Last Address
The Last Address (
The initiative had mixed acceptance by local Russian authorities and suffered from vandalism.
Description
This project is important for such things not to happen again. Those who know nothing about repressions will ask questions when they see the signs. Those who had witnessed them will remember them one more time.
The project is the initiative of Moscow and St. Petersburg historians, civic and
The project initiative had originated with journalist and publisher
The memorial sign is a stainless steel plaque 11 cm × 19 cm (4.3 by 7.5 inches) with the information on the repressed person: his or her name, profession, date of birth, date of arrest, date of death, date of exoneration. The design of the memorial plaques is by architect Alexander Brodsky. The hole in the plaque symbolizes the missing photo.[9][7]
The project is based on the law “On the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repressions” adopted in 1991. The law treats the period of political repressions in Russia and USSR as starting on 25 October (7 November) 1917. The official representative of the project is the nonprofit entity Last Address Foundation for the Commemoration of Victims of Political Repression (
On 15 June 2018 "The last address" received a German Karl Wilhelm Fricke award. Its monetary part will be sent to the Ukrainian project "Ostannya Addresa", in order to avoid the status of a "foreign agent".[10][11]
Installing memorial signs in Russia
The first Russian cities to install memorial signs became Moscow and Saint Petersburg. On 7 February 2020, the thousandth memorial sign was installed in Russia: in the city of Gorokhovets, Vladimir Oblast.[12] By that moment the plaques were also installed in the following cities: Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Perm, Taganrog, Barnaul, Krasnoyarsk, etc.
Presented below are some Russian cities where memorial plaques of "Last Address" have been installed.
In Moscow
The first memorial signs of “Last Address” project were installed in Moscow on Human Rights Day, 10 December 2014.[7] Some of the signs were made in response to applications of the residents of houses where repressed people had lived.
The next batch of signs was installed in February–March 2015. By January 2015, over 500 applications for the installation of memorial sign had been submitted. Since 2016, the installation of memorial signs is being performed usually 2 times per month.[13]
In St. Petersburg
The first 12 memorial signs on the houses of Saint Petersburg were installed on 21–22 March 2015;[14] 80 more applications were submitted to St. Petersburg “Memorial” office. At the initiative of Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memorial Museum, two plaques were installed on the wall of the “Fountain House” commemorating the poet’s civil partner, art historian Nikolay Punin, and his daughter’s husband, worker Genrikh Kaminsky.
In two cases, the applicant was a resident of the house who decided to install plaques for all those for whom that house had been a last address. These are the houses at Pushkinskaya ulitsa 19 (three signs) and
The second batch of memorial signs installed on six houses on 25–26 July 2015 included such names as artist B. Malakhovsky, outstanding literary scholar G. Gukovsky, as well as scientists, engineers, and people who were not famous or outstanding in any way, such as the family Belenkiye-Bodganovy (an accountant and a housewife) arrested as “Polish spies.”
In Perm and Perm Krai
“Last Address” was launched in Perm in February 2014.[15] The first four plaques were installed on 10 August 2015. The project founder Serguei Parkhomenko came from Moscow to Perm; in an interview to Zvezda magazine he talked about the ways to launch an initiative group, what the cases of the repressed were telling us and whether it was necessary or advisable to install signs commemorating the organizers of repressions.
The first village with a “Last Address” sign was the village Kupros of Yusvinsky District, Komi-Permyak Okrug. The memorial sign was installed on 11 August 2015 on the façade of the house that was the last residential address of peasant Valentin Startsev, declared by investigators “an active participant of the liquidated counterrevolutionary insurgent organization.” Investigators claimed that Startsev was “conducting counterrevolutionary defeatist agitation among kolkhoz members, trying to prove the inevitability of the fall of Soviet power,” “praising the old Tsarist regime and proving unprofitability of kolkhozes”; as a result, he was sentenced to capital punishment in the form of execution by a firing squad.
In Taganrog
The first commemorative sign in Taganrog was installed on 31 May 2015. The ceremony was attended by project founder Serguei Parkhomenko, the deputy of Oblast Duma Oleg Kobyakov, president of the Council of the regional branch of the Russian National Society for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments Alexander Kozhin, residents of neighboring houses and numerous journalists.
Installing memorial signs in other countries
The first country outside Russia became Ukraine, where a separate project "Остання адреса – Україна" based on Russian "Last address" started working.[16] On 5 May 2017 the first three commemorative plaques were installed on three houses in Kyiv.
On 7 June 2017, on the day of political prisoners, signs of the Last address appeared on the facades of four houses in Prague.[17][18][19]
On 2 August 2018, the Ultima adresa project was launched in Moldova:[20][21] the first two plates of the “Last Address” appeared in Chișinău.[22]
On 5 October 2018, the Georgian project "უკანასკნელი მისამართი. საქართველო", "Last Address, Georgia" officially started.[23][24][25]
On 30 August 2019, the first commemorative plaque appeared in Germany, in the Thuringian city of Treffurt.[26][27]
References
- ^ "Posledniy adres" website (in Russian)
- Radio Liberty. 26 November 2014.
- ^ «Последние адреса» репрессированных: москвичам напомнят об их истории // «Москва 24» (in Russian)
- ^ a b Мемориальный проект «Последний адрес» (in Russian)
- ^ "Humble Memorials for Stalin's Victims in Moscow". New Yorker. 13 December 2014.
- ^ "I put up plaques for victims of Soviet repression". Financial Times. 28 August 2015.
- ^ dw.de, Russian edition (in Russian)
- ^ Sergey Parkhomenko (7 March 2018). "Russia has yet to recover from the trauma of the Stalin era". The Guardian.
- ^ "Russian Project Honors Stalin's Victims and Stirs Talk on Brutal Past". The New York Times. 20 September 2015.
- ^ Verleihung des Karl-Wilhelm-Fricke-Preises 2018 // Die Stiftung, 15 June 2018 (in German)
- ^ Проект о жертвах репрессий "Последний адрес" получил немецкую премию // Radio Liberty, 15 June 2018 (in Russian)
- ^ "Последний адрес: Тысячная табличка в России (часть 1)" (in Russian). blnews.ru. 13 February 2020.
- ^ See for example a story of a sign installation: Last Address: Nikolai Yushkevich (Russian Reader, 9 May 2018).
- ^ Живые с мертвыми. Для бога мертвых нет. // Novaya Gazeta, 22 March 2015. (in Russian)
- Arguments and FactsPrikamye, 3 February 2015 (in Russian)
- ^ "Last Address: A Civic Initiative to Commemorate Victims of Soviet Repressions". Free Russia. 10 June 2018.
- ^ Poslední adresa (in Czech)
- ^ Last Address project marking communism victims launched in Prague // Prague Daily Monitor, 28 June 2017.
- ^ "Last Address" project commemorates victims who were executed or whose deaths were hastened by Communist regime // Radio Prague, 27 June 2017.
- ^ "Ultima Adresă" (in Romanian). Archived from the original on 10 October 2018.
- ^ "Proiectul "Ultima adresă" a victimelor represiunilor politice staliniste va fi lansat la Chișinău" (in Romanian). 31 July 2018.
- ^ "В Молдове начинает работу проект "Ultima Adresa"" (in Russian). Ava. 1 August 2018.
- ^ ერთი სახელი, ერთი სიცოცხლე, ერთი ნიშანი (in Georgian)
- ^ В Тбилиси «Последний адрес» впервые установил мемориальный знак жертве политических репрессий // Новости-Грузия, 6 October 2018
- ^ "უკანასკნელი მისამართი - თბილისში რეპრესიების მსხვერპლთა ხსოვნის დაფები გაჩნდება" (in Georgian). 5 October 2018.
- ^ "German victims of Stalinism get recognition with Last Address initiative". Deutsche Welle. 3 September 2019.
- ^ "Gedenktafel erinnert an Unrecht durch Militärtribunal". Thüringer Allgemeine (in German). 18 September 2019.
External links
- Media related to Last Address at Wikimedia Commons
- Website of the project (Russian)
- Publications in other languages
- "Aquí vivió una víctima del estalinismo" (in Spanish). El País. 27 December 2015.
- "Operation "Letzte Adresse"" (in German). Zeit Online. 12 January 2015.
- "La "dernière adresse" des victimes de la Grande Terreur" (in French). Arte. 2 April 2015.
- "Dernière adresse connue... au temps de la terreur stalinienne" (in French). Le Monde. 16 February 2015.
- "Čtyři zmařené životy – čtyři tabulky. Projekt připomíná oběti komunismu" (in Czech). Lidovky. 27 June 2017.