go further. But it is not clear when we can straighten our back. It is unclear how long it will take for that shard to come out. In order for it to come out, one must personally realize the phenomenon of the Gulag and make it a part of the genetic memory of the nation.

I would like every piece of "Wall of Sorrow" to convey the state of tragedy. Yes, her figures are faceless. The "scythe of death" made them so. The victims of the terror of the 30-50s were and remain too numerous and often nameless. Their twisted fates and faces erased from life are a symbol of tragedy.

Following the director Gleb Panfilov, filming the story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn "One Day in Ivan Denisovich", director Pavel Lungin started looking for material about the era of the camps. Today he tells WG why each of us will have to go through the purgatory of memory.

Pavel Semenovich, have you decided what the film will be about?

Pavel Lungin: When I think about how to make a movie, I look for humanistic support. I am from that generation that still believes in people and is not ready to go into a total postmodern tragedy. Yes, you can make a movie about the 1953 Norilsk Gorlag uprising, and the 1954 Kengir uprising of political prisoners. In Norilsk alone, according to the archives, up to 16,000 people went on strike. But this is the wear and tear of the system of camps, and their essence crystallized within a person earlier. He could not help but resist her from within. How? This is what I want to make a film about. But I have not yet found the story of the confrontation. The more I read, the more often the thoughts appear: "Who am I? Why is there so much audacity in me to touch on a topic full of blood and torment?" Sometimes I just freeze in horror. Hunt to forget the GULAG forever and not know about it. It is an instinctive fear of the scale of the tragedy. I am also afraid - will there be enough strength to show the depth of the phenomenon? To ennoble the GULAG is a crime, but to deprive people of hope is a crime.

And in my film there will definitely be a cheerful GULAG. And a feminine view of the camp

You don't have a script, but there is Solzhenitsyn, there is Shalamov, there is Zakhar Prilepin's "Abode" ...

Pavel Lungin:... Zakhar Prilepin wrote a very powerful novel about Solovki. His talent as a writer is beyond ideology, which gives the novel such characters that wow ... I would gladly film it. But, in my opinion, the copyright is gone. Although Prilepin, as well as Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, the GULAG is hopeless. And in my film there will definitely be a cheerful GULAG. And a woman's view of the camp. I have not yet populated the picture with stories, but I remember well my conversations with Andrei Sinyavsky. In France, he talked about the camp all the time. Once at his visit, I could not resist: "You remember the camp as if it was something better." Sinyavsky did not even think to argue with me. His camp friendships remained, people with whom he sat together came to him in Paris. They sincerely believed that in their case, "there was a mistake." "Yes," he replied, "in a sense it was ideal life... No money, no women, no career, nothing. You are, as it were, purified of everything and you can communicate with people as with purified entities. "This is a shock on the verge of spiritual hunger and spiritual purity. I'm looking for it for a film. It's like some people remember the war as some kind of purifying experience. It was as if you were dipped in sulfuric acid, and you were alive.

Academician Likhachev also admitted at one time that the Bolsheviks in the system of values ​​they created were right when he, who did not accept Soviet power, was exiled to the GULAG for re-education. Doesn't such a position provoke the executioners' revenge? Already documentary filmed about Rodion Vaskov - the creator and godfather of the Solovki and Magadan gold mines. In the film, his son Gritsian, with tears in his eyes, asks why his father, at the end of his life, was denounced to the Gulag for five years? After all, "he did not create terror around him, but production, gave people work, food, meaning ... He could not become a warden." What would you answer him?

Pavel Lungin: The twentieth century is rich in such phenomena. Century gave powerful attempts to create a new man. USSR, then Germany, China had its own experience, the last spasm was in Cambodia. In the USA, after 1929, labor camps were also created, but no new man was forged there. And reworking it is a dispute with God about a person. Dostoevsky brilliantly conveyed this confrontation in The Grand Inquisitor. With him Christ is not just imprisoned in prison. The inquisitor tempts Christ with the fact that freedom is the greatest test and punishment for a person, that a person wants nothing more than to have his freedom taken from him. Then he doesn't have to make a choice. And freedom is not needed. It was her that the camp took away.

But always attempts to remake a person ended in failure. After all, first you need to make minced meat from it. In this sense, of course, camps are a school of upbringing. Whom? The son of a Gulag creator responds well. He sincerely believes that among the executioners, his father was the best and kindest, chopping off heads with one blow, not two. This is one of the fruits of "education" when there is a loss of the criteria for good and evil. Instead of the "new man" we got such a level of his decay, when we must admit: the idea of ​​total re-education is pernicious. Man is "God's creature", a creature that does not lend itself to sculpting by an outside sculptor and any other plasticity. Interference with human nature is the greatest danger that awaits us. And the lack of clarity and lack of awareness of the GULAG experience gives rise to an incomprehensible phenomenon of guardsmen, who then dress up as victims.

Wasn't the policy of repression often just a pretext for recruiting into the labor army?

The Wall of Sorrow is an agreement that repression is evil. This is the beginning of spiritual cleansing

The Wall of Sorrow monument, which was erected in Moscow on October 30, 2017, is it a step of the people towards the saint?

Pavel Lungin: Sorrow for me is a consensus. The wall is the agreement of society with the fact that evil has been committed, and the understanding that we ourselves have caused it. This is just the beginning of spiritual cleansing. And the fact that the monument is donated simple people, is a sign of our recovery. At least 15 kopecks each, but the whole country should throw off the Wall. The desire to go through the Wall is the germ of awareness, repentance and redemption. We no longer pretend that there is no problem.

But we pretend, often sincerely believing that repentance and atonement is needed by someone else, but not me. In this sense, the story of the Muscovite Vera Andreeva is indicative. In the series of films "My Gulag" of the Museum of the History of the Gulag, she said that in 1937 her beloved uncle Vanya wrote a denunciation against his father and her grandfather Dmitry Zhuchkov for the fact that "a nobleman does not recognize the revolution." But my father even won the case against the NKVD. The son, expelled from the family, died in 1942 defending Sevastopol from the Nazis. "He is worthy of death," - said his father about him. “My grandfather was already lying in the ground,” Vera Sergeevna recalls, “and my relatives, a member of the CPSU, repeated his words:“ How could you go over to their side? ”But I don’t know. I remember my grandfather and I understand: I didn’t forgive that power, as a grandfather did not forgive his son. I don’t know how and don’t know how to forgive such things. " How can you forgive?

Pavel Lungin: If I could explain it in words, I shouldn't have made the film "The Island". I only know that the work of repentance is ascetic. It is not given to everyone. But I believe that feelings of shame and remorse make a person a person. A person begins with a feeling of shame, with pain for the troubles of others, with compassion. But I am in the same condition as society. I look around and do not see that society or I are moved by the awareness of past history, pain, trouble. Sometimes it seems to me that if "The Island" came out now, it would not have been heard. It feels like we've stepped over something. The brain has such a feature: if a person from two to five years does not speak, then he will be like Mowgli. They will find him, wash him off, and he will even speak, but there will be no freedom of speech. The brain was formed outside the language. So it is with the trauma of the GULAG. Maybe the time has passed when the wound was alive and easier to heal? But we with the tragedy of the GULAG still embark on the path of awareness. We need time, patience and freedom. New generations will come instead of those who were killed and who left. It seems to me that this evolution is going on, but for now we are sort of centaurs ... Our free part sees life around us, reads a lot, thinks ... But the other part of it is slowly, hard, but changing. Including thanks to projects such as "The Wall of Sorrow", but it is changing ...

On October 30, 2017, a monument dedicated to the victims of repression will open in Moscow. author project - Georgy Frangulyan. The monument is installed on Sakharov Avenue. "The Wall of Sorrow" is the name of the monument.

Background

In 1961, at a regular party congress, Nikita Khrushchev raised the issue of debunking the personality cult of Stalin. Then, for the first time, the idea of ​​creating a monument to the victims of repression was considered. But the matter did not progress further than talk. Moreover, Khrushchev offered to pay tribute to the memory of the "loyal Leninists" - party members who were shot during the years of Stalinism. When the era of the so-called thaw ended, the idea of ​​creating a monument was completely forgotten. They remembered her in the late eighties.

and other monuments

During the perestroika years, the topic of the victims of repression became a topic of discussion. The most suitable times have come for the installation of the monument. The monument opened on the Lubyanka is called the "Solovetsky Stone". It is made of granite brought from the former camp. The grand opening took place on October 30 in 1990. Where mass executions took place in the 1930s, sculptural compositions, walls of memory, chapels were subsequently installed. One of them - "Mask of Sorrow" - is located in Magadan. A memorial plaque with the inscription "Last address" has been installed in many cities of Russia.

Preparing to create the "Wall of Sorrow"

Since the beginning of the nineties, many monuments have been opened in the country. What is the need to create another one? The fact is that in many countries that were part of the USSR, there have been monuments dedicated to the victims of Stalinist repression for several decades. In Moscow, only the foundation stone. In terms of size and composition, this monument does not convey the tragedy and grief that thousands of Soviet families had to endure.

Vladimir has raised the issue of installing the Wall of Sorrow Fedotov - chairman Council for Community Development and Human Rights. In October 2014, the project of the monument was presented to the President of Russia. At the end of December, an agreement was reached on the site of the monument.

Competition

When it comes to creating such a monument, the author of the future project is chosen for several months. In February 2015, the competition started. Only one of its participants was to become the author of the monument. It was assumed that some projects could be used in other cities of Russia.

In total, the jury of the competition considered more than three hundred options. To select a suitable project, an exhibition was organized, which lasted for about a month. Georgy Frangulyan became the winner. The monument to the victims of repression could have been called differently. "The Wall of Sorrow" is the name of the monument created by Frangulyan. The second place in the competition was taken by Sergei Muratov with the "Prism" project. Third - Elena Bocharova ("Broken Fates").

The memorial will be installed at the intersection of Sadovo-Spasskaya Street and Sakharov Avenue. "The Wall of Sorrow", according to the jury, is the most responsible the spirit of the dark Stalin era, in addition, it has a very capacious, self-explanatory name. The erection of the monument is carried out not only at the expense of the state, but also at the expense of national donations.

Description of the monument "Wall of Sorrow" in Moscow

Quite impressive in size. Until the opening, it will be stored in a public garden next to Sakharov Avenue. The height of the monument is 6 meters. Length 35 meters. 80 tons of bronze were used in the creation of the Wall of Sorrow. The monument is a double-sided bas-relief depicting human figures. There are both flat and three-dimensional images.

The Wall of Sorrow photo above shows human figures. There are about six hundred of them here. On the heavy wall, the composition of which is based on the play with volumes, there are rather large gaps, made in the form of a human silhouette. You can go through them. This is a kind of artistic design that people have the opportunity to feel in the place of victims of an all-powerful and merciless system.

The Wall of Sorrow in Moscow is not just a monument. This is a warning that will allow descendants to realize the sad consequences of authoritarianism, the fragility of human life. Perhaps such a sculptural composition will protect the representatives of the future generation from repeating the mistakes of the past. Only one single word is engraved on the "Wall of Sorrow". But this word is present here in 22 languages. The edges of the wall are repeatedly engraved with "P omni".

The "Wall of Sorrow" is located in the square, which is framed with granite stones. In front of the relief, there are several floodlights mounted on granite pillars. The road to the monument is paved with stones. This is unusual construction material... The road to the "Wall of Sorrow" is paved with stones brought from camps, places of mass executions, as well as settlements whose residents were forced to be deported: Irkutsk, Ukhta, Vorkuta, Khabarovsk Territory, Bashkiria and other regions of Russia.

The Sogaz building is located next to the monument. According to the sculptor, this building symbolizes power and sluggishness. In a way, it is part of the monument. She creates a suitable, gloomy backdrop for a wall symbolizing tens of thousands of human victims.

History reference

Even today there is no exact information about how many people died during the years of repression. Mass arrests began in the late 1920s and ended only after Stalin's death. The most terrible period was 1937-1938. Then about 30 thousand people were sentenced to death.

The victims of repression include not only those who were convicted under a political article and sentenced to death penalty... Wives, husbands, and relatives of those arrested were sent to the camps. Children under 15 years old were to be accommodated in cities far from Moscow, Leningrad, Minsk, Kiev, Tiflis.