Time to read: 13 minutes(s)

The very existence of the "Last Address" project at a time when prosecutors are rescinding rehabilitation orders for victims of Soviet repression, effectively re-repressing them, borders on a miracle. The project is going through hard times, but it's not dying. Volunteers manage not only to preserve most of the old plaques but even to install new ones—albeit much less frequently than before.

"Last Address" is primarily a Moscow and St. Petersburg story: 1167 plaques out of approximately 1,500 located throughout Russia are located in these cities. Yet, it is precisely through the efforts of volunteers from the provinces that the memory of ordinary people—residents of large and small towns and villages who perished during the Great Terror—is preserved. It is precisely in these provinces that their own touching traditions sometimes emerge. For example, in Makhachkala, a tree is planted next to each "Last Address" plaque.

NeMoscow spoke with participants of the "Last Address" project from various cities about their lives today.

The Last Address Project — a public initiative aimed at perpetuating the memory of the victims of political repression and state abuses during the Soviet era. Memorial plaques of a uniform design are placed on the facades of buildings whose addresses were the last ones of victims of political repression.
The Last Address sign, based on a design by renowned Russian architect Alexander Brodsky, is a stainless steel plate measuring 11 x 19 cm, with several lines of information about the victim of repression.
The main source of information about those repressed is the Memorial Society database—the same one that formed the basis for the traditional “Return of Names” campaign at the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square.

On the eve of the war with Ukraine, attacks on "Last Address" signs began in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg. Acts of vandalism continue to this day.

"Some local scoundrels are hunting for the signs: they unscrew them, tear them off, draw on them, break them, damage them, and so on," says journalist Sergei Parkhomenko, coordinator of the "Last Address" project.

— Do you think this is an initiative from below or from above?

"It's a grassroots initiative, built on what's being done from above. With the start of the war, some people decided that this is the way things are now—maybe even the way they should be. It fits the general mood, and the higher-ups will praise it. And anyway, we have to hunt down our enemies somehow—it's clear that these are enemies we'll fight. Normal people can't remember anything about mass repressions; they can't be interested in real, authentic history. To launch this process, they needed the top-down ideology of a besieged fortress and the fight against spies, intelligence agents, and saboteurs. So, I would say, this is a countermovement. Although, of course, there's no formal government order: no one issued any decrees or edicts regarding the attack on 'The Last Address.' But it's perfectly clear that this is in line with current propaganda doctrine. And it's also perfectly clear that no one will be punished for it."

"In Moscow, this is being done by the same people who are destroying the memorial on Nemtsov Bridge, the same people who once doused Navalny and Ulitskaya with green paint and attacked Memorial—the same stormtroopers who operate under the cover of Center E. But we know that in the Basmanny district, the district administration instructed the housing department to remove the signs," says Oksana Matiyevskaya, also the coordinator of "The Last Address."

Since the war in Ukraine began, people have become wary of any manifestation of civic activism, even the very words "political repression." But to put a plaque on a building, you have to talk to the residents and explain the project. And even when volunteers explain that "Last Address" isn't a foreign agent or a division of the disgraced Memorial, people object: "What if tomorrow you're labeled a foreign agent? And my signature is on this."

Ekaterinburg

Last summer, three new plaques were unveiled in Yekaterinburg, one on building No. 43 on Pervomayskaya Street. The building was built in 1932 near the headquarters of the Ural Military District (now the Central Military District) and the "Chekist Town," which largely determined the composition and occupation of its residents. In October 1937, as part of the NKVD's "Harbin Operation," Dmitry Narkisovich Starchak, who had previously worked for the Chinese Eastern Railway in Harbin, and his three daughters—Lidiya, Taisya, and Agnia—were taken away from here. All were accused of working for Japanese intelligence and executed: the father in November, the daughters in January.

On June 30, plaques were installed on the house for Dmitry Narkisovich, Lidiya, and Agnia. But complications soon arose.

"Some woman complained to the local Communist Party chairman about the illegal installation of a plaque. He then contacted the prosecutor's office. Do you know the rationale? The plaques violate the rights of the building's residents—and this isn't the residents themselves claiming it, but people who have nothing to do with the building. Moreover, to install a 'Last Address' plaque, you don't have to contact any authority—nobody but the residents. I believe it was a political act," says Alexei Mosin, Doctor of Historical Sciences and chairman of the Sverdlovsk Memorial. According to him, the situation is currently hanging: all three plaques are in place, and there's been no news from the prosecutor's office.

The fourth plaque was also ready - for Taisiya, who lived with her husband at a different address and came to visit her parents.

"Both the board and the general meeting of the HOA approved the sign's installation. But there were some doubters. Then the prosecutor's office called, and we decided to postpone the sign's unveiling for now. Because we realized that if we announced the sign's unveiling—with the participation of residents, the press, and activists—there would certainly be provocations from the NOD members, the Solovyovites... We don't want a scandal—let things calm down a bit," Mosin says.

Yekaterinburg has 26 "Last Address" signs—a significant number for a city other than the capital. The signs haven't been torn down in recent years—the last time this happened was in 2021, before the war with Ukraine. Then, on April 7, nine signs were torn down in one night.

According to Memorial, during the years of the Great Terror in the Sverdlovsk region there were 11,731 people were shot.

"We had just installed four new plaques on two buildings on 8 Marta Street that day," recalls Alexey Mosin. "8 Marta, Building 2—plaques for the commander of the Ural Military District, Gailit, and his wife. And 8 Marta, Building 7—there were already three plaques there, so we added two more: one for Andryashin, the chief engineer of the cyanide compounds plant, and one for Zlatopolsky, the former director of the UNIKhIM Institute. That night, all nine plaques on the three buildings on that street were torn down. Security cameras captured the person who did it. We contacted the police, but they couldn't find anyone."

All the plaques have now been restored. And recently, Yekaterinburg published a guide to the "Last Address" plaques in our city, with a map of their locations on the city map and a description of each one. I believe this is the first such effort in Russia.

Tomsk

"Since the war began, the Stalinists have become more reckless: they sense their time has come and are going on the attack. But nothing has changed among ordinary people: their attitude is largely indifferent. They say, 'Well, yes, it's a good thing—but without us,'" says Alexander (name changed), a Tomsk volunteer with the "Last Address."

According to Alexander, three of the five signs installed recently have already been torn down. In total, no more than half of the signs remain in place. If signs are installed quietly—that is, without journalists or large numbers of guests—they usually remain intact. But as soon as press coverage appears, expect guests.

Between 7,000 and 7,300 people were shot. on political charges in the Tomsk region in 1937-1938.

— So this is a targeted action?

"There are special people who keep an eye on this, monitoring social media. That's why we don't publish anything anymore. We don't give out addresses; we just say, 'Somewhere in the Tomsk taiga.' Where it is, what it is—let them look. Why help them?"

— Do you think they do this because they feel the call of their hearts? Or because they're under orders from above?

"I think it's mostly private initiative. But when it came to the signs we hung in the places where the camps were, where the transfers took place, there may have been instructions from the authorities. In the case of the poles, the authorities were in full public disrepute."

In September 2024, five pillars bearing photographs of the victims were erected on Mount Kashtak in Tomsk—the site of a mass execution of repressed individuals. In addition to their names, their professions and the dates of execution were also listed. By mid-October, the mayor's office demolished pillars as "unauthorized structures".

"We suggested, 'Let's move these pillars to the cemetery where they were reburied.' They said, 'Are you sure these are the people buried there?' I replied, 'What, should we do DNA testing? Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. What difference does it make? It's a mass grave. It's a symbol. They were shot in Tomsk.' They said, 'No, we can't.' I don't think they're such sincere Stalinists. It's just that all this Stalinist garbage is surfacing again. Even the young people are shouting, 'Stalin was great, he raised the country, he won the war.' So any mention of Stalin's crimes makes them cringe."

Tula

"We have many places where plaques could be installed. But the negative experience with previous plaques is holding us back for now. We'll probably have to wait for another time," says Andrei Klochkov, deputy chairman of the board of the Tula Memorial.

The first plaque was installed here in October 2017 in memory of Priest Dmitry Glagolev. He was arrested in July 1930 for attempting to prevent the closure of the church where he served. According to the charges, Glagolev "gathered around himself an anti-Soviet element of former people" and opposed the activities of the Soviet regime. A few months later, the "troika" sentenced the priest to death by firing squad.

The granddaughter of another repressed person came from the Moscow region to the unveiling of this plaque. She also wanted to place a plaque in honor of her grandfather, Alexander Alexandrovich Chernov, a professor at the Tula Mechanical Institute. In 1938, Chernov was accused of participating in a Menshevik-Socialist Revolutionary organization, plotting terrorist attacks against the leaders of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Soviet government, and engaging in counterrevolutionary activities. He was executed.

Residents of the building built on the site of the one where Chernov lived before his arrest, despite repeated entreaties, refused to allow the sign to be installed. Activists were forced to negotiate with the owner of a store located in an annex to the building, where the sign was hung.

It soon disappeared. Who tore it down remains unknown. The plaque was restored, but they decided not to put it up yet, but to wait until "better times."

The first plaque—for Priest Glagolev—also disappeared. It was soon found, however: it turned out the plaque had been removed due to renovations to the building. It was returned to the activists, who screwed it back in.

And in September 2023, in the suburban village of Prilepy, the memory of the famous horse breeder Yakov Ivanovich Butovich was immortalized.

Butovich was friends with Tolstoy—it was he who told him the story of Kholstomer. He assembled a collection of art objects related to horse breeding, which was later taken to Moscow and used as the basis for the Horse Breeding Museum. When the stud was nationalized after the Revolution, Butovich was made director.

"...My labors were not in vain: I defended the plant, survived a period of pogroms, did not lose my nerve, and saved one of the best Orlov nests in the country. Although I lost it as an owner, I had the consolation of knowing that the labors of many years, which had already borne valuable fruit, would not be in vain, that the names of the Prilep founders of the plant, and with them my humble name, would live for a long time in the memory of hunters and “This will be repeated by everyone who worked, is working and will work on the Orlov Trotter,” he wrote in his memoirs.

But in 1927,Lepsky horseThe plant was liquidated, and Butovich was imprisoned for three years as an "enemy of the people and a saboteur." In 1937, he was arrested again and executed for "spreading counterrevolutionary, rebel sentiments and anti-Soviet propaganda among the residents of Mtsensk."

"One of our volunteers is from this village, and she organized the installation of the plaque in Prilepy. People came from Tula and Moscow. It was very touching: when the plaque was put up, horses from the stud farm—the one that's still there now—came," recalls Andrei Klochkov.

In the future, he wants to install two more signs:

My ancestors came from Krapivna, a district town where Tolstoy served as a peace negotiator. The Yasnaya Polyana estate also belonged to this district. Two of my indirect relatives were repressed and executed at the Tesnitsky Forest firing range. They are connected by the house where they lived—the former building of the local history museum. So, the idea came to mind: to install "Last Address" plaques there for these two people. One of them, the tsarist officer Mikhail Nikolaevich Saburov, was married to the daughter of another of my repressed ancestors, the merchant Matvey Ivanovich Yudin. Both were accused of "anti-Soviet agitation" in late 1937 and executed within three months of each other.

According to him, the Tula volunteers of "The Last Address" are being assisted by the local Orthodox community:

"There are several priests—including young, advanced ones—who are studying repression among the clergy. And we're trying to suggest to them that priests, too, could have plaques installed. It might not be "Last Address," and they can put up their own plaques, but it's still a memorial, something that makes you think."

The main thing is to preserve the memory, and the format isn't so important, Klochkov believes. After the Tula community succeeded in stopping a government-imposed project to "develop" the Tesnitsky firing range—which would involve the demolition of existing memorial signs and crosses and the installation of a standard monument—volunteers erected displays there telling the story of those who were executed at the site.

The Tesnitsky firing range is a mass grave site for victims of political repression. It is designated a cultural heritage site. The KGB Directorate for the Tula Region reports that 2251 people were executed there, but according to Tula-based Memorial, the death toll was several hundred higher.

"The 'Tesnitsky Execution Range' exhibition has been there for several years now. And the meaning of this place has become clear to everyone who comes here," says Klochkov. "Quite a few people come there: some are simply curious, others have relatives buried there. But, of course, the part of the population that couldn't care less, just as they didn't know what happened here before, still don't know. And those who talk about it are in a complete vacuum: we're not invited anywhere, and nobody talks about us."

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"I respect the efforts of those volunteers who restore the plaques, sparing no time or emotional energy for this work. But I ask myself: is it worth tilting at windmills? Is it really so important to install these plaques on buildings and thereby sow discord between people—as if we don't have enough reasons for discord? Perhaps it would be better not to engage in such provocations and instead focus our efforts on restoring historic buildings? To restore historical memory in other areas that may not be as conspicuous, but are no less useful? Will I personally participate in installing these plaques in today's circumstances? I've decided for myself: no, I won't anymore. Although it was a difficult decision," says one of the regional volunteers.

But windmill-tipping activists from various regions still make signs, persuade timid residents, and convey the history of the Great Terror bit by bit to their uncurious fellow citizens. "Draw it—it will be credited to you," as Okudzhava once sang.