MOSCOW - Hundreds of Russians gathered in central Moscow on Monday to commemorate Stalin's horrific victims, despite questions about whether the city's authorities would allow the annual ceremony.
Participants in the "Return of Names" event, which has been going on for more than a decade, lined up to read the names of those killed during the political repression that began in the 1930s.
Others put flowers and candles beside a rock brought from the northernmost Solovki detention center, which is now a landmark outside the offices of the FSB, previously known as the KGB.
"I come every year because I feel I have a duty to the victims," said Sergei Mitrokhin, 55.
"Today Russia is trying to forget that period," Mitrokhin, a member of the liberal Yabloko party, told AFP.
Russia has seen in recent years a formal trend to show the Stalin period positively, and reduced the repression and oppression and forced collective farms that led to the deaths of millions.
The rights group Memorial, which organizes the 12-hour event, said authorities had rejected plans this month to hold the ceremony in its usual place, but allowed it a few days later.
"We have to remember all of this," said Anastasia, 26, "We can not know anything about this period in the official media, everything depends on the work of such people in Memorial who organize this ceremony."
Nearly half of Russians between the ages of 18 and 24 said they had never heard of Stalin's crackdowns, according to a survey by the state-run VTSOM news agency this month.
