Memorial signs of the Last Address project about the victims of the Great Terror disappear from Moscow facades
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Commemorative plaques from the Last Address memorial project dedicated to the victims of repressions began to disappear from the facades of buildings in Moscow. The activists of the project drew attention to this. Moscow City Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov, who called what was happening “a planned action by unknown extremist Stalinist organizations,” filed a request with the police.
In May, posts by residents of the center of Moscow about the disappearance of commemorative plaques from the Last Address project from the facades of houses began to appear on social networks. It was about Bolshaya Polyanka, Novokuznetskaya street, a writer’s house in Lavrushinsky lane. On Saturday, project coordinator Oksana Matievskaya discovered the loss of several more tablets in the vicinity of Tverskaya Street. The project does not yet undertake to estimate how many memorable signs have disappeared, for this, with the help of activists, they are going to conduct an audit.
“The Last Address” is a memorial project, the purpose of which is “to perpetuate the memory of compatriots who became victims of political repression and state arbitrariness during the years of Soviet power.” As part of the project, on the facades of houses, at the initiative or with the consent of the residents, commemorative plaques the size of a postcard with the name of the repressed residents of the house are installed. One plate, one name. Activists explain that from a legal point of view, these are information signs, not memorial plaques: “They have the same status as the signs “Caution, icicles” or “Do not park cars at the gate.” This is a grassroots civil initiative, so officials have nothing to do with it.”
The “Last Address” calls what is happening “an attack on the project as a whole, and not the theft of individual plates.” Therefore, the activists turned for help to the deputies of the Moscow City Duma Mikhail Timonov (“A Just Russia – For the Truth”) and the “Yabloko girl” Daria Besedina (recognized as a foreign agent).
Ms. Besedina told Kommersant that she could not judge the motives, but there was a corpus delicti: “After all, the signs were installed with the consent of the owners of the building.” Mikhail Timonov agrees that “there is a theft of property, that is, a criminally punishable act.” In connection with this, the deputy will send a request to the head of the Moscow police department, Oleg Baranov. In May, Moscow deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov (Yabloko) already turned to the police with a request about the massive disappearance of project signs. He told Kommersant that he considers what is happening “an obviously planned action by unknown extremist Stalinist organizations.”
Ms. Matievskaya, in turn, is sure that the “carpet” removal of the signs is connected with the attack on the structures of Memorial (the Memorial human rights center and the International Memorial were entered in the register of foreign agents at different times, and in 2022 they were liquidated by the court ): “Preserving the memory of the victims of repression is perceived as a permitted goal, and the state, represented by the police, has withdrawn itself.” “Memorial”, we recall, was engaged, in particular, in perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression and helping citizens in search of information about relatives who disappeared during the Great Terror.
The Moscow mayor’s office did not comment on the situation.
Note that the memorial plaques of the “Last Address” are also attacked in St. Petersburg. Earlier, ex-assistant to State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov, Alexander Mokhnatkin, complained about them, and the deputy head of the committee on urban planning and architecture of the city, Larisa Kanunnikova, called the signs illegal, attributing cases of their installation to administrative offenses.
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